WAS PROP 8 ACTUALLY DEFEATED??-by Mark Crispin Miller

[kpete]

November 16, 2008 at 10:35:12

Headlined on 11/16/08:
WAS PROP 8 ACTUALLY DEFEATED??

by Mark Crispin Miller Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

Well, well, well. First we find out, happily, that We the People may not be incorrigible racists after all, as Election '08 has debunked the (feeble) theory of "the Bradley effect."

And now it turns out that Americans--at least those in gay-friendly California--may not really be as hostile to gay marriage as the outcome of that state's election has apparently suggested.

As we think about the possibility that Prop 8 was not really passed by California's voters, let's note something that the press, and others, won't discuss: i.e., that the entire apparatus of computerized voting in this country--the e-voting machines and op-scans and central tabulators, etc.--is largely owned by members of the Christianist far right.

Diebold and ES&S were both begun by Bob and Todd Urosevich, two ardent
Oklahoma theocrats, while Triad, which makes the central vote tabulators used in Ohio in 2004, is owned by the Rapp family. SmartTech, the company that helped Bush/Cheney steal that state, is owned by evangelical Jeff Averbeck; and his associate Mike Connell, owner of GovTech Solutions, which also helped to steal Ohio, among other races, was motivated to such work by his desire "to save the babies," according to Stephen Spoonamore.

.................

Meanwhile, let's all stop assuming that last week's outcome was legitimate, and look closely at the evidence around Prop 8.

EVIDENCE at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/WAS-PROP-8-ACTUALLY-DEFEAT-by-Mark-Crispin-Mille-081116-228.html

[Downtown Hound]

1. It wouldn't surprise me one bit

After all, most polls right before the election and the exit polls showed prop 8 being defeated. It's passing came as a total shock to many. But odds are we'll never be able to prove it and we'll never know for sure. All we can do now is keep marching and keep pushing for it to be overturned and a clean vote.

[BeFree]

4. "...a.clean vote."

That is where the nightmare begins and ends. The lack of a clean vote was the start and we will finish all this when we get back to having every vote as clean as possible. Obama's election is a good example of the end, and prop 8 is an example of the start of this nightmare.

[emlev]

25. "All we can do now is..."

"All we can do now is keep marching and keep pushing for it to be overturned and a clean vote."

Actually, there are other things we can do, too. We can provide public oversight of the checks and balances, such as they are, on the vote count. PM me if you're interested.

[defendandprotect]

2. Right -- and the computers go back to late 1960's ....

large computers used by "Mrdia" to report figures amid the break-downs and
stoppages --

Our elections have made nno sense since then --

In the late 1960's two journalists began to investigate computer counting

machines used in elections ...

Very few people know this story --

http://www.constitution.org/vote/votescam__.htm

[fascisthunter]

3. People are Extremely Naive to Trust Electronic Voting and their Companies

especially with what we know about them.

No private interest should ever have been allowed to own propriety over our voting process. Those who promote electronic voting should be heavily scrutinized and mistrusted.

[BeFree]

5. Unregulated

About all the messes we live with today can be found to have at the roots the fact that government did NOT regulate things, but let private interests run amok.

[fascisthunter]

6. I Agree...

[acmavm]

17. Only those ignorant of computers totally trust electronic voting. If you use

a computer every day, if you have one in your home, and if you've ever been hit with a systems crash, a worm, or trojan, or virus, you know that election voting tabulation is pretty risky.

Remember the Love virus? I personlly shut down the computer system at the University of Nebraska Planning Department, the City of Omaha Planning Department, and a number of architectural and engineering firms computer systems. Not intentially, I just clicked of the infected e-mail to read one that I needed to read and that told the machine that the e-mail had been 'read'. The phone calls started within minutes.

After seeing the manipulation and destruction of that virus, I knew forever that while computers were surely a wonderful convenience (I remember carbon paper, mimeograph paper, etc.), I knew that they were always going to be a risk to the user. Assholes and criminals would always be able to manipulate anyone they wanted to because the computer was designed, DESIGNED, to let the outside in. Not keep outsiders out.

[EFerrari]

7. Digg link:

http://digg.com/political_opinion/Was_Prop_8_Actually_Defeated

[EFerrari]

8. Before the election, Mark said we should look for the construction of a narrative

to cover for election fraud. You all remember the one about "values voters" in 2004 -- that's all we heard about for a week after the election. And yet, when analysts went to look for those voters, nobody could find them. They were ghosts.

Well, we sure got a narrative to distract us from the Prop H8 vote counting, didn't we?

[Peace Patriot]

9. There is nothing more important that WHO is counting the votes with 'TRADE SECRET' code--

people who don't credit the science in the theory of evolution; people who were campaign chairs and major fundraisers for Bush-Cheney; people who tout in the death penalty for homosexuals (--Howard Ahmanson, major investor in ES&S, who gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon foundation); and even some people who are into good old-fashioned type Republican corruption (Sequoia hiring Republican Bill Jones and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, right out of the CA Secretary of State's office, after they brought the e-voting plague to California).

All bad, bad, bad, unscrupulous people who are using bigotry to make lots and lots and lots of money. Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia--the big three election theft corporations. This is who they are--rightwing nutballs.

With "trade secret" vote tabulation, and zero auditing(some states) or extremely inadequate auditing (California, 1% of the ballots are actually counted), they have the power of a meat cleaver to simply reverse a major election (as with Bush-Cheney in 2004), or (with other hanky-panky) to install Schwarzenegger as governor of California (to protect the Texas energy moguls who stole CA's $80 billion budget surplus), or, to select one proposition (Prop 8) to try to fracture the leftist coalition that elected Barack Obama by turning out the 5% to 10% EXTRA votes we needed to beat the machines. Nothing like blacks/hispanics and gays at each other throats on the issue of bigotry to please the dragons of the far right, and play into their long term game.

Their game: They shaved Obama's mandate--very significantly, in my opinion; they inflicted him with their Financial 9/11--this incredible looting they pulled off--to tie his hands, as to any new "New Deal"; they intend to blame the results of Bush-Cheney's financial crimes, and possible social turmoil, on him and "the liberals," and, having let him win, and thus having kept their election theft machines in place (no big citizen revolt against the machines), they are free to choose their favorite nazi to install as president in 2012. I'm not saying it's going to work out this way. I'm saying I think this is their game. And critical to this game is the "social turmoil" part--beginning with Prop 8? They HAVE the capability--the EASY capability--to have done it. Who knows if they did? It's all a "TRADE SECRET," you know, with a completely inadequate 1% audit. But when did you ever hear of a Bushwhack who, given the power to cheat, refrained from doing so?

Our job as citizens is to take away their power to cheat, once and for all. The minimum thing we must accomplish is a ballot for every vote (optiscan system) and a 10% (bottom line, minimum) audit (comparison of electronic tallies to the actual ballots). 100% would be best. Or, hand-counted paper ballots--no machines.

This is the best thing we can do to support Barack Obama's administration--guarantee that they can't steal it from him in 2012. The corpo/fascists who rule over us and much of the world have their 'news' monopolies to write the 'narrative.' They have unlimited funds (mostly stolen from us). They have the levers of finance, and globalization, and items like gas prices, usurious credit card rates, and so much more, to twist and turn events to their benefit, and they have darker powers (spying, blackmail, black ops, dirty tricks, U.S.-taxpayer funded mercenary armies, terrorist capabilities, new Pearl Harbors, etc.) to scare unthinking people into line.

The one thing we can most easily take back from these fascists is control over our voting system. I don't expect Congress to do it (but they may make things worse). I think the most hopeful venue is state/local, where control over voting systems still resides, and where ordinary people still have some influence. But for how long this window of opportunity will remain open is anybody's guess. The bad guys want everything centralized and computerized. That is NOT a good idea--a very dangerous one, in fact. It's much safer--even if it's a complicated struggle with uneven progress--to keep power over the election system local.

One inside hacker, and a couple of lines of undetectable, self-erasing malicious code, and entire states can now be stolen--millions of votes switched (meat clever) or a close race tweaked to the Bushwhack (surgeon's scalpel). Imagine, then, a federal centralized system with 'TRADE SECRET' code. Much harder to investigate, much harder to challenge, much harder to change. Nearly impossible, in fact. And then there is the daunting reality that most Congress critters including Democrats like 'TRADE SECRET' code and the dragons of the right who run it. Why, is anybody's guess. They. Are. Not. Going. To. Change. This.

That is my prognosis, after watching this Congress (of the 10% approval rating) dick around with this issue for two years, and DO NOTHING ABOUT IT.

WE have to do it, with a local/state citizen election reform movement. Such a movement is in progress. Support it! Join it!

[madmadmad]

15. something doesn't add up.

and it's the same feeling i had regarding the 2004 election- we went in with the polls showing we should win, and then of course we lost. same thing with prop 8 - polls showed us winning, then we were stunned by our defeat. what to these two things have in common? exit polls that don't add up. this situation stinks to me, and i wish that SOMEHOW we could get to the bottom of it...

[EFerrari]

18. robinlynne said there were all kinds of problems in L.A. County.

I tried to ask around but most people were so upset, they couldn't even talk about it. Maybe as things settle down, more information will trickle out for us. :(

[123infinity]

10. What the hell gave him the idea the Urosevich brothers were Oklahomans?

That's just weird...
editing...I think he might be right about the vote though!

[seemslikeadream]

11. and where did Bob and Todd Urosevich get their money from?

Ahmanson


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Ahmanson,_Jr.
Ahmanson is the son of the American financier Howard F. Ahmanson, Sr (1906-1968). His parents divorced when he was 10, and his mother died shortly afterwards. Despite the trappings of wealth, he was a lonely child. Ahmanson has said, "I resented my family background, could never be a role model, whether by habits or his lifestyle, it was never anything I wanted." Howard Ahmanson, Sr. died when his son was 18, and Ahmanson Jr. inherited a vast fortune.

Ahmanson Jr. went to Occidental College, where he obtained a degree in economics. He then toured Europe, but he returned because of arthritis. He earned a master's degree in linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington and has fluency in several languages.

In the 1970s Ahmanson became a Calvinist and joined R. J. Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionist movement. Ahmanson served as a board member of Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation for over ten years. In an article published in the Orange County Register on June 30, 1996, Ahmanson said he had left the Chalcedon board and "does not embrace all of Rushdoony's teachings."<2> However, Max Blumenthal reported in 2004 that "until Rushdoony's death in 2001, Ahmanson served on the board of his think tank, Chalcedon, granting it a total of $1 million."<3>

In the 1970s Ahmanson was instrumental in starting the career of conservative Christian intellectual Marvin Olasky who then became an important figure in the conservative Evangelical media and political scene.

Ahmanson is a board member of the John M. Perkins Foundation and (along with his wife) the Claremont Institute. He was a member of the Council for National Policy in 1984–85, 1988 and sat on its Board of Governors in 1996 and 1998. He has written articles appearing in The Los Angeles Times, Philanthropy, Religion and Liberty, and other publications.

TIME Magazine covered the Ahmansons in their 2005 profiles of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America, classifying them as "the financiers."<4>

Howard Ahmanson Jr. is a trustee of The Ahmanson Foundation, which was established by his father and is still operated by members of the Ahmanson family. The Ahmanson Foundation serves Los Angeles County non-profit organizations "by funding cultural projects in the arts and humanities, education at all levels, health care, programs related to homelessness and underserved populations as well as a wide range of human services."

[nichomachus]

16. And he was one of the largest supporters of Prop 8, besides the Mormon Church

[bleever]

12. See also emlev's thread about this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=221x89724

K&R!

[AntiFascist]

13. K&RRRR...

Anyone following election fraud closely should know that the Windows-based tabulators are not to be trusted. Obama won by such a large margin that it would have been difficult to manipulate his results, but the exit polls showed that Prop. 8 was losing by 48% to 52%, and flipping those results may have gone relatively unnoticed, particularly with the apparent huge showing of Yes on 8 support (yard signs and such which were shipped and given to people for free).

I've heard a rumor that the Mormon Church is a major shareholder in Diebold, is this true?

[Control-Z]

19. Did you notice the number of NO votes

actually lost with that flip? I wonder how that happens? Unless I did the math wrong, the outcome (from the two screen shots at www.opednews.com ) is impossible. Correct me if wrong.

[BrklynLiberal]

14. If the Dominionists/Christian Reconstructionists were involved in any way, you can be sure

that they tried to make sure they would know the result before the first vote was cast.

[TheWraith]

20. Sigh. This is what I miss about traditional journalism.

Instead of just randomly suggesting things and hoping maybe they stick, real journalists would actually do a little investigation to see if what they were talking about was possible, or likely. Miller, on the other hand, starts by assuming all sorts of things not in evidence, apparently preferring to make his reader base happy by storytelling rather than giving them real facts. God forbid anyone should contemplate the idea that sometimes, elections go the wrong way for reasons other than quasi-magical vote-changing machines that, curiously, don't seem able to affect things like the 2006 congressional elections, or the 2008 congressional and presidential elections.

If I wrote an article this sloppy and tabloid, I'd get my ass kicked up and down the street by my editor, and my company doesn't even do serious journalism.

[EFerrari]

23. If you can't tell the difference between opinion and hard news

maybe you need the workout.

[emlev]

24. Miller didn't write the article. I did.

What's posted at OpEdNews is his blog item about an article I wrote. Here's the link to the original article. Part but not all of it was posted at OEN.

I was very careful in the original article to say that what we know so far is only enough to tell us we need to look more closely at the proposition 8 vote count. I made it very clear that no conclusion beyond that is warranted at this point. And I asked people to come forward to become volunteer monitors of the post-election procedures in counties around California. Tonight another election integrity advocate and I trained the first group of those volunteers. What we're asking of them is really something that should be done in every county in this country right now: providing public oversight of the election canvass (post-election processes).

I invite you to read the whole original article.

Is it possible that the prop 8 vote count is wrong? Yes.
Can it be proven? Perhaps.
Has it been proven? No. At least not yet.

[Peace Patriot]

26. "quasi-magical vote-changing machines"? Yeah, that's exactly what they are.

And the result is that there is hardly a member of Congress, or any other public official in this country, who can prove that he or she was actually elected--and that goes for bigot propositions as well. WE ARE **NOT** COUNTING THE VOTES! We are relying upon DIEBLOD, ES&S and SEQUIOA'S **WORD** on who won--three rightwing tied corporations who tot up all the votes with 'TRADE SECRET' code.

It is Alice-in-Wonderland thinking to have a MAGICAL, UNAUDITED, 'TRADE SECRET' CODE voting system and then to blame the denizens of Wonderland for shouting out against its MAGICAL, ELECTRONIC, UNSEEABLE, UNAUDITED results.

Posts like yours, ridiculing the doubters, help make people stupid.

With 'TRADE SECRET' MAGICAL BLACK BOX vote counting, those who control the code can do many things--including letting a very popular candidate win (but shaving his mandate) in order to preserve their magical machines for future uses; they can select 'Blue Dogs' in the primaries (as opposed to real Democrats) to produce a Democratic Congress with a 10% approval rating; they can help reverse a close presidential election when the stakes are very high, and (s)elect highly corrupt fascist worms like Norm Coleman to represent the progressive state of Minnesota (which elected the most kickass leftist ever to sit in the U.S. Senate, Paul Wellstone, in the previous election, pre-Diebold/ES&S).

They have bludgeon power and subtle power. They can wait for their Financial 9/11 to wreak havoc, and THEN strike Obama in 2012.

It is just stupid-making to ridicule those who don't trust 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. The American people NEED to think about this and what it can do, and then DEMAND a return to TRANSPARENT vote counting. There is no other purpose to NON-transparent voting systems BUT fraud. It is made to order for fraud. Secret vote counting IS fraud. Count the votes in PUBLIC view. Count ALL the votes. Anything less is NOT democracy.

[Swamp Rat]

21. k&r

[Zhade]

22. KICK

KICK