Letters From Battleground Ohio

[Wiley50]

Good Sunday morning. In case any of you are wavering in your decision to attend our second Gathering To Save Our Democracy rally at the Tennessee State Capital today at 2:00 pm, I thought you should read a report from one of the Ohio volunteers who drove from Green Bay, Wisconsin to western Ohio to participate in the recount. Her letter to me is a chilling documentation of at least two election laws violated with impunity by Ohio election officials. You will fear for our country as you read her letter.

But you may be emboldened by the second letter I received this evening from a North Carolina retiree, who had hoped to join us tomorrow but who may be kept away. When a gentle, elderly woman says that she will stop paying her taxes because she believes that the Bush administration holds power illegally, that should make all of us understand the gravity of what we face.

Please join us today as we fire our own rhetorical opening rounds in the second American Revolution, collectively and with conviction. I hope to see everyone of you there tomorrow, with everyone you know. Dress warm and wear orange. Bernie
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A letter from Ohio

Dear Bernie,

I want to thank you for being the one to hook me up with the Greens for the recount....

Nevertheless, it is striking that the volunteers were indeed able to compile evidence of numerous incidents that would lead any rational person to conclude that the Ohio election was riddled with fraud. Let's just begin with the illegal withholding of the poll registries. Ohio state law specifically states that such refusal to permit examination of these documents constitutes prima facie evidence of electoral fraud. Every county board of elections director in Ohio was ordered to commit this illegal act. As far as I know, all complied with this order, thus willingly becoming perpetrators of a crime that counts every American citizen as its victim. It may come as no surprise that every director with whom I had dealings was a Republican.

I helped organize and facilitate the work of 12 Wisconsin volunteers who took time away from work and dug deep in their pockets to travel to Ohio to do the tedious work of turning over the rocks. It was an exhausting trip of some 1000 miles round trip for all of us, but we were happy to do it. We all love our country and want to awaken her from this long darkness that stretches out behind us for four years, and in front of us as far as the eye can see.

We began to arrive in Ohio on Wednesday morning and we dispersed to a number of counties in western Ohio. It is too early for me to share all of their experiences. I've barely gotten home myself, and family duties call along with holiday preparations. But I can share my experience with you.

The most startling conversation I had was with the county prosecutor, who was present "to represent the county" at the recount I attended. Also present was an attorney for the Republican Party - whether at the county or state level was not clear - and a representative from the office of Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. In a sidebar discussion outside the counting room about a technicality concerning Nader's presence on the ballot, despite his removal on legal grounds, I was told by the prosecutor that the company supplying the tabulating equipment and software was Triad Systems. Much has been written about their Republican connections and suspect activities in regard to the Ohio election, so I won't go into the details here. Here's the real shocker: Triad Systems had a technician in this particular county office the morning of the recount, before it started. He had disassembled the tabulator, and replaced "a switch" that had supposedly malfunctioned. He was lurking in the hallway outside the counting room during the entire recount. One of our volunteers engaged him in a conversation and obtained his name and other information which has been conveyed to the Green Party organizers for further action. The prosecutor, in conveying this information, repeated over and over again that the vendor was Triad. He is a Democrat, and I would say more interested in democracy than some of the other attendees.

I phoned this information up to the next level and we are in the process of documenting all that occurred. When I was speaking with our coordinator, I was told that a Triad technician was also busy in Greene County, which has been the scene of several recount melodramas that have been publicized. In this case, it turns out the technician was actually the president of Triad Systems.

Need I tell you that our observers were denied the right to inspect the voter registry from any precinct in the county, including the one used for the 3% sample? I think this may be a good thing, since this violation of law basically means that no valid recount took place.

I can't help but think that these types of scenarios were playing out all over Ohio this week, and that the discovery process in which we were engaged has surely produced enough evidence to establish probable cause in legal terms. I would be very surprised if there were not multiple suits filed at the county level in the coming weeks.

I hope that my theory is correct - that it does no good to simply elect a new president if the rest of the corrupt Hydra is left in place. This monstrosity has to be taken apart, down to the last remnant, and swept out of office, out of the process, and utterly discredited in the eyes of at least the vast majority of Americans. The only way to do this is to methodically expose the breadth and depth of the corruption of our electoral processes in a comprehensive manner. It's like an enormous jigsaw puzzle, and we need all the pieces to show the picture to the populace at large.

Our job is threefold:

-We must continue to dig, dig, dig for every particle of information, every piece of this vast puzzle.

-We must continue to tell every person we meet that our will as a people has been thwarted, that every vote cast was stolen by this fraud, regardless of party or candidate.

-And we must never give up pressuring the media to cover this travesty.

I don't know if John Kerry is as uninvolved in this tedious process as he appears to be. I sincerely hope that the Green Party will meet with Kerry and lay out the evidence we have uncovered of massive election fraud in Ohio. I hope he will fight - not for himself, but for all of us. But if he chooses not to fight, we will all carry on - and this time we'll know that the Democratic Party is not an option for us. I wonder if they really understand what has been unleashed. I wonder if either of our "two" major parties understand that if this fraudulent election is not examined, criminals prosecuted, and results reassessed, that they will have firmly and finally planted the seeds of their own destruction as viable political entities. It will be interesting, and no doubt painful, to witness the events to come as they unfold before us.

It was a great experience. I met some absolutely wonderful people, and I left Ohio feeling that we had taken our place in a small way at the turning point in our nation's history. Which way it will turn is still in question, but I know we all have a part to play. I'm going off politics, other than writing up reports, until after the holidays. By then, I am hoping that my way forward will be more clear. Thanks again for helping me find my part in this effort for now. And good luck tomorrow in Nashville. I'll be there in spirit.
Love, "Diana"
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A letter from North Carolina


Dear Mr. Ellis,

I do not know if I will be able to get there and if I cannot, I would be honored if you would speak for me because there is something I want very much to say...

The evidence of Electoral Fraud throughout the Nation on November 2, 2004 is overwhelming and irrefutable.

I like to believe I am well informed. I knew the Fox News Network was ideological. I knew about Sinclair.

But not until the media blackout of one of the biggest stories in history; proof of massive election fraud in what was once the greatest Democracy in the world, did I fully appreciate the catastrophe that has occurred. It would be impossible to overstate the gravity of the situation.

Tens of millions of our Countrymen have no idea what has happened. We have to find a way to tell them and the ability to do so is available to us.

One of the most simple and direct methods of communicating with others is for EVERY ONE OF US to put a sign in the rear window of our car declaring ELECTION FRAUD IN U.S. or even just VERIFY THE VOTE, with at least one website reference.

These signs need to start popping up like Flowers of Freedom for all to see. We can carry lists of websites in our cars and hand them out to anyone who inquires. We must talk to our neighbors and refer them to sources of information.

I believe all who love America, Democracy and Freedom are working diligently to save the Republic.

There isn't much time before this fraudulent election must be challenged. I believe the evidence is being amassed as quickly and thoroughly as possible to establish the basis upon which the Ohio Electoral Votes and the Election itself will be Contested in the Congress on or before January 6th, 2005.

However, if this fraudulent election is not contested, if all our leaders fail us, then it will be in our hands, and ours alone, to do what must be done.

Acting in concert and by legal means, We The People can Contest this election on our own behalf. We The People, can do this for ourselves both peacefully and legally.

On April 14, 2005, if this unelected government remains in place, I will not pay my taxes. One of the most basic principles of the United States of America is "no taxation without representation" and I will be eager to engage the Internal Revenue Service in the courts to prove the American People are not represented by this government and present the extensive evidence of Election Fraud to prove it.

If every American who knows what actually happened on November 2, 2004 joins me, there will be millions of people who will refuse to be taxed without representation. Once this process is initiated the continued suppression of information of Election Fraud in the United States will be impossible.

We The People should settle for nothing less then a nationwide revote for President with paper ballots and scrupulously observed auditing.

Never forget the words of Abraham Lincoln...a "Government Of The People, By The People and For The People Shall Not Perish From The Earth".

United We Stand.

Thank you very much,
"Bessie Hyatt"

Asheville, N. C.

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I can't think of anything you have to do on Sunday at 2:00 pm that is more important than to honor the courage and spirit of these two women. See you there. Bernie

[hedda_foil]

1. Can you find out what county she's reporting on?

Also, if you have her name and email, please PM me. I'd like to get this info to the right people in the recount and the lawsuits and have direct access to all of them.

Thanks!
hedda (http://www.helpamericarecount.org)

[TexasBushwhacker]

2. Important stuff - kick n/t

[Twist_U_Up]

3. All for one and one for all

I think this is a great idea, it may be the route I take also

But you may be emboldened by the second letter I received this evening from a North Carolina retiree, who had hoped to join us tomorrow but who may be kept away. When a gentle, elderly woman says that she will stop paying her taxes because she believes that the Bush administration holds power illegally, that should make all of us understand the gravity of what we face.

[Clark2008]

4. I'm so glad that Tennessee is representing!

I wish I lived closer to Nashville (and had heard about this before now) so I could have participated. I didn't know they were going to do it again.

Thanks for reporting on this. It made my day. :)

[Vidar]

5. Way to fight, Wiley!

[chomskysright]

6. OTHER imp info from [email protected]....

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2004 01:15:33 -0500
From: "Bruce Hall" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Sandusky Witness report
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"



Bruce Hall (not Hull)
Fort Wayne, IN
December 18, 2004


I was one of the witnesses of the recount in Sandusky County for the “GLib” party candidates on December 15. The Director of the Board of Elections, Barbara Tuckerman (D), told us at the outset that we were not to interfere with the count or stop it in any way. If we had questions that were not answered to our satisfaction we were to make note of them and relay them to our people later. They had prepared a test deck of ballots with a few each of minor party candidates, several each of the major candidates. What I didn’t understand was the proportionally much larger stack of under- and over-voted ballots. When I asked why the stack was so large, it was explained to me but I still didn’t get it, and I asked for clarification. I still didn’t understand, but didn’t want to look like an idiot or like I was trying to put a halt to things, so I made a note of it and hushed up. As near as I could tell, it looked like they were including one under-vote and one over-vote per precinct, or something like that. I didn’t write down the number so I can’t say exactly how many, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and quite disproportionate to number of legitimate test ballots in the deck. After hand counting these ballots and machine counting them, they reconciled the numbers and declared that the machines tested OK and we could proceed with the actual 3% machine vs. hand count test.
Earlier in the morning, I had observed that lists were being given to certain people to choose the precinct they wanted counted. This did not appear right to me, as it was my impression that the selection was to be by a scientifically valid random sampling plan. The scheme they were using certainly wasn’t random. After talking this over with the other two GLib observers present, I recommended to them that we ask for a precinct as well. I believe it was Karen Wagner who made the selection, City of Clyde C. The other precincts that were chosen were Ballville TWP A CV, and Rice TWP. I paid close attention to Clyde C. The hand count matched the machine count after it was discovered that a ballot with a name written in on the write-in line was actually an under-vote by the machine count because the voter had neglected to fill in the bubble in the margin beside the name they had written. We were told we could go to lunch and the full machine recount would begin at one o’clock.
We returned about 1:10 and found the machine count underway. I stationed myself at the same machine that had counted our precinct in the morning, and kept a close eye on what was going on. The machine would stop periodically with a message that a ballot had been found with no vote or too many votes on it, and these were set aside to be judged. One scenario was that there were some ballots where a candidate’s bubble was filled in, as well as the one directly below it on the last line, that for a write-in candidate. The ruling was made that since the line for write-in candidate had been left blank, a white-out sticker would be placed over that bubble so the machine could count it as a vote for the candidate. Due to the rotation of names between precincts county-wide, ballots that were over-voted in this manner would go to various candidates, and if the voter filled in two or more bubbles higher up on the ballot, it was definitely an over-vote. Probably some voters thought they had to vote separately for President and Vice-President, and were filling in the two ovals in the margin closest to their selections. But none of the VP candidates had separate bubbles so there were some spoiled ballots on that score. If a voter had clearly made an effort to erase a bubble and filled in a different one but the machine counted it as an over-vote, it received a white-out sticker on the erased bubble so as well to be properly machine counted. A couple of ballots that were machine read as under-votes had all the ovals for their selections on the ballot checked instead of filled in, so when this was shown to the judges the decision was made to fill in the bubble where the checkmark was. This all seemed quite fair to me and I was impressed at how well the Democrats and Republicans got along, joking about how much it hurt to repair those types of ballots for the other side, all in good fun. It was surprising to find ballots with most or all of the Presidential candidates’ ovals filled in, or with none filled in at all. Puzzling, but relatively rare, ballots like these that registered no vote for President.
I asked for a copy of the official, certified results. I was told I would have to wait until they were done counting them. I said, no, I wanted the results that they had already sent in to the Secretary of State previously, those results had to be on record somewhere in the building. I was told OK, I could have a copy of that. I said, thank you. Can I have them now, please? I was told everyone was busy, I would have to wait until they were done counting. I said I really needed to have them before the recount was finished, that it was important to me that I have them now. I was polite but firm, and said there were plenty of people just standing around, and I am sure someone could make a copy of the results that had been sent to the SOS for me. So after about the fifth request it was delivered to me, and I thanked them graciously. The certified result for Clyde C was Bush 226. Kerry 212. The hand and machine recount was Bush 226, Kerry 214. I saw how this had happened by means of two of the over-voted ballots being corrected as previously mentioned, and I began to gain a little more confidence that perhaps the vote count was on the square in this county, but I couldn’t swear to it.
I was asked why the recount was requested by the minor party candidates, and said I didn’t know for sure. I said there has been a lot of reports of problems with the election, but I thought that it was in the larger counties and those with touch-screen voting. A man said something to the effect that any county that had those ought to smash them, they were ripe for fraud. I asked if I could quote him on that and he said yes, and I got his name. It was Tom Yonkers.
There are a couple of things about the spoiled ballots that bothers me. One is that in cases where the voter filled in a bubble, then crossed it out and filled in a different one the ballot was deemed an over-vote and no vote for President was recorded. I said it seems that the intent of the voter can be determined, and was told, no, you can’t count those. I didn’t argue the matter, but felt more strongly that this determination was improper when I later found out that the precincts were furnished with pencils that had no erasers. Also, it is my understanding that Nader was not allowed to be counted on the ballot, even though his name appears on it. In some cases Nader’s bubble was filled in as well as that of another candidate. If a Nader vote did not count, shouldn’t the voter’s other choice (Kerry or whoever) be counted?
There was also some talk of people being purged from the voting rolls if they hadn’t voted recently. If they showed up to vote and their name wasn’t on the list but they insisted they had voted before and were registered, they were given a provisional ballot. If their name had been purged, however, I don’t think their vote was counted. Is that right? Also, some provisional ballots were not counted because of not having a signature on the outside envelope. Was there a rule change on that?
Interestingly, the two counting machines were ES&S, and even more interesting, there was a memo lying in plain sight on one of the tables with an ES&S letterhead. The memo gave a phone number to call if there were any problems on Novemeber 2, and requested that the election results be called in as soon as possible. Why would they need to know what the results were right away? The machines stored their information on a computer floppy disk drive built into the machine, but printed out the totals on an Okidata dot matrix printer on a table right by each machine. The hand counted precincts had the totals printed at the machine during the 3% test. During the full recount, the printers kept a running total of how many ballots they had counted and each time the counting was stopped when an uncountable ballot was encountered, but they did not print out any totals for the candidates as the recount progressed. I noted that to the person running the machine, and she said yeah, if it did that everyone would crowd around whenever it printed anything. Imagine that! So then I started to think, maybe there is a way this thing can be hacked after all. But I didn’t find any proof of that. When the recount was finished, each machine printed a total for the candidates that it had counted in that run, and I made notes of those results. The director took the floppies out of the machines and left the room, saying we should get the final results in about a half an hour. I did a rough calculation, adding the numbers most recently printed together with the ones from the 3 precincts we had counted in the morning, and the numbers were relatively close. After everything was said and done, Bush picked up 26 votes, Kerry picked up 33. The election officials appeared to have done their jobs well, and the added votes were fairly allocated.
Results: Badn'k Bush Kerry Nader Per'ka W-in over under totals
11/17 53 16,195 12,653 107 48 ? 225 139 29,451
12/15 53 16,221 12,686 107 48 31 173 136 29,455


The average voter turnout was 74.75%. Ballville F reported the highest, 87..58% turnout. It went Bush over Kerry 255-152. The lowest turnout was City of Fremont 4-E, 54.48%, which went Kerry over Bush 109-98. It appears that many of the precincts with above average turnout went Bush and those with below average turnout went Kerry, especially in Fremont. This could indicate tampering or suppression, or just a lower percentage of turnout by Kerry supporters and a higher turnout among Bush supporters. However, people most often turn out to voice their opinion to change things, not to make them stay the same. I do wonder what is going on.
For the most part, the election officials in Sandusky County were courteous and professional, and I thanked them for hard work on such a difficult day.


Bruce Hall (not Hull)

[chomskysright]

7. yet more info pulled fm current DUer link...

rom DU: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x178275



one of two posts.

I am not an engineer. I am definitely not a DOS guy. I am not a Programmer.

I do understand hardware evolution.

>Lets define more acronyms here first.
>
>ROM read only memory
>PROM Programmable Read only memory
>E-PROM electronic programmable read only memory
>EE-PROM Erasable programmable memory
>
>The order, is also, sort of it's practical historical
>introduction into mainstream computing. the first be the least
>expensive ( though not at the time of its introduction) The
>latest chips would last have the highest cost. The more chips
>produced over time the lower the cost of goods.

The above will also apply to a second post called EE-PROM
as applied to the The technician in OHIO, one of the suspicious examples sited by Cong. Conyers.

In order to Reset the E-PROM in those days one would expose it to ultraviolet light.

Could the the weight of the heavy jacket have been an ultraviolet light box?

When one downloads firmware, to E-PROM don't you have to reboot the machine to invoke it? Didn't MS Eaton say the machine rebooted in her testimony? (I have just spoken to Simone who confirms this.)

I'd guess He updated the firmware. If so then why?



REPLY:

He could have replaced the operating system on the hard drive with a "democratic" one, using a USB flash drive that would fit in his pocket.

If only people knew how easy it is they would STFU about the recounters being "paranoid".

[chomskysright]

8. from yet another DUer link...

(trying to keep this together; maybe the OH 'state forum' has cranked again):

Rally and Recounts
As the reports of our county observers and coordinators come in, a pattern is emerging: very few of the counties conducted recounts that could be called "random" in the statistical sense. Each county was different, with some choosing test precincts for convenience, others for reasons known only to the Board of Elections. Defiance County held their recount yesterday, and Trumbull County has the last scheduled recount start date: tomorrow, December 20th. Fairfield County reconvened yesterday to do a hand recount of the 3% with a new machine (the same situation Monroe County faced on Tuesday). All reports can be found in the press release archive. Donations are welcome to help defray the substantial costs of this effort.

There is also a legal update on the site.

Edit to add: http://www.votecobb.org/press / has county-by-county recount info.

[Alizaryn]

9. I am guessing Cobbs/Arnebeck got these reports?

Maybe the NC paper would like to interview them?