Reply #32: Right after the 2004 election

[DFW]

There were multiple reports out of Ohio of a "company" technician who, after the "results"
were reported, came around to collect the hard drives of all the electronic voting machines.
He only missed one, which was way out somewhere, and in a precinct with only 600 registered voters.

The thing is, when this lone machine was examined, it gave Bush something like 3900 votes in a
precinct with 600 registered voters. Blackwell's goon called it an unfortunate "glitch" (remember
Robocop?), and said it shouldn't reflect on the reliability of the rest of the machines that didn't
get examined. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) He forgot to explain why not.

Like in The Freedom Toast's song "Diebold, Diebold" (to the tune of A Bicycle Built for Two):

Touch screen, touch screen, you leave no paper trail.
It’s a good thing that you can never fail
You gave Bush four thousand seven
In a town of just eleven
But you can’t speak, so there’s no leak
And we can’t find who programmed you.

Now if one considers that 800,000 of Ohio's votes were tabulated by these machines, we might
be forgiven for extrapolating a bit, and demanding the inauguration of President Kerry, even
though we know it ain't gonna happen.

But raising our voices loudly and frequently won't hurt, and it will not be ignored. A friend
of mine who is high up enough in the DNC to have had more than one C-Span camera on him this
morning when Dean was overseeing the closing DNC meeting's cereminies, has been receiving
pastes from this board and others from yours truly on the subject of the rigged voting machines,
and he has been passing them on to Howard Dean. Howard is running on overdrive at this time,
working full time on the "50 State Strategy" as well as fundraising and as much day-to-day stuff
as he can stand. Poor Judith is probably not thrilled about all this, and I know Howard gets back
to Burlington when he can just to remind her that he's still there.

Another thing that the Republican voting machine makers got away with was going to court and having
their machines declared "private property," and thus subject to forensic examination by expert third
parties only if they gave their consent (they don't). My brother works on secret high tech computer
projects for ther Defense Department, and he has told me that he could detect if such a machine was
tampered with, but only if he was allowed to examine it. With the court decision, the Republicans
give the results that their machines say are the results, and then abscond with the hard drives so
as to make verification of their claims impossible. Thus, in Ohio 2004, Bush won for the sole reason
that Diebold and friends said he did, and for no other reason. Indeed, "we don't know."

Either American Democracy has been reduced to Soviet standards, or we need to know. Another way of putting
it is: if the Republicans think the results are as they treport them to be, how come they are so intent on
making sure no one can verify their claims? Rotten eggs don't stink nearly as much.

I think with everything else he has on his mind, and not being a computer expert, Howard is making a decent
amount of noise about the manipulability of the voting machines. The one thing he/we must do is not let up
the pressure. Verify them, or scrap them, preferably the latter. But don't blast Hhoward for not being obsessed
with the matter. That is the domain of those who have the technical knowledge to tell what was done. Howard
already went on some show to show how to manipulate one of the machines, but that is because someone showed him
how. The person who did that is the one to go on TV and show how to detect it. Of course, the trouble with
that is, we all know who owns the TV stations....................