***Election 2004: 73 SCHOOLS LOCKEDDOWN IN PALM BEACH ***

[Carl Brennan]

Terror scare not just in Warren County Ohio

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_ne...

Schools locking doors Election Day
By Cynthia Kopkowski <mailto:[e-mail] >
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 28, 2004
The 73 Palm Beach County schools used as polling places will be in a security lockdown on Election Day because of fears that terrorists or anyone else seeking to disrupt the presidential election could target the buildings.
The district has not received any threats specific to Palm Beach County schools, Superintendent Art Johnson said. But he and schools Police Chief Jim Kelly believe the district must be concerned about schools being "soft targets" for terrorism.
We are simply listening to the same news everyone else is listening to and what we've heard is the possibility of people trying to disrupt our election process," Johnson said. "We are going to exercise the highest degree of preparedness."
Although schools have been used for elections the past two years, this is the first presidential election since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The anticipated heavy turnout will mean more strangers on campus than in previous elections.
Slightly less than half of the district's schools are polling locations......

snip
....Nearly 1,000 people are registered to vote Tuesday at Calusa Elementary School in Boca Raton, Principal Ann Faroane said. The security plan will boost efforts instituted years ago to make campuses more secure, she said.
"Since 9/11, our antenna has always been up," Faroane said. "We're always extra cautious. Our staff will just be keeping their eyes open for people who shouldn't be there."
Martin County also is taking extra precautions in the three schools that will serve as polling places: Hidden Oaks Middle School, Martin County High School and SeaWind Elementary. The sheriff's office will station deputies all day at those schools and place polling locations in areas isolated from students and adjacent to the parking lots, said Lt. Morgan Sprott, who oversees Martin's school resource officers.
MORE

[Minstrel Boy]

1. Way to go, Carl!

I think this is a huge support to Madsen's story.

I hope someone has sent this to Olberman, who does not know of incidents outside of Warren County.

[Eloriel]

10. There's other info in this thread

RESEARCHERS -- need some googling QUICK re Vote Fraud
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...


Also, FWIW, this article said 84 schools in Palm Beach County:

http://www.bocanews.com/index.php?src=news&category=Loc...

[Carl Brennan]

12. Oh good, more corroboration. Thanks Eloriel

I wanted to get this info out in its own topic. I've sent some stuff to hedda.

[Carl Brennan]

67. Thanks, it links Homeland Security. Who else would issue a terror alert?

[kk897]

2. Jumping on this train a tad late

since I've been following other threads related, but has anyone mentioned the lockdown of the Palm Beach courthouse because of dangerous mold? It was on DU a few days ago, and I'd search, but I don't have that function (since I haven't donated, gulp).

[witchhazl]

7. I don't know about the Palm Beach courthouse lockdown

But the election day lockdowns referred to in this article seem to apply just to the schools themselves, to keep the students safer. It doesn't say anything about locking down the vote count.

[Carl Brennan]

13. Who would want to vote in a school where there is

a terror lockdown? That is the thing that is troublesome. People will be reluctant to vote there.

[KMG]

27. Remember Breslan

remember how there was that terrible terror attack on that school. All of the schools were under alert. This wasn't at all unusual. Our kids should come first and if it took that to keep them safe, I'm all for it. People still were able to vote.

[Carl Brennan]

36. Come on person!! Don't make me reinvent the wheel here.

Read through this topic and learn.

People were still allowed to vote after waiting in line for 4 hours too, but you cannot deny that this long wait forced some, maybe many, not to vote.

[witchhazl]

57. Well yes, I totally agree, but that's a separate issue.

Madsen's article claims precincts were locked down to facilitate election fraud, not voter suppression.

[flyarm]

33. re: "i dont know about the palm beach lockdown"

this has been posted here and many other boards on the internet, but what some are not understanding..its is not about the polling places being locked down..the warren county place that was locked down was the tabulation center..the place where the votes are fed into a main computer and sent to the state ..i have posted this everal times, and it doesnt seem to be computing to some people..its not the polling places in this possible fraud ..its the places where the innards of the polling places went and were then sent to the state for certification...its the vote tabulation places..if there were others locked down we would have something here..the reason warren county ohio being locked down is significant .,.is ..it was the place where the county votes were taken to be put through computers and sent verified to the state..the verification center of each state is what matters..not the polling places!!!!!!!!!!!!!! not that the polling places dont matter, but in regards to the tabulation of votes and being locked down...its the fact that the tabulation place in warren ohio was locked down and media and lawyers from observing what makes that so suspicious and disturbing...and it being locked down because of it being claimed that there was a treat level supposed to be close to a 10 and the soe saying she got the threat from the fbi and homeland security and that being totally debunked by the fbi and homeland security...

for all we know ..with no reporters or media allowed in and no lawyers or observers from either party able to observe..anyone could have been in that room to feed the wrong info or wrong cards into the certification computer to the state. If the certification process can not be observed how are controls in place to make sure no diebold , es&s people or anyone else wasnt in that room???

so please understand..its not just about being a lock out..its that the places where the finally compilation takes place was locked down in warren county ohio..thats what makes it so dangerous that that occured..if anyone knows of another tabulation place being locked down..call keith olberman , he has been looking for that info!! and hasnt found it yet..anywhere else in the country...

[Eloriel]

52. It's actually BOTH -- but if you have Olbermann's phone number --

If you read the thread linked to in my first post, you'll see that there were two patterns re "lockdowns" -- both, IMO, significant.

One was blocking the press and public from the vote counting process, as was most visible to us in the Warren County case, but by no means the ONLY instance of that around the country (even if Terror wasn't always the reason).

And the other was scaring schools into taking security measures that no doubt could have had the effect of suppressing votes, or causing disruption, etc.

We found no instances of FBI or Homeland Security presence at polling places or central tabulating centers, but I'm not entirely sure we exhausted all that google might have to offer us, either.

[rockedthevoteinMA]

26. here it is - i thought this was pretty suspect

Mold problems close federal courthouse
By Scott McCabe and Susan Spencer-Wendel

Palm Beach Post Staff Writers

Saturday, November 20, 2004

"WEST PALM BEACH — A U.S. district judge closed the federal courthouse Friday after receiving complaints that mold spawned by Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne was making people sick.

Two security guards were posted at the doors of the courthouse, at 701 Clematis St., to turn away visitors Friday afternoon.
"We are closed indefinitely," one guard said, pointing to a notice from Chief U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch.

Zloch ordered the closing after people complained that mold or mildew had formed as a result of water damage from the hurricanes, said Clarence Maddox, court administrator for the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida.

Despite complaints about headaches, sinus problems and watery eyes, no one has been hospitalized, Maddox said. He wasn't sure whether any of the 130 employees missed work because of the mold."

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_ne...

[goclark]

3. kick,,sounds like fishy to me

What about the schools in the rest of the country?

New York?
California?
Why not a terror alert for all schools in the nation?

Sounds like a Jeb Ploy to me.

[Carl Brennan]

4. Yep, they selected a heavy dem county to do it.

[electropop]

6. They did issue a terror alert for all schools

just before the election. Coincidence, I'm sure. I forgive you for not remembering the school terror alert; the fake alerts were gushing out of the Bushies so fast, it was impossible to remember them all.

[New Earth]

5. unless i'm missing something.....

nothing in this article mentions that the schools were 'told' by any type of agency to tighten up security. that would be the key, i think, to add this to the case of lockdowns.

[goclark]

8. Exactly!

Most schools that are polling places are extra alert anyway.
The staff/custodians/administrators are highly visible for a number of reasons.

As an example: because there are more visitors, the parking lot is usually a nightmare.

However, most of the voters are very familiar to the staff and the students. They live in the neighborhood.

[juajen]

68. Here in Lafayette, LA

the schools were closed for attendance by the children. This is always the case. The kids get a holiday. I was surprised that this was not the case across the nation, as I am so used to this happening here. My grandkids love election days. Therefore, no crowds, ample parking and ample shelter in case of inclement weather. Something that LA does much better than other states, IMHO.

[Carl Brennan]

23. They must have been told by some higher authority. You raise an

important question.

[Eloriel]

54. Go to the thread linked to in my first post to this thread

and look for an article in China Daily. Your answer is in there.

[Carl Brennan]

9. 3 states involved in terrorism lockdown.

At least three states involved in terrorism lockdown:
http://blogspot.mg.co.za/?q=node/101

Its 'BOOM' time now..we're in the time period where a number of things are quite possible. The next 48 hours are going to be real interesting. Let me list them (mmm, lists GOOD mmm) :
1. The Bush neocons manufacture/allow a fake terror attack in order to
a) cancel elections and institute martial law..
b) delay or disrupt voting in certain key swing states
proof of this possibility?
http://www.legitgov.org/essay_kane_fema_terror_drill_10...
"At least three states have WMD/Terrorism Incident drills scheduled for Tuesday, November 2, 2004 - Election Day. As of May 8, 2001, Dick Cheney was placed in charge of managing all domestic preparedness related to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
It is likely that Cheney will be managing all of the Election Day WMD/Terrorism Incident drills across the country. The presidential statement, which gave Cheney this power, also created the Office of National Preparedness. FEMA’s website makes the national announcement, but omits any dates, saying only that this is a “training course” that takes place over three 8-hour days. The course is headed by the Office of Domestic Preparedness. http://www.fema.gov/compendium/course_detail.jsp?id=353
Arizona is running a WMD/Terrorism Incident exercise on Election Day.
http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php...
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041012-032905-2...
(CERT - Citizen Emergency Response Team - will be holding a “disaster simulation” nationwide on Election Day, November 2, 2004.
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/articles/october2004/041004d...
The D.C. Emergency Management Agency has a Public Works WMD/Terrorism Incident
training scheduled for November 2, 2004. The location is listed as, “To Be
Determined.” http://dcema.dc.gov/dcema/cwp/view,a,1225,q,586022.asp
Senator Dayton recently announced he was closing his DC office due to intelligence reports of possible terrorism in DC He stated he would not advise anyone to go to the Capitol between now and the election. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6243845 /
'

[seemslikeadream]

11. Thanks Carl

Homeland Security's the way to go

Have they denied knowing anything about it yet?

[Carl Brennan]

66. They must be behind these terror scares.

What other authority would post these warnings?

[seemslikeadream]

14. kick

n/t

[KaliTracy]

15. Warren County

The thing about Warren County is that it was only during Tabulation that the Media and other observers got "locked down" -- the Tabulation took place behind closed doors, in other words.

Though I'm sure this link has been posted : http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/05/loc_warrenv... for more information.

That isn't to say that lockdown of a polling place because of "security concerns" during voting is right -- it should all be investigated. But it was DURING the process of counting votes that the lockdown occurred in Warren County, which meant that the votes were counted without witnesses.

tracy
who is a new poster, but has quite a bit to say tonight....

[shraby]

16. Here's something more unusual

They could have messed with the machines if there were some there.

Fla. State Elections Office Evacuated Nov. 1, 2004


TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A suspicious package was reported Monday in the building that houses Florida's Division of Elections, and employees were kept out while the building was searched.

Many employees of the division are housed in other buildings and the evacuation wouldn't affect Tuesday's election, said Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for the Department of State, which oversees the elections agency in the state that was ground zero for the disputed 2000 race.

Firefighters and police were called to the building at about 6:30 a.m. when a security guard in the building reported the package, said police spokesman John Newland.

A police hazardous device team was still in the building at midmorning and there was no word on whether anything had been found, he said.

(more)
<http://www.politics.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,128... >

If there were central tabulators there, it would have been an ideal time to rig them.

[Carl Brennan]

22. Good point.

An important thing that these differant lockdowns have in common is that they are using terror scares to impact voting: either suppressing the vote or changing the count afterwords.

[Karenca]

17. kick

[Greybnk48]

18. a question about machine malfunctions

I have heard and read here at DU about machines that registered a vote for Bush when the voter had in fact punched in Kerry. Somewhere it was said that poll workers moved voters to a new machine if this happened three consecutive times. Is any of this true? And if so, were those votes counted for Bush? Deleted--or what?

[shraby]

19. Would have been easy for the

poll worker to enter the vote when the voter moved to the next machine. I would have looked like the poll worker canceled the vote.

[flyarm]

48. would have been easy...reply

i was a poll watcher for seqouia machines in fla..so i can only address those...but with this machine..if there was a malfunction..and someone was moved to another machine..there is an activated card..if a poll worker was to push the final vote into the machine that malfunctioned .. the card would not be activated to work for the voter at another machine..once the vote is registered at a machine the card gets de activated..so unless the poll worker re activated the card , after say fraudgulently putting a vote in for someone they moved to another machine ..the card would not work twice...so the probability would be remote at best!!..this is not proof of no fraud i am stating..its just a fact of the seqouia machine..the card can only register one vote without being reactivated!! the machines in the morning are supposed to be set with all zeros..i observed each machine and checked to see if all zeros were present..and then the clerk of the precinct must sign and the machine worker must sign it as well...i was there to observe this was done properly and all zeros were in each machine...then through the day we posted the number counts on each machine..the timing was decided by the kerry campaign..we called the numbers in..where i worked bush had a lawyer there to do the same...this was done election day all through the day...at the end of the day i observed the clerk and machine poll worker do the same and observed them signing the paper rolls and removing the computers main card and observed them going into the envelopes with the numbers of the machines on them..making certain no switches were done on computer cards ( data cards) and paper rolls..they were all signed and sealed into envelopes...
i had beginning and ending numbers on each machine...as did all poll watchers..this proceedure was followed on nov 2nd as well as for the 2 weeks of early voting...but if a machine malfunctioned and someone was moved to another machine the machine with the problem was shut down...everything was documented..and signed off on...at the precinct level..what happened there after was not observed until the precinct stuff reached the soe designated drop off place for the innards of the machines.and was transfered or dropped off at tabulation center..some did this at the soe offices some big counties had warehouses designated. when patches are mentioned to create fraud they are on the main tabulation computer that sends the info to the state for certification....

i hope this helps some understand the process...now this is not to say any of the machines at precincts couldnt have a patch in them..i believe they could...some machines could be programmed with a patch i would guess and it would be a guess i am not a computer wiz...by any means..but i could more see it happening where the main tabulation center would be..thats what bev was looking for at volusia..and that was i believe her concern of the rolls being in the garbage..the signed rolls..as they would verify what was singed off for at the precinct level and then what sent through the main computers to the state...there she could see if numbers were "adjusted" or changed...with the verification of the precinct signed rolls...thats where bev was upset about the voting machine cards being strewn all over where the gems machine was...and not kept in an orderly manner..thats why bev locked it down..i think!!

this is my opinion..nothing more or less...i have done as much studying of the system here in fla as i could read and get my hands on , long before the primary and early voting , and general election , so i would know what i was looking for..for early voting i worked with florida and new york lawyers..i believe i knew more than them of what to look for...as they asked me more questions than i of them!!..but they had the legal license to do something about any problems...and get a more expeditious response.
i had to have a lwayer get a machine shut down during early voting as a retarded girl was brought into vote, and she said she knew what she was doing, none of the poll watchers watched her , and she proceeded to pull the entire paper tape out of the back of the machine before a poll worker noticed..i had been told i could not talk inside..so i was doing my best to flag someone down to what this girl was doing...well i wanted the machine shut down..the poll workers rolled the tape back up and i was screaming BLOODY MURDER THAT THAT WAS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.I WANTED THE MACHINE SHUT DOWN..SO I HAD TO GET A LAWYER THERE TO DEMAND IT BE SHUT DOWN...
but....i must say with these sequoia ..i really feel the only place fraud could take place is if the machines were pre set to committ fraud, but more likely it would be in the tabulation to the state in the main gems machines..fly

[Eloriel]

56. True of Diebold touchscreens too n/t

[Chili]

20. Kerry-to-Bush votes...

...go here, look down the "Kerry votes going to Bush" column, there are articles about it, but not a lot of info. Apparently journalists weren't real interested in what should've been alarming to most people.

http://shadowbox.i8.com//machines.htm

[Greybnk48]

21. Thanks Chili

It seems from your chart that the possible cheat that I noted was just one among many.

[jamboi]

24. NEW STRATEGIZING THREAD FOR US TO COORDINATE ALL THIS WORK

NEW STRATEGIZING THREAD FOR US TO COORDINATE ALL THIS WORK

For those of us who want to help connect the dots in Madsen's hypotheses there is a new strategizing thread located below to follow up on all the good work that Eloriel and so many others are doing:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[scarletlib]

25. there is nothing to this

I live in Palm Beach County and worked in a precinct located in a school on election day. The school I was at was not "locked down". The school policeman was there all day. His primary purpose was to keep the kids where they needed to be and maintain order on the campus (a middle school). All the cars and people coming to vote do present opportunities for confusion and problems can arise.

If some schools were "locked down" it was for the reasons I cited above.

This cannot have affected the vote in Palm Beach County in any way. The machines are Sequoias and at the end of the day the cartridges are pulled from the machines and taken into the SOE office for tabulation of the votes. Any hanky panky in the vote counts either occurred when the machines were programmed before the vote or when the votes were tabulated at the central location on election night. (I personally think the latter.)

(edit typos)

[KMG]

28. to tamper with votes

at the end of the day would imply widespread conspiracy. You can't even get 2 people to secretly do something these days without blowing the whistle. I just can't buy any of this. Sorry.

[scarletlib]

29. i'm not saying the votes were tampered with.

I'm just saying the schools that were locked down had nothing to do with the voting process or how the votes were counted. However, I am saying that if fraud were or did occur the central tabulating location at the SOE office would be the place to do it. It didn't happen in Palm Beach County at the precinct level.

[KMG]

30. Right

You're basically saying that you don't believe there was any wide spread fraud. At least in your area, which you have first hand knowledge. But you're saying it might have happened higher up and my point is that it would have had to be well known they were doing it. Is that probable? It would take more than one person to pull that off.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

32. Actually it takes less to pull it off at a higher level, doesn't?

There would have to be too many cooks at the precinct level to pull off hacking the votes. This way, at the county and state level, the higher up you go, the fewer people you need to do it. The fewer people to know about it.

Have you've seen Bev Harris give a lesson to Howard Dean in how to accomplish this?

http://votergate.tv/

[flyarm]

34. reply to" actuallyit takes less to pull it off at a higher level"

correct!!!!!!!!!..its the main tabulating computers that bev was looking at..in volusia county, its what warren county lock out was all about the main tabulation of precinct votes..the place the votes all go to be sent to the state, i am saying this in simple terms..so people can understand..its exactly what bev showed howard dean..its about the tabulation places not the precincts...bev was looking for the signature rolls that came out of the machines that were signed by the precinct clerks and poll workers...they all get signed at the beginning of the day and the end of the day...bev was looking for those to see if what when into the main tabulator voting machines matched...if there was a problem with fraud the recipts of the machines would not match the tabulator machines..the ones with GEMs in them...the "fix" would be in the tabulation centers, not precincts...or it could be done in transit to the tabulation centers for each county...we complained here in fla after primary and election that the transit of the cards from the sequoia and the rolls ( paper rolls from machines) were going together to the tabulation centers...in some instances from st petersburg to clargo where the soe office is could take 45 minutes driving time...well during the primary some clerks turning the voting rolls and cards from the machines they waited 2 hours to turn them in..alot can happen in 2 hours!! alot can happen in transit..but if the two verifiying pieces of the machine were separated ..no hanky panky could take place because they would have to match up...but that is not the case presently..they go to soe together ..so if one is changed both can be changed...but most experts believe if a change is to occur it will happen in the tabulation center..be that a warehouse the soe sets up as in volusia..or a center set up by any county soe...but those must be made transparent ..open to watchers , as in lawyers or state executive committee people , news organizations, people deemd to represent candidates..or just plain old citizens...that did not happen in warren county ..no outsiders who were watchers were allowed to observe the tabulation process!!

[Carl Brennan]

47. PLEEESE. Do not jump to conclusions.

I am starting to get just a little pissed off at this.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

31. This would be voter disenfranchisement, but not like Warren County

Warren County is where the votes were actually tabulated.

By putting the schools under terror alerts, they were frightening people away from the voting process, which would the disenfranchisement. Especially in Palm Beach County which is normally, overwhelmingly Democrat.

[Carl Brennan]

35. This is what I say in posts above. There are many ways to skin a cat, or

steal and election.

[genieroze]

37. Send this to Olbermann

He said the only lock downs he was aware of were only in Ohio.

[IFeelLikeArock]

38. The link doesn't work anymore?

Maybe my computer is just stupid, but when I click on the link it doesn't work.

[mirandapriestly]

39. the Palm Beach Link Doesn't Work, hmmm n/t

[Senator]

40. Google Cach Version

Google Cache Version

[IFeelLikeArock]

44. ok thanks I see it now

Man this stuff is so fricking upsetting. If today was 11/3 we would ask ourselves "how do they expect to get away with all this?" but today is 11/27 and it appears they are!

[Senator]

50. Not necessarily. We MUST change the FRAME

This is WHY we ALL...

MUST change the FRAME




Watch my Daily Kos Diary for updates on what to do.

[berniew1]

41. &#65279;Palm Beach County Voter Suppression Widespread and Systematic

Palm Beach County Voter Suppression
www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp?sort=state&sel...

1. State legislator received an incomplete absentee ballot when she chose paper instead of the touch-screen.
2. An unknown number of absentee ballots went out without a second page containing proposed amendments to the state constitution.
LePore said she received one report of a blank page on a ballot. She attributed that to a printing problem. She said there have been "sporadic" reports of people receiving incomplete ballots, but the problem is not widespread
3. Sequoia was late delivering absentee ballots to Hillsborough, Pinellas, Palm Beach, and Indian River Counties.
4.State Sen. Ron Klein received large numbers of complaints with voters unable to confirm the status of their request for an absentee ballot. Many of them requested a ballot online but said
they couldn't confirm whether their request was processed. When their ballot didn't arrive, they called their elections office, which had no record of their request. In some cases, by the time they realized a ballot wasn't on its way, it was too late. Hundreds of voters —— including Klein's son, a student at the University of Michigan —— couldn't vote because their early orders for ballots disappeared. Though elections supervisors blamed postal workers for delays getting
ballots to voters on time, Klein doesn't. "Direct mail is done in the billions of parcels each year," the state Senate minority leader said.
5. The Palm Beach County canvassing board rejected as many as 2,000 absentee ballots, most of which lacked signatures, but also many that had signatures that didn't match those on file with the elections office. LePore said she used public service announcements and voters' registration cards to inform people about updating their on-file signatures. But few do that, she said.
Cohen and the rest of the three-member canvassing board —— LePore and Marcus, who is chairwoman of the county commission —— said they were extra careful with the ballots of older voters, and both Cohen and Marcus said they relied on LePore's expertise to make many of
the handwriting evaluations. LePore said many of the signatures that didn't match were actually those of recently registered voters. "I don't know if they were signing a clipboard and they were in a hurry and signed more carefully with their absentee ballot or what," she said.

7. The waiting time at some polling places on Friday was more than five hours. Shouting matches at voting spots have become common, and vandalism is rampant.
8. LePore instituted a ban on media near polls and county offices. A widely published investigative journalist was tackled, punched and arrested Sunday afternoon by a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy who tried to confiscate his camera outside the elections supervisor's
headquarters
9. In the second day of early voting, touch screen machines failed and had to be replaced. One machine froze as a voter was voting.
10. After a woman finished voting, she realized the touch-screen hadn’’t given her the option to vote on the two referendums for Boca Raton or for state House District 87. She was given the
wrong ballot because the computer was programmed for the wrong ballot, but she can't re-vote.
11. Review screen doesn't match selections. Poll worker agrees, after scrolling back through the selections. Vote recorded for candidate different than the one touched.
12. Voters in Pompano Beach discovered at the last minute their precinct had been moved from the Pompano Beach Civic Center to a nearby church. The discovery was made after an unknown
number of voters had cast provisional ballots at the Civic Center. Precinct 1C has 1,200 registered voters. A similar problem was discovered Tuesday morning at Precinct 72Q in
Weston, which has 1,920 voters. These provisional ballots will not count. In the Pompano Beach case, neither the clerk nor the voters said they were aware of the address change.
13. Turia Hayden, a spokeswoman for Election Protection, said some voters, particularly in African-American neighborhoods, had problems locating their correct polling place because some voting sites were relocated in the wake of the hurricanes. When they showed up to vote at the old location, they found no signs or other assistance to help them find the new polling place.
14. Review screen doesn't match selections. Poll worker agrees, after scrolling back through the selections, and tells voter to cast the ballot anyway.
15. Florida voters can't use provisional ballots except in their home precincts, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday. Secretary of State Glenda Hood applauded the decision because it will help ensure an orderly election. But 90 polling places were destroyed by the hurricanes and many of those voters will not know where to vote.
16. A small number of voters who went to the wrong precinct in Pompano Beach, Fla., were given provisional ballots by poll workers, which the county acknowledged was a mistake. In Florida, provisional ballots must be cast in a voter's exact precinct.
17. Thousands of provisional votes were not counted, many because the votes were cast in the wrong precinct. Unlike 17 other states, Florida doesn't allow people to cast provisional ballots
anywhere in their home county. To be counted, the ballot has to be cast at the polling place for the person's assigned precinct. Palm Beach County Judge Barry Cohen, who chairs the county's
elections canvassing board, said it pained him to reject ballots that were cast in the wrong precinct."I was not happy with rejecting the ballots of those people who went to all the trouble to
register, went to the polls and went through all the other hoopla and then, because they voted in precinct 1028 instead of 1064, their vote didn't count," he said. "The law is clear, but the law is
not right," he said.
18. Sequoia DRE. A routine test of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machines was canceled Tuesday because the computer network at the elections office malfunctioned hours before the public exercise.
19. Poll workers closed the election on machines, rather than just shutting down for the night. Machines can't be used again in the election.
20. A patriotic American and registered independent, Tina Knight had trouble believing widespread voter fraud could occur in this country. But after acting as a nonpartisan observer Nov. 2 this time around at a precinct in Palm Beach County, she says she's lost faith in the
system. In nine hours Tina says she saw "lowdown tricks" that have made her feel "disgusted, angry -- and yes, energized. But she took a week off from classes in early November and flew to Florida where her mother lives to work as a volunteer with the nonpartisan organization Voter Election Protection. Tina arrived at 6:20 a.m. election day at Palm Beach County Precinct No. 7120. "There were over 100 waiting to vote." Polls opened at 7 a.m. Most people in that
neighborhood, Tina says, "were blue- and pink-collar workers, immigrants and retirees. These are people who have shift jobs. They cannot afford to miss work without getting docked or even
fired."
Soon after the polls opened, problems began. "I started getting people from a neighboring precinct coming to vote." Tina explained they had to vote in their own precinct. "They said they'd been called over the weekend and told to come here. Some people had even been told, while waiting in line at their correct precinct, to come here. "That's the first indication we got that people had been deliberately misinformed," Tina says.
A second incident made Tina even more angry. "Another nearby voting place was in a synagogue. When people in that precinct went to vote, the polling place was closed. There was no notification of where they should go, and there had been no prior written or telephonic
communication. They didn't know what to do."
A few persistent voters had finally gotten calls through to county election headquarters, and had been told they were to vote at the precinct Tina was monitoring. "So our organization went to the
synagogue and put up a note advising people where to come to vote. And the sign disappeared. So we put up another sign with a sign watcher. As soon as he finished his shift, the sign disappeared again."
Tina worked nine hours election day. She talked to a woman who said the voting machine had repeatedly registered the wrong presidential candidate. After 8 or 9 tries, it finally showed the candidate she had selected. Another lady said when she got to her review screen," at the end of the voting process, "the opposing presidential candidate was listed. . . . She called the poll worker and demanded it be fixed. The poll worker went back through the screens" and agreed
the woman had voted for a different candidate than the review screen showed. "The poll worker said, 'The review screen is wrong, but just go ahead and punch the confirmation button.' The woman refused. She made the poll worker cancel out the transaction, and she voted again. But how many people would do that -- go against what the poll worker advised?" After hearing many voters' stories, Tina says, "I have absolutely no good feeling that those machines have integrity."
21. LePore, whose term expires in January, said this election was "very smooth" despite the hype.

[Carl Brennan]

43. *** Palm Beach ballot chief Lepore linked to Saudis!!!!***

Did Adnan Khashoggi Throw the Election to Dubya?
Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, December 4, 2000, at 2:56 PM PT
On Dec. 1, the "Washington Wire" column in the Wall Street Journal published this gratifyingly noir item about the postelection drama in Florida:
"Madame Butterfly" Theresa LePore wasn't always an embattled Palm Beach ballots chief. In the 1980s, she moonlighted as a flight attendant on private planes owned by Saudi weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a middleman in Reagan administration arms sales to Iran.
Connoisseurs of Khashoggi-centric conspiracy theories should have little difficulty using this information to finger Khashoggi as the mastermind of the plot to deny Al Gore the presidency. Khashoggi has close ties, from Iran-Contra and elsewhere, to the Republicans, and vaguely defined ties to Dubya's father. (In a 1990 court case, Khashoggi's phone records revealed that Khashoggi had spoken at least twice with George Bush's vice-presidential office during 1985 and 1986.) LePore worked for Khashoggi during the 1980s, when, according to her official biography, she was chief deputy supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, a job she held until 1996, when she was elected supervisor of elections. Ergo, LePore has been working as a Khashoggi asset to elect the son of Khashoggi's old comrade-in-arms, George Bush!
Continued...
<http://www.slate.msn.com/?id=1006609 >
BTW: This was in December 2000. More recently, Khashoggi was doing lunch with Richard Perle of PNAC fame. Perle asked Khashoggi to "invest" $100 million in his company, Trireme. Seymour Hersh wrote about it in The New Yorker.

[IFeelLikeArock]

46. Can you tie him to Five Star Trust?

maybe he has ties to the 29 million dollars that some reporter says was a payoff.

Carl

[Carl Brennan]

49. Thanks, Damn good idea. Lepore is a woman called "madame butterfly"

I think we are onto something here. Need to get this to Madsen.

[seemslikeadream]

53. Poppy Strikes Gold

And while the Bush family steadfastly believes that ex-felons should not have the right to vote for president, they have no objection to ex-cons putting presidents on their payroll. In 1996, despite pleas by U.S. church leaders, Poppy Bush gave several speeches (he charges $100,000 per talk) sponsored by organizations run by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, cult leader, tax cheat—and formerly the guest of the U.S. federal prison system.

Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997-2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation. The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian’s U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.

They could well afford it. In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush-era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could “perfect its patent” on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $ 10,000. Eureka!

Barrick, of course, had to put up cash for the initial property rights and the cost of digging out the booty (and the cost of donations, in smaller amounts, to support Nevada’s Democratic senator, Harry Reid). Still, the shift in rules paid off big time: According to experts at the Mineral Policy Center of Washington, DC, Barrick saved—and the U.S. taxpayer lost—a cool billion or so.

Upon taking office, Bill Clinton’s new interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, called Barrick’s claim the “biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy.” Nevertheless, because the company followed the fast-track process laid out for them under Bush, this corporate Goldfinger had Babbitt by the legal nuggets. Clinton had no choice but to give them the gold mine while the public got the shaft.

more
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=207&row=1

[Carl Brennan]

58. More on Lepore and Khashoggi

http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/khashoggi-911_...
Saudi Entrepeneur Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists
by Alex Constantine
PART 8: A "DIRTY SON-OF-A-BITCH" & THE BLIND SHEIK
Emad Salem, the FBI informant - also the governmentís key witness in the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and ten followers accused of plotting to blow up the UN, an FBI office and two tunnels - was a hopeless confabulator by his own admission. And a loaded one: Salem was paid a million dollars for his testimony.
The Egyptian bodyguard for Shiekh Rahman admitted under questioning that he had lied for years about his past. He boasted to his FBI handlers that heíd been ìan intelligence officer in the Egyption army,î when in fact, Salem said, heíd been a lowly ìtechnical officer.î He freely offered that on one occasion, as the New York Times reported in March 1995, ìhe even lied under oath in a criminal trial in Manhattan, saying he had been wounded trying to protect President Anwar Sadat of Egypt when he was assassinated in 1981.î1
Defense attorney William Kunstler investigated and discovered that Salem was a lieutenant colonel in the Egyptian army, an unreliable witness, one ìwho never stopped working for the Egyptian government.î Kunstler grumbled that Salem - a bigamist with one wife in New York and another in Egypt - was devoid of character: ìHe divulged that he had had amnesia since January of 1992, and that he had been going to a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Stein to help him with this situation...î
It devolved under questioning that Mr. Salem had received a quarter million to one million dollars for his services as an FBI informant cum agent provocateur. In one meeting with FBI, Agent John Anticev - secretly taped by Salem - there was an argument over escalating expenses:

[seemslikeadream]

64. Khashoggi was bailed out with a $4 million check from Peter Munk

In 1983, the Khashoggi-led group formed the gold company whose name was soon changed to Barrick Gold Corp. Sheik Kamal Adham was reportedly one of the new company's founding co-owners. Adham, the chief of Saudi intelligence, had coordinated royalist guerrillas in Yemen, with British arms secretly provided through Khashoggi.
Beginning in 1985, Khashoggi borrowed $21 million, using his Barrick stock as collateral, for the covert transfer of arms to Iran for the Bush-North group, during an offical U.S. arms embargo against the Khomeini regime. Khashoggi who allegedly provided the loan from his Cayman Islands company, president of Khashoggi's Triad American holding company.
Khashoggi used the Monte Carlo office of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International to launder money for Iran arms sales. Barrick Gold Corp. co-founder Kamal Adham was later prosecuted for fraud in the BCCI case, and paid a $100 million fine.

Khashoggi's Saudi royal piggybanks also underwrote George Bush's Central American "Contras" adventures, making payments through the Swiss Bank Corp. and a Cayman Islands bank, totalling about $27 million.

When the Iran and Contra scandals blew up in 1986, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese linked the two scandals in a Nov. 25 public revelation. The next day, Munk announced a shareholders' meeting to decide on an urgent restructuring plan. A new organization emerged, keeping the Khashoggi group in control, but easing Khashoggi out of the limelight and making Munk the sole public figurehead. Personnel were shifted into the Canada organization out of Khashoggi's Triad operations in Utah. Tariq Kadri, Khashoggi's longtime attorney, was made president of the Horsham holding company that was put over Barrick.

As the U.S. Congress took up the arms-for-drugs investigation and other trails leading to Vice President Bush, Khashoggi became too hot for the Canadian partnership and the Khashoggi group's shares were officially sold off. Khashoggi was himself arrested in 1989, in a fraud case involving the Philippines' Marcos regime. Taken from Switzerland and jailed in New York, Khashoggi was bailed out with a $4 million check from his partner, Peter Munk.

http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-ontario-stories...

Adnan Khashoggi used his personal funds to institute one of Ollie "The Traitor" North's neat ideas for money making off-the-books foreign policy.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US -

Israel/Iran_Contra_Affair.html
Must of been quite profitable, as PNAC's Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle hit up Mr. Khashoggi for $100 million for a piece of Perle's appropriately named "Trireme Partners Ltd."

http://www.doublestandards.org/hersch1.html



Did Adnan Khashoggi Throw the Election to Dubya?
Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, Dec. 4, 2000, at 2:56 PM PT


On Dec. 1, the "Washington Wire" column in the Wall Street Journal published this gratifyingly noir item about the postelection drama in Florida:

"Madame Butterfly" Theresa LePore wasn't always an embattled Palm Beach ballots chief. In the 1980s, she moonlighted as a flight attendant on private planes owned by Saudi weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a middleman in Reagan administration arms sales to Iran.

Connoisseurs of Khashoggi-centric conspiracy theories should have little difficulty using this information to finger Khashoggi as the mastermind of the plot to deny Al Gore the presidency. Khashoggi has close ties, from Iran-Contra and elsewhere, to the Republicans, and vaguely defined ties to Dubya's father. (In a 1990 court case, Khashoggi's phone records revealed that Khashoggi had spoken at least twice with George Bush's vice-presidential office during 1985 and 1986.) LePore worked for Khashoggi during the 1980s, when, according to her official biography, she was chief deputy supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, a job she held until 1996, when she was elected supervisor of elections. Ergo, LePore has been working as a Khashoggi asset to elect the son of Khashoggi's old comrade-in-arms, George Bush!
http://slate.msn.com/id/1006609

http://www.geocities.com/francis_uy/palmbeachvote.html

[seemslikeadream]

51. Khashoggi

The opening of a long-delayed civil suit in a London courtroom; a brief, buried article on a judical nomination; a fluctuation in the commodities market; three mundane, seemingly-unrelated items in the news last week that combined to give a fleeting glimpse of the ugly reality behind the frantic, diversionary facade of the "civilized world."

The Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's Atlanta branch was the primary funnel used by the first Bush Administration to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly chemicals and other WMD naterial supplied by the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in the U.S. like, weapons merchant Matrix Churchill.

As soon as the BNL case broke, President Bush 1 moved to throttle the investigation. He appointed lawyers from both Cardoen and Matrix to top Justice Department posts--where the supervised the officals investigating their old companies.

Which brings us to the judical appointment. One of the White House aids who unlawfully intervened in the BNL prosecution was a certain factotum named Jay S. ByBee. Last week, said factotum was nominated by the current warmer of the Oval Office seat, George W. Bush, to a place on the federal appeals court--a lifetime sinecure of perks and power. ByBee was confirmed on March 13,2003

And the commodities connection? President Pretzel's relentless hissy-fit for war on Iraq has of course goosed the price of gold enormously-- and that's set Bush Family coffers a clinking. How so? In the waning days of his failed presidency, Bush 1 invoked an obscure 1872 statue to give a Canadian firm, Barrick Corporation, the right to mine $10 billion in gold from U.S. public lands.( U.S. taxpayers got a whopping $10,000 fee in return. Bush then joined Barrick as a highly paid "international consultant," brokering deals with various dictators of his close acquaintance. Barrick reciprocated with big bucks for Junior's presidental run. And in another quid for the pro quo, last year Junior dutifully approved Barrick's controversial acquistition of a major rival.
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02152003.html

Interesting note Barrick was started by Khashoggi, at least that's what Greg Palast says.

Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan, Rwanada and Congo/Zaire are wars where factions are armed with U.S. made weapons (M16s,SAMs, TAnks); where U.S. covert forces undertake brutal secret missions and psychological operations; accountable to no one; behind the headlines. They are wars where the Central Intelligence Agency is deeply and maliciously entrenched in subverting democracy and orchestrating chaos that is expediently advertised as such by our dubious media. At the roots, however, these are wars like any other war.

Essential to the superalloys and weaponry of the global economy of war are Congo's cobalt, uranium and columbium tantalite (coltan). Cobalt is elementao to nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, tank armor, industrial furnaces and aerospace, and for 50 years the CIA has insured the free flow of cobalt out of Congo. The human devastation in poverty, disease, torture and massacres is uncountable. Similarly, coltan is essential for cellphones and childrens playstations, and companies like Sony and Nokia have been cashing in on this windfall paid in human blood.

President Bush 1 helped Barrick get a gold mining consession in Tanazania. There was a political problem you see, the gold field in Tanzania already had gold miners on it, Tanzanians you would be suprised to hear and which got in the way of the Canadian-Saudi-American deal-so the Tanzanians had to go for Barrick to buy the land- so it was cleared by running bulldozers across the property- August 1996 they ran bulldozers across the property-smashed the workers houses, filled the mine pits and chased away 30,000 workers-all but 50-because according to our reports 50 miners were in the mining pits when they were sealed.

http://democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/22/1529206...

Three Million Lives have been lost since 1998 in Congo.

[Carl Brennan]

55. Bwaaaaah! This is all starting to make a helluva lot more sense.

Jeeez, a civil suit in a London courtroom, linked to buried judicial nomination, to a fluctuation in the commodities market, to gold in the Congo and BCCI and BNL, to the deaths of three million in the Congo.......a Palm Beach ballot chief linked to the Saudis who themselves are involved in a $29 million plot to rig the US election......WOW!!!

Talk about opening up some new lines for research.

And start more fires for the fascisti to try to put out, hee, hee.


But some would say this is just wild speculation, incoherent rambling, blah, blah.

[Carl Brennan]

42. New Mexico schools "lockdown"

Please go and vote people but you may get your ass blown away in the process. Oh, no problem.


Aztec schools lockdown on election day:
http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=14...
AZTEC, N.M. (AP) - Aztec school will lock the doors in its schools as a precaution against terrorism through Tuesday’s general election.
Aztec Superintendent Linda Paul says the district has not received any threats.
She says she put schools on heightened alert as a precaution.
Paul says classroom doors and exits to school buildings will be locked to monitor movement on campuses.
She says, however, schools will not be in a lockdown, and that the front doors of each building will remain open.
Visitors to schools at any time are requested to get a visitor’s pass from the office.
GOOGLE: TERRORISM+SCHOOLS+LOCKDOWN+ELECTION

[berniew1]

45. It wasn't just Palm Beach County; see Broward County, etc.

Broward County Voter Suppression(biggest dem county with Dem unfriendly Supervisor appointed just before the election)
www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp?sort=state&sel...

1. 58,000 ballots that were supposed to mailed out on Oct. 7 and 8 are late and appear to be missing.
2. 2505 absentee ballots were mailed on Saturday (October 30). Election is on Tuesday(Nov 2). Most had been requested long before the deadline for absentee ballot requests.
3. Absentee voting problems were a "disaster." Voters were unable to confirm the status of their request for an absentee ballot. In some cases, by the time they realized a ballot wasn't on its way,
it was too late. Hundreds of voters couldn't vote because their early orders for ballots disappeared
4. 94% of 78,861 absentee ballots were recorded in favor of Amendment 4, which passed by a thin margin in the county. The votes in question were counted late on election night after a glitch was discovered in the computers tallying absentees.
5. Nine of 14 early-voting polling sites had trouble linking laptops to the main computers that confirm voter eligibility.
6. After waiting in line for several hours, several voters were told late Sunday evening that they would have to come back another day to be able to cast their ballot. The machines had broken down.
7. At least 21 voting machines in Broward County malfunctioned and were replaced Tuesday. Most of them had been used by some voters before being taken out of service
8. An improperly calibrated machine at the polling place at 2501 Coral Springs Dr. in Coral Springs was used by an undetermined number of voters before it was replaced. If they did not
review their ballots, it is possible that some votes were recorded inaccurately. Possibly other malfunctioning machines were also miscalibrated.
9. Several touch-screen voting machines in Broward County malfunctioned this morning when their batteries went dead.
10. ES&S vote tabulating software used for absentee ballots "is not geared to count more than 32,000 votes in a precinct. So what happens when it gets to 32,000 is the software starts counting
backward. Amendment 4 passed in Broward County by more than 240,000 votes rather than the 166,000-vote margin reported Wednesday night. ES&S has known about the problem for two years and done nothing about it. The same software is used in Martin and Miami-Dade Counties
11. Florida voters can't use provisional ballots except in their home precincts, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday. 90 polling places were destroyed by the hurricanes.
Secretary of State Glenda Hood applauded the decision because it will help ensure an orderly election.
12. Broward County accepted on 2428 provisional ballots out of a "ton" of them. In many cases, clerks at the polling places gave provisional ballots to people who could have voted
regularly, deputy registrar Salas said. She thinks many clerks had trouble with last names of voters with compound names -- they simply couldn't find their names in the precinct registers,
even though they were there.
13. The vast majority of provisional ballots -- voters' last chance to have their voices heard -- were rejected. The majority of rejected ballots were cast by people who simply were not registered to vote. Other reasons: voting in the wrong precinct, signatures that didn't match those on file at the elections office and lapsed registrations because voters hadn't responded to address-
verification requests and hadn't voted in at least four years.
14. Broward and Miami-Dade counties both have about 1,058,000 registered voters, but Miami- Dade has 20 early-voting sites, compared with Broward's
15. Every Miami-Dade site is equipped with at least 20 voting machines, while some in Broward have fewer than 10. Some voters wait
4-1/2 hours in Broward to vote.
16. Republicans and their attorneys say they are arming themselves with lists of voters whose registrations appear flawed, preparing to challenge voters on election day. But they refuse to
give the list to officials who want to correct errors ahead of time.
17. University of California's Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team released a statistical study - the sole method available to monitor the accuracy of e-voting - reporting irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election.
18. Documentation of Widespread Voting Irregularities in Broward and other counties www.flcv.com/fla04EAS.html

[Carl Brennan]

59. Wonder if the person responsible for sending out those ballots

is also chummy with Saudis and Bushies?

[Carl Brennan]

60. Madsen replied to my e-mail.

He said thanks and that the info on Lepore is very important. Let's see what happens.

[sunnystarr]

61. I knew she was a wolf in sheep's clothing in 2000

cause no real Dem would have created a butterfly ballot. I'll be real interested to have her exposed and hopefully held accountable for tampering with the election process.

I can't understand how these people can live with themselves.

[loudsue]

62. Because they're all part of a MAFIA...a bush MAFIA EMPIRE...

And it goes into the JFK assassination, to the drug running from Mena Arkansas, to the Iran-Contra mess, to the dubya bush presidency. It's a HUGE mafia enterprise. When you approach it from that angle, it all starts to make sense...because it's TRUE!!

Even the CIA has been beaten like a bad dog by this bunch of thugs. That's how powerful, ruthless, and unAmerican these assholes are.

And THAT is why they were legitimately voted OUT OF OFFICE by a HUGE majority of Americans! And it is also why THEY STOLE THE ELECTION, with the help of their mafia and family members in the media.

[sunnystarr]

63. It's like a cancer that keeps spreading ... how depressing :( (nt)

[Carl Brennan]

65. I just wonder how many of "Democrats" the Bushboys have

working for them?