How do we light a fire under Dean's ass about electronic fraud?

[Dancing_Dave]

He was given a report with no real forensic study of the voting and counting machines and how they can be manipulated. So the media tended to take this is as evidence that there was no fraud to worry about. Yet anyone who knows anything about electronic scams can see the issue was not even addressed in a way which could determine anything.

Dean needs to take the initiative in getting studies which focus directly on the fraud possibilities of machines used in many states, and bringing them to the attention of the press. Perhaps we should do a letter writing campaign to Dean and the DNC. Or prepare a petition written largely by computer science experts. We need to actually seize these machines used in many states, if we can't do it in Ohio, we can do it elsewhere. Every line of their code needs to be known.

Dean can get it. The problem now is he is placing to much trust in old school DNC types who don't get it and have no clue how to really study it.

Our hopes of geeting many people to realize that the 2004 Presidential election was stolen have been dashed. But perhaps the more important issue is showing how these machines can be used to rig future elections unless the system is changed.

[meganmonkey]

1. Maybe we should literally light a fire under his ass!

;)

I know what you mean though. I don't know if they really don't understand the machine problem, or if they are really just afraid of saying FRAUD out loud without 'conclusive proof', or if it's some faction of the party that has too much invested in the status quo....

It's damn frustrating.

[Dancing_Dave]

19. The burden of proof must be on the makers of the machines

They need to open up what they are doing and proove to us that their machines are fair and are not being rigged. No voting technology should be used without such open proof.

[byronius]

2. I'm writin' him a letter.

[hootinholler]

3. Um that's a no-brainer...

Have him talk to Andy.

-Hoot

[Ellipsis]

4. He said Fraud was not "widespread"...

Not that there wasn't any. Don't roast his ass. How and when do we get Andy in front of the good doctor?

[kansasblue]

5. hey... I saw a TV special where Dean was with Bev Harris

Together the changed vote total on the central tabulator. He knows they can be jack around. That's not the problem. I don't know why he's not bringing it up. I guess with out proof there's not really any use.

[autorank]

6. He was Freeped, I mean Braziled ... Need to go afte rhis new team

[kster]

7. Yep, we need

to keep talking about the election theft,I really think we are getting the message out to the people, Neocons know we know and they can't stand it.

They tried sending the freeps in here to discredit, they tried giving us a BIG report that was supposed to satisfy us, I know it didn't satisfy me.

Keep pushing the word sooner or later they have to give up,and tell the truth, They say conspiracy theory, one way to find out if I am, let the experts open up the voting machines now, and in all future elections.

If they are afraid to do that, THEY must have something to hide.

[autorank]

9. "Neocons know we know and they can't stand it. " Kster's msg is TRUE

:yourock:kster

[shance]

16. What happened Autorank? Haven't heard about this.

n/t

[autorank]

8. Here's how--$upport the Election Assessment Hearing--Counter Carter-Baker

SUPPORT REAL ELECTION REFORM-ELECTION ASSESSMENT HEARING-HOUSTON AS A VOICE OF TRUTH TO THE CARTER-BAKEKR ELECTION REFORM PANEL

[shance]

17. AR** How can we honestly support a commission with someone who

was closely involved in the theft of the 2000 election?

How does James Baker have any business on an "election reform" panel?

How can we ignore this fact? It's akin to putting Henry Kissenger on the 9/11 panel.

To ignore this fact seems to me only hurts any chance of any legitimate election reform.

I wish this were not so, however, but when are we going to stop hoping for the best when we know certain situations (like this) appear to be rigged from the beginning.

[MissWaverly]

10. start sending in donations in rare coins

I heard that the people in Ohio, plan to pay their property taxes with
beanie babies

[LightningFlash]

12. I think these people are afraid of Blackwell.....

Fancy that...All of them are scared by Blackwell except Dean, what does that tell you...What a sad bunch of spineless whimps! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

We need more Boxers, Deans and Conyers to take charge!!!! Blackwell scapegoated all the fraud on the BOE employees, and he himself was in charge and should be arrested. We got Fitrakis here showing how they had wired direct access....Enough is enough, get someone with guts down there to catch the perpetrator and start a federal lawsuit.

:thumbsdown:

[MissWaverly]

13. let the fire smolder for awhile

The whole dirty thing will come out, Bush is nervous, there is an international war crimes convening on the Iraq war, the torture tapes and photos will be released on the 30th, someone, somewhere is going to realize that Bushco is going down, they will turn in evidence to save themselves, numero uno, who wants to remain silent when the final payoff is a long jail term, and public humiliation. If someone steps up to the plate now, they will be seen as heros and they will have immunity.

[Carolab]

11. I think there might be a way to work with the National Lawyers Council.

Dean announced that this group was forming at the DNC executive committee meeting. Since there are supposed to be lawyers for each state caucus/chair to act as counsel. I think they might be "invited" to examine each state's legislation, its procedures for balloting, counting and recording, to look for legal/security "loopholes". They should have independent technical counsel assisting them in making determinations/recommendations to amend the legislative language. They should also be looking at the voter registration/provisional balloting procedures on a state-by-state basis.

[Peace Patriot]

14. That is a very good suggestion, Carolab! That is very much what is...

needed--an aroused Dem Party lawyer and tech force hounding the states/counties at every turn, to achieve transparent elections and to weed out the corrupt (both Dem and Repub).

Dean has an uphill battle to get that done. I have little doubt that's what he WANTS to do. CAN he do it, given the resistance WITHIN the Dem party from HAVA-corrupted and war-corrupted elected officials and party operatives?

In Calif, we had a Sec of State who was demanding to see Diebold's source code (and had sued their butts and decertified their goddamned election theft machines)--and the DEMOCRATS helped get rid of him!

That's what I mean by "uphill battle."

----------

Where do we come in? I'm beginning to think it might be a waste of time to dwell on this corrupted report, and get to squabbling with our own (if corrupted Dem leaders can be considered "our own"). Instead, we should probably be giving Dean max support on the new DNC lawyer group, and doing our damnedest to get verifiable election systems in place for 2006/2008--or at the least well-organized, motivated legal monitoring teams.

I think many of us are wondering: Why do all this for the Democrats? We worked our butts off to get them a victory in 2004--and succeeded!--and what did they do with it? They, a) screwed us long before the election by not objecting to the election SYSTEM (run by Bushites with secret source code! I mean, come on...), and b) threw up their hands, conceded, caved, turned tail, didn't fight back.

It's as if they had slapped each us in the face, and said, "Go back to your hovel! Go back to being peons! We didn't want to actually win, you stupids!"

(Please note: I am really not prepared to blame John Kerry personally for the Dems' stupifying reaction to what was a patently fraudulent election. I DON'T KNOW what happened that night, nor who exactly was responsible for failing to challenge the election SYSTEM when they should have. And, in any case, it is the political SYSTEM that Kerry is/was embedded in, that most deserves our attention and our ire. To dwell on one individual's part in that system is a huge mistake. And those who do are succumbing to the "white knight" syndrome--the delusion that SOMEBODY ELSE is going to rescue our democracy; somebody other than US, collectively, as a people--the very heartbeat of democracy.)

So, why bother with the Democrats any more?

The only answer I can come up with is, STRATEGY. No, they do NOT deserve our support. If it were feasible, we should be forming another political party. (The Paper Ballot Party? I've had that thought.) But that is NOT feasible--not in the time-frame in which we need to take action. We have something very practical--and very doable--that MUST GET DONE. And that is getting our election system back into the public venue. And we have only a very short time in which to do that before the Bush Cartel has a permanent lock on all power in the country.

The ONE PLACE they don't yet have a lock on power is state/local control over election systems. Ordinary people still have some influence in these venues, and have the potential of completely turning things around, by means of a thousand, highly inspired, tenacious, local battles for election reform. That's where Dean and the DNC and its new lawyer group can help us. And it appears to me that Dean knows all this and wants to help.

We must meanwhile work on purging the Dem Party of the corrupt and the collusive. But our FIRST PRIORITY must be transparent elections--even if it benefits Democrats whom we don't like and don't want to vote for ever again.

At the moment, majority rule means Democratic Party rule. That is a fact. The Dems blew the Repubs away in new voter registraton in 2004, nearly 60/40--mostly the work of leftists, progressives and peaceniks, but still, the Dem base is huge. We have no choice but to work with that fact--unless we want to go the way of Germany 1933-34--the splintering of the left.

Reform the election system in alliance with whatever remnants of honesty we can find in the Dem leadership. Buck the remnants up, in fighting the corruption. Get their help in prying the election system open and achieving transparency. Then, and only then, will we be able to successfully address the other huge problems that we face: Corporate Rule, corporate monopoly of the air waves, the campaign contribution pigsty, the 'military-industial complex' pigsty, damage to our planetary environment, pro-war Democrats, bought and paid for Democrats, and all issues of poverty and injustice.

------

Note: I haven't yet quite decided what I think about addressing the DNC report directly, and challenging it. It does cry out for an answer and probably should be refuted--partly because it is untrue and a piece of crap of a report, and partly because it will likely do some damage to election reform efforts. But, how much do we want to fight about this report--as opposed to pouring energy and resources into achieving transparent elections for the future? That is the question. Some may feel the two things go hand in hand--and that is certainly a reasonable position.

[Bill Bored]

21. I attended one of their meetings in NY and I'd say the jury's out.

Some of them are in denial about the potential for e-votin' fraud.
They need to be educated, but some of them do get it.

I haven't sorted out the players yet and I'm not sure I'll be invited back, but I hope I will be. It's not very exclusionary, which is nice. It's not limited to lawyers, at least not in NY.

Now, having said this, we just had some pretty weak legislation passed here to allow DREs with VVPATs and only 3% random audits. Op Scans are also allowed with similar auditing of their paper ballots, but the BOEs and the courts get to decide almost everything else! By 2007, our lever machines will probably be gone. :(

But the good thing is, if you CONTEST an election, you get to have experts examine the secret software and have a 100% hand count of all the VVPATs or VVPBs, as long as a court orders it. And any BOE can order a full hand count whenever they feel like it.

So we have in effect a pretty weak auditing law (although it's still much better than any federal law), with what I hope will be an easy recount/election contest procedure. If the random auditing requirement were stronger, it would be harder to get a full recount. (The false sense of security we all worry about.)

Right now, the evidence for every election challenge in the state would be that 97% of DREs are NOT audited! So if you don't like the outcome, CHALLENGE IT! I only hope the candidates and lawyers see it this way! It's up to the courts and the BOEs to decide whether to order the recounts, and up to the CANDIDATES AND THEIR ELECTION LAWYERS to push for them!

This is where the lawyers come in. If we see a replay of Ohio 2004 in NY, then it's over for us. The only thing we'll have going for us is a border with Canada! But if the lawyers, candidates and the courts stand up for us, we may be OK. We will have the paper; we just need to count it.

So this Lawyers' Council thing may be useful if they are given the facts about e-voting. I'd urge anyone with an interest in this to try to do it! They may be our last best hope.

[emcguffie]

15. I would like to go see them.

I have posted this elsewhere, and asked for someone to go with me several times months ago.

After my attempt at contacting the DNC, which I did, I should say my attempt to contact -- what's her name, from Clinton's campaign, who was heading up their Voting Rights Committee, or investigation -- when she went off on me for "insulting" her by insisting on wanting to know whether they were looking at just voter suppression or also fraud, and the possibility that JK won the election... I asked a few times for someone to do this with me.

I think just showing up may be more effective than phone calls and letters, I don't know. But for me, personally, the only way I can be sure I did what I could is to go try to talk to them.

Anybody up for it? Shall I complain again that you all ignore me, I guess because I only came to DU on Nov. 2, 2000? Obviously I don't know how to play the right little games here, or it seems someone might be at least willing to talk to me about it.

I live in NJ, Essex County, and work in NYC. Anybody?

[Bill Bored]

22. See post 21 (and this one too)

www.nyvotingrightscoalition.com.
They are now the NYDLC.

[mrdmk]

18. There is a problem with saying the elections are corrupt

This is what the Republicans did back in the Sixties to get people to stop voting in elections and have continued to imply to this day and that is, "your vote does not count". The less people voting the better for the Republicans.

I am all for removing the Bush Jr. administration from office, but we have people like Donna Brazile as a shaker and mover, that seems to me to be a recipe for failure each and every-time. Her track record is not very good for the Democratic Party at this time.

If we want the Democratic Party to be tough, we need to push the point.

[shance]

20. So bring us some ideas Mrdmk.....offer some possible solutions.

I think its important at least to inform neighbors and friends as much as possible about election fraud and the electronic voting machines which magnify both the probability of election fraud and the difficulty in prosecuting those engaging in the fraud.

It does seem to me that we both need to inform and educate Americans through public service announcement and house parties in neighborhoods simply to wake Americans and neighbors up to the problems surrounding the validity of our vote.

You are absolutely right we need to push the point. The challenge lies in informing and educating neighbors, friends and family and inspiring them to get active on election/voting reform. What I have noticed is individuals like to get involved when they see more people getting involved. The good thing about voting reform is there are many more people involved than when I first became involved with the issue. I think the best way to do inspire people to get involved is to show how it affects every voter, Republican or Democrat, which it does. It is a bipartisan issue.

I think many individuals get overwhelmed by the issue, namely because we've been so conditioned that political issues like that are for someone else to worry about. When people begin to grasp the issue, they begin to see it affects everyone of us. I think we need to be creative and use our own experiences, humor and wit in talking about the issue. I have not used that nearly as much as I should, but when I do, it certainly engages more individuals than it turns off.

Those are some ideas of mine. What are yours?

[mrdmk]

23. Yes, at every opportunity I mention the problems with our voting process

I have even written to my Representative Christopher "Deregulate and Deregulate some more" Cox several times to get HR 2239 out of committee. This guy does not even send back a canned response any more. The word here in California is that a lot of Democrats are trying to undo the hard copy reports that will hopefully be in place by 2006. It is almost like each and every politician is trying to out corrupt each other. It would be interesting to get a imitative for hard copy on the ballot in a already corrupt system.

[tommcintyre]

24. On the right track, but he's trusting NEW school DLC types (DINOs)

See this link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x381320#381335