Do BBV industry workers participate in threads on DU?

[Walt Starr]

I'm really curious because every time I see a BBV thread with yet another dot being connected, they usually devlove into incredible flamfests.

I've been following the tidbits of information and not paying a lot of attention to the personalities involved. In fact, I know of basically three DUers involved, Bev Harris, DemActivist, and Eloriel (I know there are more on the BBV investigation side of things). I really have not paid attention to the disruptors or the personalities involved in the disruption, however, it seems to me that the BBV industry would love to see these threads get locked and fall to the archives, ASAP.

We know there have been right wing disruptors who would turn threads into flamefests when the thread revealed embarassing information about some rightwingnut in power. I'm just wondering if the BBV industry could be doing the same thing.

I hope that the tidbits get reposted whenever the threads devolve into flamfests. This is important information. We're talking about America's democratic institutions being sold out to the highest bidder and the potential ending of the voting process forever in this nation. I, for one, want to know what is being found. Yes, there is not enough to say that elections have been stolen, however, what's being divulged are potential methodologies that could be used to steal elections.

After 2000 was stolen by a corporatist conspiracy (there can be no doubt whatsoever that this was the case), we cannot afford to let even one dot slip by.

[shirlden]

1. High Jacking BBV threads is great sport

for a handful of DU posters. Those of us who are seriously involved in following the info provided by Bev and others have learned to expect this. The good news is that they are normally quickly nuetralized by the superior knowledge and debating skills of our 3 prominant BBV'ers as you noted.

:kick:

[Fredda Weinberg]

2. You call it disruption

but if you read it carefully, you'll see valid criticism met with behavior that gets threads locked. Not the questions ... the responses violate DU rules. This is a consistent pattern.

But I have a question for all those blind followers: Why didn't Pitt consent to mirror the files? Why is he endorsing an action he won't take himself?

[hedda_foil]

3. Please place disruptors on ignore to avoid thread locking.

Yes, Walt ... though not necessarily the above poster, there are definitely industry people who have participated on some of the more important BBV threads.

[Clete]

5. Yes, I noticed and they have been outed.

Including the one posting on this thread.

[Sterling]

6. I could be wrong but the poster above deserves a little respect

In my expirience Fredda is an honest and thoughtful person. If I am not wrong she works with a very respected journalist and most likely is only trying to help.

I can't see why anybody would not be interested in making sure our votes be counted. What is the normal pattern of a disruptor on a BBV thread anyway?

[Clete]

14. She's getting respect.

Disagreeing with her position is what we are doing. Are you another stifler of freedom of speech?

[TheBigGuy]

4. I dont pay much attention to the BBV threads as i find them demoralizing.

I think the BBV argument, that elections are susceptible to being stolen, and some may have been stolen, via electronic voting, to be perhaps the most demoralizing thing I have ever come across on DU.

The entire concept transforms politics into one big WWF match. Staged, phoney, with the outcome predecided.

I try not to pay attention to them becuase they challenge one of the bedrock beliefs that makes democracy work..that votes count.

If votes dont count, why bother voting?

[Clete]

7. Because even ballot stuffing can't change a wide majority.

That's why.

[TheBigGuy]

11. ok..makes sense

BBV vote manipulation can only work where there are narrow margins, so as to give swinging an election plausibilty....the swing was within a margin or error of the last poll.

Thanks....thats a good point.

[Sterling]

9. ?

I can't see how ignoring the problem solves anything. Yes it is depressing but think of what other people have had to contend with to ensure their freedom of choice of who will govern them.

[TheBigGuy]

10. Becuase it is a problem one can't do much about.

If this BBV stuff is true it is a massive conspiracy that the media won't expose in any big or substantive way.

What will happen is we have folks like the community of BBV investigators here or on other sites laying out what is going on, but it wont break out into "legitimtate media" such as newspapers, magazines, etc.

The BBV thing will be relegated to the arena of conspiracy theory or "internet rumor" or "urban legend", and there it will sit. Nothing will be done.

[Clete]

12. My local very conservative newspaper did an article on BBV.

I think we are going to have to start feeding information to the small local newspapers. They haven't been absorbed by the BFEE propaganda machine and still adhere to journalistic principles of unbiased reporting.

So if you want to be pessimistic, don't bring everyone down with you please. Most of us want to turn things around and start sending the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction.

[Fredda Weinberg]

13. Substantial stories make it to the mainstream press

The voter scrub in Florida made it to the Washington Post. Now that's a dispiriting story!

The brother of the president denies that his office sent a document which is later resent - in modified form. The powers that be are willing to overlook that.

If there was substance to this publicity stunt, it would have legs. As it is, it takes great effort to keep the excitement going at DU - and the WWF atmosphere comes from those who presumably have a sober argument to make.

So, why is Will Pitt refusing to mirror these files, but willing to endorse the idea that others do it?

[madfloridian]

15. Not always! I disagree with your statement about substantial stories.

They do not always make it to the mainstream press. Most people I know never heard about the voter scrub in Florida. (And no comments about the kind of people I know....I know educated intelligent ones) It is like the power crisis in CA. The CA crisis and Enron hit the news for a brief period May 2002, and then disappeared.

You would be amazed at the people who never heard of it in a "mainstream" way, or at all.

I see stories here and around the internet all the time. I think that people are waking up. Then I go and read the mainstream papers. If I read only the mainstream for a few days, then come here...I am stunned. There may be a spattering of real news in the mainstream, then it goes away.

Do a search on Google on scrubbed voters in Florida. I got mostly left leaning sources.

[Fredda Weinberg]

22. But you can't contradict the substance of my argument

which is that the Diebold reports do not hold any water whatsoever. You may want more exposure on the scrub (and there will be next year - wait for Unprecedented on Showtime) but false accusations won't help the atmosphere.

[Eloriel]

21. You can do a LOT about it, BigGuy

But only if you choose, and are willing to do something other than cry in your beer (no offense).

* Call your reps to support Holt's bill H.R. 2239.
* Inform yourself. What is the situation in your state?
* Call your local election officials and your state election officials and ask pertinent questions (after you inform yourself). Help them understand the pitfalls of blackbox voting, and why a voter-verified paper trail and open source code are essential.
* Talk to your state reps, no matter what party, and educate them.
* Talk it up to others, inform others, and encourage them to get involved as well.
* Write letters to your local paper.
* Repeat all of the above.

* JOIN BLACKBOXVOTING.ORG DISCUSSION FORUM
http://www.blackboxvoting.org -- Discussion Forum on the right side of the page.
(But not today, they're moving the site.)

A really important thing to remember: YOU HAVE THE POWER! If you doubt it, you (and all of us) lose by default.

Eloriel

[Eloriel]

16. If the votes don't count

why don't you swap your demoralized self for an activist self? And make sure your votes count in YOUR state?

That's the point of all these threads: to STOP this stuff. Your voice is needed too.

Eloriel

[Cocoa]

8. I doubt it

based on the notes from the secret meeting of the manufacturers with their PR person, it seems they are going to conduct a pretty conventional PR campaign. There was no hint of them doing anything underhanded.

The "unorthodox" PR methods belong to one group of activists. Methods including discrediting and ridiculing any and all critics, such as the League of Women Voters and the ACLU and even, incredibly, me. Any time someone accuses ME of being a secret agent, that's huge red flag for me. :-)

[Eloriel]

19. You don't have to be a "secret agent" to aid and abet

the wrong side of this issue, Cocoa.

And in fact, you name two of the groups who are doing that -- LWV and ACLU. Why are they involved, and on the wrong side? My speculation is this: enough computer illiteracy to "trust" the system automatically (and unreasonably, IMO), and trying to be of active help to disabled voters. We have also wondered if they weren't lobbied either by vendors or the industry itself -- ITAA, for example.

And to answer Walt's question, yes, there have no doubt been industry insiders participating at times. And why not? DU allows itself to be used by all sorts of people who do not have our best interests at heart, and not all of them are on the BBV issue. As long as they don't break certain rather narrow rules, they're free to post here.

And too, some people are quite skilled at fomenting disruption while appearing all innocent.

Eloriel

Edited: typo (Cocoal???)

[Cocoa]

20. maybe they are, but I just gave some pretty good evidence that they aren't

That meeting showed their strategy to be basically to persuade their opponents, not destroy them.

On the other hand, we know for a fact that one group of activists openly and aggressively uses various forms of "opposition research" to make their points.

[Eloriel]

24. Uh, I wasn't discussing "that meeting"

And I don't know why you're hung up on it, esp. since your take on it is -- well, clouded at best, IMO.

On the other hand, we know for a fact that one group of activists openly and aggressively uses various forms of "opposition research" to make their points.

What is YOUR point? I have no idea. Do you? Are you referring to BBV activists? Is there something wrong with opposition research? You don't want to know about people on the other side? You think people's past and organizations' current associations aren't relevent? I'm really having a hard time figuring out just what your point is here.

Eloriel

[Cocoa]

32. here's my point about the meeting

We're speculating on whether the manufacturers are infiltrating this board, right?

Well how do we know? We can't know, really. But with that meeting, we get a glimpse behind the scenes where they themselves are discussing their strategy. And there's nothing there that supports anything like the underhanded tactic of infiltrating anyone, or doing anything like that.

Regarding opposition research, yeah, there is something very wrong with it if it's done in an unethical way, such as making unfounded charges against people or encouraging people to look up opponents' home addresses.

[laura888]

17. ok, I'm dumb - what is "BBV"??

n/t

[Eloriel]

26. Black Box Voting

Computerized voting is dangerous under the current circumstances. There is no way our votes are protected against hacks and virtually undetectable vote fraud, should any knowledgeable insider care to do that.

And why wouldn't they?

http:/www.blackboxvoting.com and http://www.blackboxvoting.org are being moved to another host site, so you might get some weird results if you try to go there, but if you care about your vote, you MUST go there, as soon as you can. There have also been hundreds of threads here at DU on the subject.

Eloriel

[Generic Other]

18. It's one thing to be a naysayer

It's another to stalk the BBV threads and constantly harass people who are interested in this subject, deny their credibility, and try to suppress the ideas by getting the threads locked.

Let's face it, flamefests happen all the time on DU. Only a few people use them as an opportunity to squelch ideas they don't like. They bait others, wait for reactions, then turn informant and get the threads locked. Sort of like how the Gestapo worked and the one thing I find objectionable about DU. Thread locking is not used to prevent outside disruptor behavior half as often as it is used to suppress the views of longstanding members that other members have personal issues with.

Seems to be the way our Democracy has been working of late.

Those vigilantes who routinely run to whine to mods that rules are being broken do so because they have no other way of controlling the conversations. The rules are on their side. But if they believe they are respected for resorting to the sort of tattletale behavior they learned on the playground in third grade, they are sadly mistaken. Assholes on DU have earned their reputation.

Everytime someone disrupts and gets a BBV thread locked, I get more suspicious. If the same disruptor posts a contrary thought everytime anyone says anything, I start to question that person's motives. "Methinks they protesteth too much."

Most of us on these threads have only one stake in looking at this topic. That's because we know that elections WERE compromised at the national level in 2000. That is all the reason any citizen needs to be suspicious, to be nosy, and to be in the faces of any election officials and voting machine company reps we wish to be. You either support free and open elections that stand up to public scrutiny or you lose any credibility.

Anyone at all can post on DU. But those who drop in to BBV threads like a constant wet blanket to ridicule, distract, and divide, should also come clean about their motives. I understand why Bev, DA, Eloriel, and others have worked so hard on this issue. Their motives are not suspect as far as I am concerned. They have established their credibility with me, an outsider, who has weighed and processed the information as best I could. I don't have any stake in this fight other than being a citizen who hates people thinking they can deceive and trick me. I can muster up a lot of energy to fight those kinds of people.

People who are dishonest about their motives make me sick because they have the arrogance to believe that I am too stupid to figure out what they are up to. Those who present biased, slanted views with no facts to back them up are the ones whose credibility is called into question. I become suspicious when the detractors always draw definite negative conclusions from data the rest of us are merely asking questions about.

I will probably try to post this message and find that in the time it took me to write it, someone will have gotten the thread locked.

on edit: How long will this thread last?

[Vadem]

30. Excellent post, Generic O!

I agree wholeheartedly with your conclusions. The DUers involved in trying to find answers to all the BBV questions and to connect the dots to the military industrial companies that have their hands in BBV ownership are voting citizens who are worried that the 2004 elections will become as nefarious as 2000 and 2002.

[Rex]

23. When you threaten big business it will find a way to get back at you.

Bev's idea is so dangerous to these corporations that just her snooping around has sent them into a state of panic. That she posts here at DU has made it as much a target as her ideas.

[DEMActivist]

28. How right you are Rex

What we are seeing here is DU's own personal version of Lucianne Goldberg. You know, those folks who are paid to befriend and derail any progressive investigation and keep it out of the press.

It goes back much further than BBV. It goes all the way back to Florida 2000, Lori Klausitis (sp?), 911 all the investigations we activists have tried to get into the mainstream press.

We have documented proof of certain persons' correspondence to reporters and journalists attempting to derail the investigations into all of these matters.

Are you comfortable with the idea that someone you are supposed to trust as an ally has spent years trying to derail the things we have all tried to get into the public consciousness?

Just so you know, a constorium of progessive writers are now sharing this evidence and considering a class action lawsuit.

DU has become the current target because we ARE getting word out and that is very dangerous to them.

[BevHarris]

25. Here it is

The attempts to derail discussion and get threads locked is deliberate.

I don't discuss my volunteer work, but I'm in contact with people who are very concerned what's going wrong at DU. The number of threads that have to be locked is only a symptom.

Fredda Weinberg, posted last night on a BBV thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=288085&mesg_id=288085

Sigh. So go ahead. Lock this.

[Rex]

27. You're getting hits, these companies don't like the fact

that so many people (in the right places) have picked up your story, and ran with it. If no one would have reported your findings, I'm sure we would see almost no "refuters" here at DU.

I'd even bet that some are trying to make a name for themselves by trying to discredit you.

[BevHarris]

29. By the way, "ignore" is the zzz -- just click it and

certain people vanish.

[EarlG]

31. The discussion of who is or is not a disruptor at DU

is divisive and incites flames. Everyone who is currently able to post at DU is a welcome member and should be treated as such. I'm locking this thread.