ABC posted results of 1998 election on their website day BEFORE election!

[Amaryllis]

This is an interview with Victoria Collier, daughter of one of the Votescam authors. Go to the link; she talks about how she ended up following in her father's footsteps.

"When I had to tell people in 1998 that neither Jim nor Ken were alive any longer, it was because ABC News had just posted the results of the 1998 off-year election on their website the day before the election. My phone started ringing off the hook. People were looking for Jim. They wanted him to get on the radio and talk about it and he had just died a month earlier. So, I had to tell everybody that, and the reaction that I got was really dramatic. I realized that they had been doing something that nobody else is doing and that nobody else could do at that particular moment in time."

Exploring the ballot racket
Geoff Metcalf interviews vote-fraud activist Victoria Collier

By Geoff Metcalf

Question: Were you involved in investigating this book with your dad or did you pick up the pieces after his passing?

Answer: It was after he died in 1998. I was involved a little bit on and off during the years, but I never thought that I would be continuing to take his place or to talk about the book for him. But he went a lot earlier than any of us expected, so somebody had to keep talking about it.

Q: Your politics are far more to the left than most of our guests. What attracted you to this issue?

A: We talked about vote fraud and debated about it for years in my family, and nobody else was talking about it until the "Votescam" book came out. Even after that, because it was banned by the major book chains, we've had to struggle for years to make it available to people who kept it going by word of mouth. People would buy cases of the book and pass them out to their friends. That was amazing. We've sold quite a lot of books over the years through just that sort of thing.

More: http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/qa/21756.html

More on Votescam: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x331781

[aquart]

1. Is it possible that they posted the test?

[Amaryllis]

2. Don't understand your question? Did you read the interview?

[aquart]

8. No. Does the interview say

That they ruled out pre-election testing accidentally appearing on air?

Wasn't there an instance of that on CNN or one of the networks more recently?

[ISUGRADIA]

3. Yeah, every local county or city election official was in on the

scam to make the numbers match the day before the election 1998 ABC website. Come on..does this even make sense? A conspiracy of tens of thousands of Democrats and Republicans...tha's the ticket.

[Amaryllis]

4. Did you read the article? Or are you ready to condemn it without having

read it?

[ISUGRADIA]

5. yeah, i did read it...i'm saying that ABC was not part of some

conspiracy that had all the election results before the polls opened in 1998. This happened in 2004 with several entities where bogus results were used to test a system and got out on the web by accident.

[ISUGRADIA]

6. I'll clarify my point...I can see how voter equipment can be

tampered with to shift votes from D to R candidate to swing the election to R, every 5th D vote actually is counted for R for example. I cannot see a network posting "results" the day before the election saying 564,899 voted for D and 613,203 voted for R in a race and for the election results for dozens of counties to be figited with on election night to match the totals the conspiracy desires. That just does not make sense.

[Wilms]

7. Sure you can pre-program vote shifts.

And later, you can also stuff any # you want/need into a tabulator if you over/under did the dirty work.

[ISUGRADIA]

9. OK, some states may be corrupt but there is precinct level

record keeping when it comes to individuals voters, signed eligibility slips, etc. that make it hard to change turnout numbers. And the job of pollwatchers for parties should be to watch the number of voters who show up to challenge numbers that may be crooked. You can manipulate voting but turnout is something you cannot easily distort if people actually do the job of monitoring the polls.

This was my experience in Iowa, your oversight mileage may vary.

[Wilms]

10. The way I heard it goes...

Everybody is happy with the precinct #'s, and because they are, they accept what comes out of the tabulator.

One could manually add up all the raw precinct data, of course, but is that done?

[ISUGRADIA]

11. In Iowa, at least, there are checks and balances in place

So at a hypothetical precinct everyone who comes in and votes has to sign an eligibity slip or a roster and the number the voter is for the day is put aftet his/her name. The tabulators for paper ballots have a screen which shows the numbers of votes that have been cast. So an observant pollwatcher at the end of the day should be able to see 100 people have signed slips and 100 votes were cast on the tabulator.

A check of each precinct results (normally reported in the paper) and confirming that these match the Sec of State's numbers ithen can be done.

Also Dems and Repubs are able to observe the counting of absentee votes to see if names were signed, numbers match etc.

My original point was that if ABC had "real" results posted on their website because they were in on a fix, that there is not an easy way to pad or subtract numbers in a state with a transparent process. A political party could detect it through analysis of the numbers. You can't just easily add or subtract 25,000 or 50,000 votes statewide and make numbers match. Those eligibity slips and ballots and people's voting records are public record. So if you want to pay, you can get a list of all those who voted in Iowa from the Secretary of State's office if you wished now.

I think voter initimidation, short staffing and equiping of precincts, and software manipulation are more credible possibilities.

[Wilms]

15. When you say "software manipulation "...

Are you referring to DRE's?

[ISUGRADIA]

16. DREs and Tabulators of paper ballots

are both open to manipulation to change vote totals though DREs are perfect for this because you have no backup record (the paper ballot) to examine. Tabluators have been mentioned as having been tampered with but that is less likely as you have the ballots that could be checked in a recount.

[Wilms]

17. But first you got to get a recount! eh?

Thanks for the help.

[Cookie wookie]

12. In Georgia SOS Cathy Cox is moving the checking in of the

voters at the precinct level to a computerized, paperless process, though the move hadn't progressed to the poll I watched. Secondarily, the precinct counts were never posted on the web from the 2004 election, only county totals were available for the public to access from the SOS website.

[ISUGRADIA]

13. Things like this are suspicious

It's always a danger sign when state election officials want to reduce the trasparency of elections. I see the things Georgia is taking away or not providing as a check and balance to the system. Same thing with having no paper ballots there, there is no check and balance or backup for the system to check for fraud, manipulation, errors, etc. This does make tampering a lot easier to get away with. I'm always wary of elecion people who are afraid of having the system open for public scrutiny. Very disappointing.

We saw what happened in NC in the state 2004 ag commissioner race: razor thin statewide, no paper backup in a key precinct, almost went to a revote but the Dem caved.

[Wilms]

14. Bingo! (unfortunately) n/t

[ISUGRADIA]

18. Yes, I cannot support a system that has no paper ballot marked by

the voter as a backup. Also, DREs are a great money maker for Diebold compared to tabulators.

OPTION A One tabulator in a precinct with paper ballots= $4000

20 voting booths at $50 each= $1000

TOTAL = $6000

OPTION B Six DREs in a precinct without paper ballots= $3000 a piece= $18,000

TOTAL = $18,000

So on election day let's guess which precinct will have less problems A or B

A) 20 voting booths & a tabulator that can take, let's say 10 ballots a minute or

B) the 6 DREs that each voter may end up 5 minutes on a piece. It's obvious that a county can have a stock of $50 voting booths to bring to a precinct if it i getting backed up, county cannot afford to have many $3000 DRE spares for similar emrgencies.

(sarcasm on)Of course, counties will save millions from not having to have paper ballots (sarcasm off)

[Wilms]

19. I don't know anything about tabulators.

Are they securable?

Can you name names so I can look stuff up?