"Election results still troubling" article in Ukiah CA paper

[garybeck]

http://www.solarbus.org/election/articles/sheppard.shtml

Election results still troubling
Another voice by Janie Sheppard

Having spent at least 100 hours on the Internet reading election horror stories and Congressman Conyer’s 102-page report, I could not say for sure whether I believed voters intended to elect John Kerry or George W. Bush on November 2, 2004. When I started to assemble the data I had gathered I thought I could find "the answer." Here’s what happened.

First, there was the issue of polls. Before the election, the major pollsters called the election for John Kerry. When John Zogby announced on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show on the eve of the election that he was calling the election for Kerry, I thought that cinched it. Kerry would win. Princeton Professor Sam Wang daily assembled the latest state polling data into a meta-analysis, which--on the polling data alone--showed Bush the winner on the basis of decided voters. He called the election for Kerry, however, based on some assumptions concerning undecided voters. As it turned out, the meta-analysis based on decided voters, in his words, "captured the exact final outcome." Later, after the election, Professor Wang analyzed the pre-election polls to determine how close they were to the final outcome. In Ohio, the pre-election polls had predicted the outcome. In Florida, those polls were off by a margin of 4 percent.

Early exit poll data showed Kerry to be the winner. The early data, however, were removed from Internet websites as the election returns came in favoring Bush. As the returns came in, the pollsters conformed their polls to the returns. Pollsters, who trade on the accuracy of their polls, do not like being seen to be wrong. Generally, exit polls accurately reflect how the voters really voted so when the exit polls that had seemed to show Kerry winning were "conformed," I, along with many others, suspected election fraud.

Experience working in the Mendocino County polls over the last six years, both with the old punch card system and with the new Diebold voting equipment, gave me some confidence in my own ability to evaluate the stories I had been reading on the Internet. I believed the optical scanning Diebold equipment we used in Mendocino County, which reads paper ballots, tallying the votes as the paper is fed into a free-standing unit, was tamper-proof because two tapes of the tally are printed out in the local precincts BEFORE the units are connected to a central computer in the County offices. One tape must be taped to the door of the polling place and the other is sealed in an envelope that the Precinct Inspector returns to the county office. The numbers on the tapes, not the numbers conveyed from the precinct to the central computer, are the official numbers.

In Volusia County in Florida, where the voting equipment is the same as that used in Mendocino County, Bev Harris of Blackboxvoting.org found elections officials destroying "poll tapes" that had been signed by the precinct workers. She actually tangled with one official over a trash bag containing the original tapes, which she had requested under the Florida Public Records Act. It turned out that the results the county had submitted to the Florida Secretary of State were not from the Nov. 2 tapes, but poll tapes printed out on Nov. 15. With the two sets of poll tapes in hand, Harris and her Blackboxvoting associates found differences of hundreds of votes. She said there was a clear pattern of all the anomalies favoring George W. Bush. Apparently the elections officials ignored the safeguards provided by Florida law.

<snip>

rest of article:

http://www.solarbus.org/election/articles/sheppard.shtml

Janie Sheppard is a Ukiah resident.
AS PRINTED IN THE UKIAH DAILY JOURNAL, SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2005, p. 5-6

[fooj]

1. Awesome read! Nominated!!!

[Tigress DEM]

2. Welcome to my world. Love Bev Harris by the way.

Here's the latest in Ohio if you haven't heard. It won't change the election results, but I'm sure we are going to be able to prove fraud.... Say, there's a sound bite. Who wants to elect ANY repub when it can be proven they stole the election and told us to get over it?

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1166
by Dena Graziano February 17, 2005

Representative Conyers and others file amicus brief in Ohio Supreme Court
<snip>
Today, Congressman John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, will be filing an amicus brief in the Ohio Supreme Court with the support of Senator Russ Feingold and 17 other members of the House of Representatives recommending that the Court not sanction the attorneys who brought Ohio election contest in Moss v. Bush (no.04- 2088). Mr. Conyers offered the following statement:

"The attorneys in this case had reason to believe that the election results did not reflect the will of the electorate. In good faith, they brought a case based not only on statistical probability but the depositions and affidavits of computer experts, statisticians, and election volunteers. In only a couple months, these attorneys have amassed over 900 pages of evidence.

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1155
by Office of Rep. Tubbs Jones February 12, 2005

Congresswoman Tubbs Jones Outraged at Blackwell's Failure to Appear During House Administration Hearing
<snip>
"I am thoroughly disappointed that the Secretary of State from my home state of Ohio, Ken Blackwell, chose not to testify today before the House Administration Committee," stated Rep. Tubbs Jones. "Just as he created tremendous confusion among voters in Cuyahoga County and across the state of Ohio during this past election by issuing bizarre directives and playing partisan politics, his failure to testify before this committee today shows that he is not committed to improving our election system.

"I would have thought that he would have seen this hearing as an opportunity to further examine the problems that occurred during this past election and work to develop a plan of action for addressing them. The Secretaries of State from key battleground States such as Iowa, New Mexico and Indiana felt it important enough to attend this hearing today. Ken Blackwell owed it the people of Ohio and of this country to be at this hearing today. They deserve the truth!"


http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1138
Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman February 3, 2005

Ohio Attorney-General's attack on election protection attorneys draws mountain of documentation on state's stolen election, including new study on exit polls

<snip>
Stiff legal sanctions sought by Ohio's Republican Attorney General James Petro against four attorneys who have questioned the results of the 2004 presidential balloting here has produced an unintended consequence -- a massive counter-filing that has put on the official record a mountain of contentions by those who argue that election was stolen.

In filings that include well over 1,000 pages of critical documentation, attorneys Robert Fitrakis, Susan Truitt, Peter Peckarsky and Cliff Arnebeck have counter-attacked. Their defense motions include renewed assertions that widespread irregularities threw the true outcome of the November vote count into serious doubt. That assertion has now been lent important backing by a major academic study on the exit polls that showed John Kerry winning the November vote count.

<snip>
Blackwell refused to testify in the case, and he has removed from public access critical documents relating to the vote count.

[understandinglife]

3. Recommended. (nt)

PROVE MY VOTE COUNTS, NOW

[Tigress DEM]

4. Polls are forecasts so 100% accuracy is unlikely....

However, hard evidence of vote Fraud is had to come by if you've been to Bev Harris' site you know it's tons of work people have been doing to get the evidence secured and tallied.

Polls don't convince me as much as the things Blackwell did before and after election day that simply are outrageous. That was 20 electoral votes.

He was co-chair of a committee to get Bush elected, and promised in writing to deliver the Ohio vote. Conflict of interest and poor choice of words at the very least.

He made this pronouncement that all voter registration cards had to be on 80# paper after multitudes of registrations had already come in on lighter stock paper. That got overturned.

Precincts were changed 2 weeks before the election.

He had the precincts really mixed up. Sometimes accross the street from each other or in the same building, but regardless you had to wait in line and if you were in the wrong line go to the other line and wait again. 3-4 hours in mostly black Democratic areas was common with up to 10 hour waits and some people being locked out.

There is actually a film documenting the Ohio vote problems.

In one of the links I sent before it says they took depositions from voters for 3 days who were disenfranchised in one way or another.

Machines that selectively malfunctioned - pick Kerry - get Bush or Nader.

Machines in storage while primarily Democratic precincts were way short of machines.

People told they were in the wrong precinct -even when they had called previously or recieved information prior to 11/2.

People who were bounced back and forth and not listed in either precinct.

92,000 uncounted votes.

A lock down at the last precinct to be counted so the press could not get in to verify things were proceeding legally - due to Homeland Security Concerns in Warren Ohio. In Warren Ohio? Right.

[Peace Patriot]

8. "Polls are forecasts..."?? Exit Polls are NOT forecasts. They have a far

...higher degree of accuracy than any other polls (except for Exit Polls in elections involving Geo. Bush), because they poll people who HAVE VOTED, not people who MIGHT VOTE.

Exit Polls are used worldwide to verify elections and check for fraud. The U.S. TV networks' ALTERATION of the Exit Polls (Kerry won) to fit the "official tally" (Bush won)--thus HIDING THE EVIDENCE OF ELECTION FRAUD--was anomalous to THIS country.

This is all explained by numerous Ph.D's in numerous Exit Poll analyses and reports that cry foul on the 2004 election and call for an investigation. (See below.)

The egregious election fraud in Ohio (also FLA)--these highly visible, blatant, massive violations of the Voting Rights Act and other existing laws--is an indication of how panicked the Bush Cartel was about the election. Possibly the "old pols" didn't entirely trust the tech fraud plan, or wanted to limit the electronic fraud evidence (to a 3% flip from Kerry to Bush), but realized, as election day approached, that Kerry was gaining a huge advantage in new voter registration (Dems 57% vs. Repubs 41%!), and all other indicators were pointing to a Kerry landslide--so they had to go all out to defeat him, including putting their corrupted operatives, like Blackwell, in serious jeopardy.

Dr. Steven Freeman (in his 2nd report) adds up the huge Dem advantage in new voter registration, the big jump of Nader voters to Kerry (64%), and the base vote going in (Gore 2000 voters), and calculates a 4 to 8 million vote margin for Kerry that just somehow disappeared on election day.

Here is just some of the documentation of widespread, nationwide 2004 election fraud:

Exit poll analysis: astronomical odds against Bush win

Dr. Steven Freeman: Professor, Center for Organizational Dynamics, Univ. of Penn.; Karel Steuer Chair for entrepreneurship, Univ. de San Andreas, Buenos Aires; Professor of Management, Central Amer. Inst. of Business Administration (INCAE),
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm
"The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," and "Hypotheses for Explaining the Exit Poll-Official Count Discrepancy in the 2004 US Presidential Election"
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1970

Dr. Ron Baiman: Economist/Statistician - senior research specialist, Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago; teaches at the University of Chicago.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/997

Baiman: "I conclude that, based on the best exit sample data currently available, neither the national popular vote, or many of the certified state election results, are credible and should not be regarded as a true reflection of the intent of national electorate, or of many state voters, until a complete and thorough investigation…."

Dr. Webb Mealy: http://www.selftest.net/redshift.htm (Bush vote skewed to the Electoral Votes that were needed to win.)

Nine Ph.D's from leading universities say, 1) Kerry won the Exit Polls (by 3%); 2) the Exit polls were skewed to Bush, so Kerry's margin was likely even higher; 3) there is evidence of electronic fraud at the precinct level, and 4) call for investigation of the 2004 Election:

http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/USCountVotes_Re_Mitofsky-Edison.pdf

Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D. - Temple University Statistics Department
Steven F. Freeman, PhD - Center for Organizational Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania
Brian Joiner, PhD - Prof. of Statistics and Director of Statistical Consulting (ret), University of Wisconsin
Frank Stenger, PhD in mathematics - School of Computing, University of Utah
Richard G. Sheehan, PhD - Department of Finance, University of Notre Dame
Elizabeth Liddle, MA - (UK) PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham
Paul F. Velleman, Ph.D. - Department of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University
Victoria Lovegren, Ph.D. - Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University
Campbell B. Read, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Statistical Science, Southern Methodist University
Kathy Dopp, MS in mathematics - USCountVotes, President
Also Peer Reviewed by USCountVotes’ core group of statisticians and independent reviewers.

Florida: 130,000 to 230,000 phantom votes for Bush--paper vs. electronic voting—calls for investigation:
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu
Report issued by Dr. Michael Haut, & UC Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team; Haut is a nationally-known expert on statistical methods and member of the National Academy of Sciences and the UC Berkeley Survey Research Center
Press release: http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1118-14.htm

Democratic Underground (ignatzmouse):
(North Carolina: absentee ballot vs. electronic, inexplicable 9% edge to Bush in electronic:)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x45003
(also at:) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/12/233831/06

TV networks alteration of the Exit Polls to fit the "official tally" (& Zogby prediction of Kerry win):
http://www.exitpollz.org/

Johns Hopkins report on insecurity of electronic voting: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00196.htm#5

Easy demo of how insecure voting machines are:
http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htm

"Myth Breakers: Facts About Electronic Elections" (2nd edition): www.votersunite.org

Ohio vote suppression: http://www.bpac.info

Documentation of widespread machine fraud and dirty tricks in over 20 states: http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.html

57,000 machine malfunction/vote suppression complaints to Congress:
http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=3961

"Kerry won – just count the votes at the back of the bus!" – by Greg Palast
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won.php

Democratic Underground (TruthIsAll): "To believe Bush won, you have to believe…"

Part 1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1316010

Part 2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1358806

Part 3
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x197878

Democratic Underground (TruthIsAll): The Time Zone Discrepancy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x318693

In progress compilations of various articles and materials on 2004 Election Fraud:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x311105

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=304579

------

NOTE: Here's a great compilaton site for 2004 election fraud

http://www.solarbus.org/election/archives.shtml

[In Truth We Trust]

5. Revolution NOW!!! Paper ballots NOW!! Hand counts NOW!!!

[EFerrari]

6. Thank you, Ukiah! kick!

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. Excellent! This is what we need to see in local papers. Recommended! n/t

[Peace Patriot]

9. I agree! This is a very fine piece that focuses on exactly the right...

...points. Kudos to the column writer--Janie Sheppard! And to the Ukiah Daily Journal for publishing it.

I especially appreciated the following:

"Early exit poll data showed Kerry to be the winner. The early data, however, were removed from Internet websites as the election returns came in favoring Bush. As the returns came in, the pollsters conformed their polls to the returns."

--because this was the turning point in national perception. And it's very, very important for people to understand this. If Kerry voters--the majority!--had realized that there was this compelling evidence of fraud, their REACTION would have been much different, and the calls for investigation (that immediately started in the days and weeks right after the election) might have been unignorable by the lapdog press and the politicians.

We might even have had a reaction such as occurred in the Ukraine--with a million people in the streets demanding a recount. (THEY got to see their REAL Exit polls!)

And that is WHY the lapdog press ALTERED the Exit Polls, of course. In my opinion, it is the biggest journalistic crime of this era, bar none.

We were deprived of the rightful president--and the damage from this fraudulent outcome is likely to be immense, including more death and destruction around the globe, the meltdown of the U.S. economy, the destruction of Social Security, and the end of the U.S. Constitution as any kind of "check" on presidential dictatorship.

And the fabulous grass roots movement that elected Kerry by a landslide--and with the specific purpose of ousting the Bush Cartel--was shattered and fell into disarray, leaving millions of outraged and depressed activists and voters.

That movement is just getting back on its feet today. But, my Lord, what a rough ride it has been!

And what an eye-opener! (For instance, where were the Dem party leaders when this fraudulent election SYSTEM--with BushCon companies 'counting' all the votes using SECRET, proprietary programming code--was put into place? We need an answer to THAT question.)