LETTER OF THE WEEK #4 – REVISED.
Here is a revised SAMPLE LETTER on the Kevin Shelley situation, much improved as to the wording and main points, but still rather long (3 pages, including 2 pg. letter and 1 pg. annotated list of election fraud urls) in 10 pt. Times font.
LETTERS ARE URGENTLY needed to educate California Democrats on 2004 election fraud, to support Shelley in his anti-Diebold actions, and to warn them of the consequences of lack of vigilance on this matter.
GO HERE for a list of current DU threads on this situation (full list towards the bottom), and other information—including California Democratic office holders who are on the WRONG SIDE of this issue.:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x319613In brief: CA Sec of State Kevin Shelley resigned last Friday, effective as of March 1. He had decertified and sued Diebold for their lies about their electronic voting machines, and provided Californians with a paper ballot option for 2004. The charges against him seem farcically minor, and are probably wholly unfounded. His real sin was going after Diebold, and trying to protect CA's election system--with Arnold Schwarzenegger planning an initiative this year to redistrict CA and rid him of CA's progressive legislature, among other BushCon plans for CA.
Unfortunately, some of CA's Dems are corruptly tied up with Diebold (or just ignorant of the perils), and have piled on to the attack on Shelley, which was led by the San Francisco Chronicle (a truly execrable newspaper) and it all got telegraphed around the state, putting terrific pressure on Shelley (whose mother is in intensive care, according to the L.A. Times).
CONTACT KEVIN SHELLEY:
EMAIL: elections@ss.ca.gov or ConstituentAffairs@ss.ca.gov
CALL: (916) 653-6814, or (916) 653-7244
Choose the executive office from the message menu.
CONTRIBUTE TO KEVIN SHELLEY'S LEGAL DEFENSE FUND: Very important!
Write checks to: Legal Defense Fund
Olson, Hagel & Fishburn
555 Capitol Mall, Suite 1425
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 442-2952
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...and CONTACT CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS!
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SAMPLE LETTER
Your name and address, and the date, and the no. of pages, if it's a fax.
Dear (California Democrat):
I strongly support California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, and approve of his decertification and suit against Diebold, his providing Californians with a paper ballot option, and his other efforts at transparent elections, and I believe that the scurrilous campaign to remove him from office is ill motivated and will result in a catastrophe for the California Democratic Party, for the people of California and for the nation.
Some California Democratic politicians are on the wrong side of this controversy, and I don't know if the reason is corruption or ignorance, but if it is ignorance, I want to help correct that problem.
First, I would like to recommend,
1) strong support for Shelley's work in trying to safeguard California voters against electronic election fraud;
2) urging Shelley to remain in office if he can possibly bear up under this disgusting and unfounded attack;
3) resistance to any appointee of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican or Democrat, who falls below Shelley's high standard of vigilance regarding the integrity of our election system; and
4) throwing Diebold and other electronic voting machines into San Francisco Bay, Lake Tahoe, off the Santa Monica Pier, or into some other body of water comparable to Boston Harbor in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party.
Re: #4. Yes, I think it's that bad. Electronic voting machines are so insecure and hackable—and so untransparent and obviously corrupt, run on SECRET, proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by major Bush supporters—that I am convinced we have lost our right to vote!
How could this very unpopular President have been "re-elected"?
Consider, first of all, Bush's low approval ratings--hovering around 50% since the election and dropping below 50% at the Inauguration—unprecedented lack of approval for a recently "re-elected" second term president. Also, nearly 60% of Americans disapprove of the war on Iraq, and 63% disapprove of torture under any circumstances. How could Americans give Bush this astounding "vote of no confidence" in opinion polls, after "re-electing" him by 3.5 million votes?
The mysterious "re-election" of George Bush is key to an understanding of the perils of electronic voting, as well as to the mystery of other Democratic losses around the nation.
Here is a summary of just two of the recent expert studies from the mountain of evidence pointing to a wrong result in the 2004 presidential election, some of it listed below.
Dr. Steven Freeman provides an astute analysis of the predictable vote for John Kerry in 2004, using the base vote going in (who voted in 2000), the big switch from Nader to Kerry, and new voter registration which favored Democrats by 57% to 41%. Adding these three groups of voters together, Dr. Freeman finds a discrepancy of over 4 million votes (and possibly as high as 8 million) that Kerry should have gotten and didn't, in the official results. (Dr. Freeman's two studies on the 2004 election have primarily to do with the impossible odds against a Bush win, given Kerry's win in the exit polls.)
Dr. Freeman's second report on the 2004 election will be published as a book in May, and is available to interested parties upon request at
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htmIn yet another new study, on January 29, 2005, nine Ph.D.'s and other experts from leading universities issued a report that also calls the 2004 election result into serious question. They find that Kerry won the exit polls (by a 3% margin). They find the odds against exit poll error--and thus, the odds against the Bush win --to be 1 in 10 million. They find a large, unexplained skew toward Bush at the precinct level in electronic voting vs. paper ballot (a skew that has been confirmed by other reports--see the U.C. Berkeley/Florida, and democraticunderground.com/North Carolina reports, below).
This report also finds the explanation by Edison/Mitofsky (the exit pollsters) for why Kerry won the exit polls--that Republicans were shy of the pollsters--to be without foundation. In fact, the data points to the opposite conclusion--that the exit polls actually favored Bush--which makes the unexplained discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results even larger. The report calls for a full investigation of the 2004 election--the latest in a growing list of expert reports that do so. See:
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/USCountVotes_Re_Mitofsky-Edison.pdfThese reports come after many other investigations and reports (see below), all of which point to the same thing: Stolen Election II.
How did they do it?
You need only look at the non-transparency of electronic voting, and who owns and controls the source code that tabulates all our votes to know that prime conditions for fraud were present. Indeed, the electronic systems were like an open bank vault—an invitation to fraud for those with the means and the motive. Would these same people who stole the 2000 election, and probably stole some of the 2002 by-elections as well, resist such a temptation? Did they not deliberately set up the conditions for fraud?
• The programming source code that counts all our votes is held as SECRET, proprietary information—no public review!--by major donors and supporters of the Bush/Cheney regime, including Bush/Cheney campaign chair, Wally O'Dell (Diebold), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio to Bush," and rightwing billionaire H. Ahmanson (ES&S).
• A third of country voted with no paper trail whatsoever—let alone a voter verified paper ballot—a circumstance that was deliberately arranged by Tom DeLay's obstruction of transparency measures in HAVA, backed by the electronic voting machine companies.
• These electronic machines are notable for their extreme insecurity, unreliability and hackability: one hacker, a couple of minutes, leaving no trace. (See the Johns Hopkins report, and the Chuck Herrin demonstration.)
Luckily, there were others ways to check for fraud. For instance, all studies of the Nov. 2 Exit Polls point to a Kerry win, and reveal impossible odds against a Bush win, due to the skew towards Bush in Exit Poll/Official Tally comparisons—that is, the uneven padding of Bush votes in critical regions—that cannot be accounted for by some imagined bias in the Exit Polls. There have also been comparisons of paper ballot vs. electronic voting, absentee ballot vs. electronic voting, and top of the ticket vs. lower ticket, all pointing to massive electronic fraud in Bush's favor.
Indeed, it appears that the movement to oust Bush was so big and so evident in the weeks leading up to the election day, that Bush operatives in Ohio, Florida and other places had to go all out, using every means of vote suppression, machine "malfunction," and outright illegality—combined with electronic fraud—to keep Bush in office. The touchscreen machines that kept changing Kerry votes to Bush votes all day long without correction are a good example. So, too, were the shortage of precincts and voting machines in African American and other Democratic districts, leading to 10 hour voting lines, in flagrant violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Congress received 57,000 such complaints.
But capping all of this is the distinct and impossible skew to Bush that curves from east to west across the country (most prominent in the battleground states), indicating the Bush operatives' anxiety about securing the election early on, by fraudulent means. See:
The Time Zone Discrepancy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x318693The Exit Polls "altered" on Election Day
And here is something else that most Americans don't know: The Exit Poll data showing a Kerry win on everybody's TV screens on election night was changed, as the night went on—it was "adjusted" to fit the "official results" that were coming in from central electronic vote tabulators. Americans were thereby denied the information that Kerry won the Exit Polls—unlike in the Ukraine, where voters could see the two conflicting figures—the Exit Polls vs. the "official results"—and knew something was wrong. This Exit Poll "adjustment" in our election contributed to the illusion of a Bush win, and prevented an outcry by voters.
But that majority—which voted for Kerry, and voted with particular intent to oust the Bush regime—still exists, and still believes in our progressive country and its founding principles—the rule of laws not men, consent of the governed, a balance of power, and equality and justice.
Thousands of activists around the country are fighting to restore majority rule in this country, beginning with restoring our right to vote. We hope you will join us in this greatest of democracy movements. We stand ready to assist any politician who courageously pursues progressive policies, and who is willing to investigate the 2004 election and support true election reform.
I urge you to study the attached reports on the 2004 election, and gird yourself for the attempted Bushification of California, now in progress.
Yours sincerely,
XXXX XXXXXX
ATTACHED
Exit poll analysis - astronomical odds against Bush win:
Dr. Steven Freeman:
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htmDr. Ron Baiman:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/997Dr. Webb Mealy:
http://www.selftest.net/redshift.htmJonathan Simon:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00142.htm9 Ph.D's from leading universities call for investigation:
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/USCountVotes_Re_Mitofsky-Edison.pdfFlorida: 130,000 to 230,000 phantom votes for Bush--paper vs. electronic voting:
Dr. Michael Haut & UC Berkeley stats team:
http://ucdata.berkeley.eduJohns Hopkins report on insecurity of electronic voting (general):
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00196.htm#5Easy demo of the how insecure electronic voting machines are:
http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htmOhio vote suppression:
http://www.bpac.infoWidespread machine fraud and dirty tricks in over 20 states:
http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.htmlDemocratic Underground (ignatzmouse):
(North Carolina: absentee ballot vs. electronic, inexplicable 6% edge to Bush in electronic:)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x45003Democratic Underground (TruthIsAll): "To believe Bush won, you have to believe…"
(Parts 1, 2 and 3:)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1316010http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1358806http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x197878Democratic Underground (TruthIsAll): The Time Zone Discrepancy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x31869In progress compilations of various articles and materials on 2004 Election Fraud:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x311105http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=304579End of letter.
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CONTACTING CALIFORNIA STATE SENATORS AND ASSEMBLYFOLK:
CA SENATE & ASSEMBLY CONTACT: FAX
http://www.cawa.org/legcont.htmIncludes Assembly & Senate FAX NUMBERS and also, click on name for direct link to EMAIL. BEWARE: This list is very useful for providing FAX NUMBERS for each Senate and Assembly District, but it may have inaccuracies about current names and email links. I found one regarding the 30th Assembly District, which lists the name Dean Florez and his email, but correctly links to the current rep Nicole Parra's web site and gives correct FAX AND TEL NOS. Advice: Check other lists for current office holder names, and go back here for quick access to FAX NOS.
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CA ASSEMBLY CONTACT: EMAIL
http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/acsframeset7text.htmlisted by name, party, distr, bio & direct EMAIL LINK TO THEIR WEB SITE
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CA SENATE CONTACT: EMAIL
CA Senate Email Addresses
Senator.Aanestad@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Ackerman@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Alarcón@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Alquist@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Ashburn@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Battin@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Bowen@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Campbell@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Cedillo@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Chesbro@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Cox@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Denham@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Ducheny@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Dunn@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Dutton@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Escutia@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Figueroa@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Florez@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Hollingsworth@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Kehoe@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Kuehl@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Lowenthal@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Machado@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Maldonado@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Margett@sen.ca.gov
Senator.McClintock@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Migden@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Morrow@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Murray@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Ortiz@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Perata@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Poochigian@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Romero@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Runner@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Scott@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Simitian@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Soto@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Speier@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Torlakson@sen.ca.gov
Senator.Vincent@sen.ca.gov
Senators who are not listed here, or who do not respond to email messages, can be contacted by the contact form on his/her website, regular mail or by phone. Links to the Senators' home pages, where contact information is listed, can be found at
http://www.sen.ca.gov/~newsen/senators/senators.htpCA SENATE WEB SITE LINKS
http://www.senate.ca.gov/~newsen/senators/senators.htpSENATORS FULL NAMES
Aanestad, Sam
Ackerman, Dick
Alarcón, Richard
Alquist, Elaine
Ashburn, Roy
Battin, James
Bowen, Debra
Campbell, John
Cedillo, Gilbert
Chesbro, Wes
Cox, Dave
Denham, Jeff
Ducheny, Denise Moreno
Dunn, Joseph
Dutton, Robert
Escutia, Martha
Figueroa, Liz
Florez, Dean
Hollingsworth, Dennis
Kehoe, Christine
Kuehl, Sheila
Lowenthal, Alan S.
Machado, Michael
Maldonado, Abel
Margett, Bob
McClintock, Tom
Migden, Carole
Morrow, Bill
Murray, Kevin
Ortiz, Deborah
Perata, Don
Poochigian, Charles
Romero, Gloria
Runner, George C.
Scott, Jack
Simitian, S. Joseph (Joe)
Soto, Nell
Speier, Jackie
Torlakson, Tom
Vincent, Edward
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California Democratic Party
CA Democratic Party Chair Art Torres
http://www.cadem.org/site/apps/fc/form.asp?c=fvLRK7O3E&b=34877 Sacramento Office
1401 21st Street, Suite 100
Sacramento, California 95814
(916) 442-5707 phone
(916) 442-5715 fax
Los Angeles Office
888 S. Figueroa Street, 4th Floor
Los Angeles, California 90017
(213) 239-8730 phone
(213) 239-8731 fax