All the President's votes? -- Important article to read

[Emillereid]

This piece is languishing over in editorials -- it deserves greater traction -- some of the best reporting on the election fraud and naturally it was published in an English newspaper.

A quiet revolution is taking place in US politics. By the time it's over, the integrity of elections will be in the unchallenged, unscrutinised control of a few large - and pro-Republican - corporations. Andrew Gumbel wonders if democracy in America can survive

14 October 2003




Fears of more US electoral chaos after flaws are discovered in ballot computers

<snip>

Those figures were more or less what political experts would have expected in state with a long tradition of electing Democrats to statewide office. But then the results came in, and all of Georgia appeared to have been turned upside down. Barnes lost the governorship to the Republican, Sonny Perdue, 46 per cent to 51 per cent, a swing of as much as 16 percentage points from the last opinion polls. Cleland lost to Chambliss 46 per cent to 53, a last-minute swing of 9 to 12 points.



Red-faced opinion pollsters suddenly had a lot of explaining to do and launched internal investigations. Political analysts credited the upset - part of a pattern of Republican successes around the country - to a huge campaigning push by President Bush in the final days of the race. They also said that Roy Barnes had lost because of a surge of "angry white men" punishing him for eradicating all but a vestige of the old confederate symbol from the state flag.
<snip>

There were also big, puzzling swings in partisan loyalties in different parts of the state. In 58 counties, the vote was broadly in line with the primary election. In 27 counties in Republican-dominated north Georgia, however, Max Cleland unaccountably scored 14 percentage points higher than he had in the primaries. And in 74 counties in the Democrat south, Saxby Chambliss garnered a whopping 22 points more for the Republicans than the party as a whole had won less than three months earlier.

<snip>
That, according to computer experts, was a violation of the most basic of security precautions, opening all sorts of possibilities for the introduction of rogue or malicious code. At the same time, however, it gave campaigners a golden opportunity to circumvent Diebold's own secrecy demands and see exactly how the system worked. Roxanne Jekot, a computer programmer with 20 years' experience, and an occasional teacher at Lanier Technical College northeast of Atlanta, did a line-by-line review and found "enough to stand your hair on end".

...more....
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=452972&host=3&dir=70

[Zhade]

1. kick

NT!

[Emillereid]

2. Here's another good article in Independent -- companion piece

Fears of more US electoral chaos after flaws are discovered in ballot computers


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=453116

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles




14 October 2003

<snip>



The three leading voting machine manufacturers are substantial Republican campaign donors, and one of their chief executives, Walden O'Dell of Diebold, in Ohio, wrote a letter to Republican supporters saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year". That raised serious concerns of bias. "The rush towards computerisation is very dubious," Rebecca Mercuri, a research fellow at Harvard University, said. "It takes away the checks and balances of a democratic society."




In Georgia, citizens were alarmed at apparent anomalies in the election results forgovernor and one of the state's two Senate seats. Both offices were won by Republicans in last-minute voting swings away from Democrats.




Causes for alarm included a serious malfunction in the voting software, discovered after the machines were packaged for shipment, which had to be repaired with a programming "patch", and the fact that the patch showed up on an open-access internet page. Hundreds of security flaws were identified in subsequent follow-up studies. There were also several election day glitches, including the loss of 67 voting memory cards in the Democrat stronghold of central Atlanta.

 


Causes for alarm included a serious malfunction in the voting software, discovered after the machines were packaged for shipment, which had to be repaired with a programming "patch", and the fact that the patch showed up on an open-access internet page. Hundreds of security flaws were identified in subsequent follow-up studies. There were also several election day glitches, including the loss of 67 voting memory cards in the Democrat stronghold of central Atlanta.

Pisses me off that the main stream media in the US are paying such scant attention to this -- how can we get this information out?

[Voltaire99]

3. Undoubtedly the story of the hour. So where is the US coverage?

Should be arriving on page 28B any day now!

[Dude_CalmDown]

4. Kicking is great fun!!!

:kick:And it's also part of a balanced breakfast!!!:kick:

edit: because sometimes fonts can be too big.