Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News March 13,2006--Hang tough TIA

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TruthIsAll

We are thinking positive thoughts and saying prayers for your recovery.

Hang Tough

TIA, the news cooperated and made a propitious offering:

GREAT DAY FOR GORE IN WEST PALM BEACH (scene of the crime in 2000)

"Welcome back, Mr. President!" someone yelled from the crowd as Gore took the stage.

Backers, still chafing from the infamous 2000 election recount in Florida that ended with Gore losing the presidency despite winning the national popular vote, roared and lauded him with standing ovations.

BAD DAY FOR DIEBOLD

Here's what Thomas Swidarski inherited when he stepped into the hottest seat in Northeast Ohio's corporate world at the end of 2005:

Theprofit for North Canton-based Diebold Inc. plunged 45 percent last year.

Its stock price tumbled below $40 a share, down more than 30 percent from its April high of nearly $58.

Never forget the pursuit of Truth.
Only the deluded & complicit accept election results on blind faith.

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News March 13,2006

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.

1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.
2. Post stories using the "Election Fraud and Reform News Sources" listed here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x371233
3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.
4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.

Please

"Recommend"

for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

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1. FL: GORE CHEERED IN WEST PALM BEACH, FL (scene of the crime)

Al Gore is my president. He’s yours too! He won the election and had Florida stolen from him. He had help in South Florida. The incompetent (at least) Theresa La Pore designed an idiotic ballot and that was just for starters. There were a couple hundred thousand Florida votes thrown out because they were “spoled” – that means form predominantly black precincts. And much, much more. Gore is back and it’s going to be payback time soon.

Al Gore fires up crowd at West Palm Beach fund raiser

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-pgore13mar13,0,1922798.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

By John Coté
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
March 13, 2006

WEST PALM BEACH -- Former Vice President Al Gore returned Sunday to what one supporter called "the scene of a crime," telling a feisty, partisan crowd that the administration of President Bush poses an unprecedented test for U.S. democracy.

"I genuinely believe that American democracy faces a time of trial and challenge right now more serious than any that we have ever faced," Gore told about 400 supporters gathered at the Kravis Center for a fund raiser to boost state Democrats in the November election.

Gore cited a litany of issues, including the Bush administration's assertions of executive power, its fumbled response to Hurricane Katrina and its backing of a secret, domestic surveillance program, warrantless searches and interrogation methods used in Iraq and the war on terror.

Backers, still chafing from the infamous 2000 election recount in Florida that ended with Gore losing the presidency despite winning the national popular vote, roared and lauded him with standing ovations.

"Welcome back, Mr. President!" someone yelled from the crowd as Gore took the stage.

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2. NV: Democratic Secretary of State: “I won’t stand for fraud at the polls

Good. Go out there, investigate, catch the crooks, and prosecute them. All of which implies an investigation!.

Nevada Democrats rally, call for return of ethics to politics

ANJEANETTE DAMON
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
Posted: 3/12/2006


Read Anjeanette Damon's blog, "Inside Nevada Politics,"
at RGJ.com Reno Magazine
http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060312/NEWS04/603120368/1002/NEWS


Nevada Democrats hungry to win back the state's top seats from the GOP this year rallied their party faithful at county conventions Saturday, sounding off on recent ethical breakdowns that have marred both state and national Republicans.

"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention," U.S. Senate candidate Jack Carter told a crowd of 150 delegates at the Washoe County convention.

<snip>

Secretary of state candidate Ross Miller reminded the crowd of allegations that Republicans registering voters in 2004 shredded Democratic forms.

"I won't stand for any fraud at the polls," Miller said. "I won't stand for any intimidation at the polls."

[kster]

3. K&R ..............nt

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4. OH: Interview with Diebold CEO Thomas Swidarski, former head of Diebold

OH: Interview with Diebold CEO Thomas Swidarski, former head of Diebold Div.
OK, so they dump the last CEO because of embarrassments eminating out of theelections division and lousy profits. What do they do? They bring in the guy who ran the elections business. Folks, this is a corporation that deals in the retail industry and banking., and has done quite well for decades with that business. Why the Hell were they in elections in the first place? Silly me! As little Stevie says on the Sopranos’ “Every time I try to leave, they pull me back!” Sorry Dieold, you’re screwed. Nice fire sale for some 80’s style corporate raider. Carl Ichan is still in business and doing great. Go for it Carl! Clean house!


On the Record
Inheriting a challenge
http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/business/114216816973460.xml&coll=2

Sunday, March 12, 2006

And the company's smallest business segment -- electronic voting machines -- generated its most frequent and loudest critics.

<snip>

My job now is to revisit some of the fundamentals. Is this a global business? Is this something the other parts of the world are going to move into? Now, I'm 100 percent convinced that the technology, whether it be optical scan or electronic or the printing piece, it's sound. As many times as I was in Georgia and watched elections, they talk about how there were a million more votes counted in 2004 using touch-screen than in 2000 because they eliminated undervotes, they eliminated overvotes, they had multiple languages so you could actually understand it, and it was ADA-compliant so you had visually impaired voting for the first time.

Is it the biggest issue I get up and think about? No, because I've got some other things in the $1.8 billion business I've got to spend my time on. But I now feel good about the folks that are running it, helping me assess these things to come up with the right answer.

Q: So if it doesn't fit, does the company consider selling it?
A: I don't know. I'm not there yet.

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5. Europe: Last dictator (haha) standing fixing his election again.

I love the “last dictator” terminology. What about Berlusconi, and bLIAR. Since they’re dictators, should we assume they fix their elections too?

13/03/06

‘Europe’s last dictator’ takes no election chances

http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/world/Full_Story/did-sglyyXKTLs3V6sgadLjt5C321I.asp

By Maria Danilova

WITH media under tight control, parliament in his pocket, the opposition persecuted and powerful Russia on his side, no one doubts Alexander Lukashenko will be proclaimed the winner of Belarus’s presidential election.

The question is what comes afterward. The opposition has pledged protests if it judges the election a fraud, and the authorities have banned any such demonstrations.

Mr Lukashenko, branded “Europe’s last dictator” by Western governments, has packed parliament with his loyalists and thrown opposition figures in jail. At the same time, he has rejected international calls for an independent investigation into the disappearances of four government opponents several years ago.

With polling due next Sunday, opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich has seen scores of his supporters detained. He complains of being denied virtually any access to media and most venues to meet with voters, and has called on his supporters to hold peaceful protests if votes are counted fraudulently.

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6. Swans Commentary: Connects Totalitarianism and cancelled elections.

This is quite an article and matches up with our current rulers quite well.

Swans Commentary » swans.com March 13, 2006
<[h3>Totalitarianism Then And Now
http://www.swans.com/library/art12/mdolin13.html

by Michael Doliner

(Swans - March 13, 2006) The word "totalitarianism" is, in itself, a piece of deft propaganda. With it spinmeisters yolk together the Nazis and Stalinists and claim that leftists are Stalinists and hence Nazis. Burdened with this harness the left had to drag Hitler and Stalin along as baggage. "Totalitarianism" became a tool in the ideological battle of the Cold War and effectively turned a class struggle into a struggle between "freedom" and Nazism. Now which side are you on?

Hannah Arendt, in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, had another view of totalitarianism. Although she did identify both Hitler's Reich and Stalin's Soviet Union as totalitarian regimes, she would not have labeled all leftist governments as totalitarian. Totalitarianism is not a form of government, but a mass movement organized as a political party that hijacks the state and uses it as the tool to set in motion a whirlwind. In both Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union the party rather than the state had power. Totalitarian regimes don't have normal political goals, but under the guise of a utopian vision they let loose the apocalyptic urges of mass man. Those in power harbor dark longings for the end of the world. Inside totalitarian regimes the population is atomized, first stripped of all non-party affiliations, and then, through indoctrination, emptied even of thought. Once they are in this condition the leader can say the most outrageous things and ignore the most obvious facts without any opposition. Day-to-day reversals of direction stir no ripples. Totalitarianism is immensely destructive, unstable, and like a hurricane, soon exhausted. Post-Stalin Soviet governments may have been authoritarian, but not totalitarian. The use of the word to characterize Saddam Hussein's Iraq is also wrong.

<snip>

If our present subconstitutional government is to fall to a totalitarian party, Bush himself is essential. Only he is a true mobster-bohemian. We will know we have a totalitarian regime if Bush manages to cancel the election of 2008 or finds a way to run again. But by then it will hardly matter.

Even if we can quiet the totalitarian storm this time, the ever more isolated atomic masses in America will only be waiting to crystallize around a new leader. To end this threat the rich will have to end the more than century-long class war at the heart of our politics and write a new and fairer social contract. In any case, radical change, totalitarian or not, is in our future.

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7. Zimbabwe: Sounds Familiar--Popular opposition just can't win???!!!

Zimbabwe: Sounds Familiar
A ruler steals elections and the opposition party can barely get a foothold. Despite his poor record, the ruler keeps getting elected. How crazy is that? Not very, think of 2004. All of this has a familiar ring to it.


Welcome to Zimbabwes Biggest Daily Online Newspaper
Monday, March 13 2006 @ 04:13 AM GMT

Just 6 Years On, MDC Struggling For Relevance

Monday, March 13 2006 @ 12:04 AM GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
http://zimdaily.com/news2/article.php/20060312131219415



General News Six years ago this month, a fledgling coalition of trade unionists, human rights activists, women's groups, constitutional reformists, farm labourers and business tapped a deep vein of popular discontent and handed a stunned Robert Mugabe his first defeat at the ballot box - rejection of the president's draft new constitution for Zimbabwe in a nationwide referendum. A few months later, in June 2000, the coalition struck again, winning nearly half of all elected seats in the parliamentary elections. In less than a year, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had established itself as a formidable political threat to Mugabe and the most significant opposition party in Africa. But less than a week before the party's second congress, the MDC is struggling for relevance.

Bridled by biased election laws, ballot fraud, political violence, media bans and a deep cleavage in its top echelons over last year's decision to participate in a Zanu PF project called the senate, the opposition need to work hard to win back the confidence of the masses if results of elections held last week are anything to go by. MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa says the party is still intact, although there are 'traitors' who wanted to sell out the struggle to Zanu PF, he said in apparent reference to a grouping of disgruntled dissidents who have formed their own splinter group and calling themselves the 'pro-senate faction.'

“This congress is going to be a tribute to all the brave women and men of Zimbabwe who sacrificed their lives, property and were beaten and disabled by the Zanu PF regime because they were members of the MDC," Chamisa said. "They played a very important role in their brave fight for a new Zimbabwe. We are going to acknowledge their supreme sacrifice and we will not let them down by allowing the MDC to fall into the hands of people working against the interests of Zimbabweans,” Chamisa said apparently referring to the Mutambara camp, which held its congress last month. The pro-Senate MDC held its congress in Bulawayo and Professor Arthur Mutambara emerged as its new leader.

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8. Be SURE to CHECK www.BradBlog.com today-- Breaking News

Brad has another whistle blower.

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9. OH: New ESS machines have 30% Battery Failure. "Priceless"

I’m not in a real good mood lately but this kicks it. What type of COMPLETE IDIOTS are running the show in these elections departments. COMPLETE IDIOTS.

Bad batteries….#%@%!!!. What, did Blackwell and company go to the discount aisle at Walmart? Are they buying used batteries?

This is the summary statement about our current "democracy." To the Republicans, to the people who supported the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), to the elections officials in counties...
IT’S ALL ONE BIG JOKE.

Question: Can elections officials be ashamed?

Answer: No, they can’t feel shame to begin with. And even if they could, they wouldn’t appreciate or understand it.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Batteries trouble voting system
Memory cards fail during Summit testing ahead of May elections

By Lisa A. Abraham
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/14074421.htm

Dead batteries -- that's what Election Systems & Software officials are saying is to blame for the failure of dozens of computer memory cards in Summit County's new optical scan voting system.

``What we're dealing with is a portion of one batch of cards sent out in recent weeks have an issue with low batteries,'' ES&S spokeswoman Ellen Bogard said Friday.

ES&S made the new voting equipment, but the memory cards were made by Vikant Corp., a Long Grove, Ill., company. Company officials from Vikant did not return a call seeking comment.

Testing of the county's new voting system began Monday, when the memory cards failed to work as often as 30 percent of the time.

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10. CA: Alameda County 4:30 Today--Major Protest

NEWS RELEASE (no 4 para restrictions apply. Public press release.)

For Immediate Release
Monday, March 13, 2006

Contacts:
Dan Ashby, VRTF 510 233 2144 (to 4:00 p.m. Monday)
Jim Soper, VRTF 510 923 1524 (technical specialist; to 4:00 p.m. Monday)

ATTN: DAYBOOK /Assignment Desk for Monday

Election Activists Reveal Naked Truth About Diebold and Sequoia Blackbox Voting Machines


Alameda County voters will bare their displeasure with electronic voting machines in a demonstration and press conference on the steps of the Alameda County building, 1221 Oak Street, starting at 4:30 today, before giving supervisors an earful about the kind of voting systems they'd like to have, during a hearing from 6:00 to

8:00 p.m. in the supervisors' chambers.

The intensely graphic protest will feature a voter "stripped of her voting rights," clad only in a black box representing the secret vote-counting machines of Diebold and Sequoia, two vendors vying for a potential $17 million dollar county contract. The supervisors will vote Tuesday on whether to commence contract negotiations.

The machines are a menace to democracy and a waste of taxpayer dollars, in the view of activists from such groups as the Voting Rights Task Force and the Open Voting Consortium, who have been lobbying the Alameda supervisors for more than a year to cancel their present contract with Diebold.

"The fundamental principle of honest elections is openness--yet these machines use secret code, undergo secret inspection and secret testing, and are owned by private companies that even claim a proprietary right to keep the raw voting data secret," said Sherry Healy, a coordinator with the California Election Protection Network.

"The federal qualifications and state certification processes have been shown to be flawed; technology that has passed both levels has been shown to be hackable and shot through with security problems," said Judy Bertelsen,co-chair of the Voting Rights Task Force. "Any electronic technology purchased for use by the county should have its source code open for review by computer experts of the county's choosing."

"Only Diebold and Sequoia really know what's inside their machines. Hidden code activated on election day can steal an election and then cover its tracks," says Jim Soper, a software programming consultant and election integrity activist. "To secure our votes against possible rigging, we need open source software, aggressive security testing, tight chain-of-custody procedures, a 100-percent paper ballot trail, and thorough hand-recount auditing processes. If the public is to believe in its elections, the entire system has be opened up to public verification."

Diebold and Sequoia have both suffered embarrassing revelations about their voting equipment's malfunctions and vulnerability to vote-rigging manipulation. Diebold was temporarily decertified by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson in November after a hacking demonstration under simulated election conditions in a Florida county revealed that the memory cards used to program Diebold optical scan machines and store vote records can be preloaded with malicious code that can alter vote totals and audit logs without leaving a trace of the deception.

Recently the citizens' election investigation group Blackboxvoting.org released findings of a public records request filed to obtain audit logs for Sequoia DREs used in the 2004 presidential election in Palm Beach County, Florida. The logs showed 70,000 instances of voter cards getting stuck in the machines and an additional 100,000 errors, including memory failures. Of the 4,300 machines in use, 1,475 of them had to be recalibrated during Election Day.

"These voting systems are a fraud and a financial black hole," said voting activist Jody Holder. "The evidence is voluminous. Anyone who continues to advocate for them is either woefully ignorant, willfully ignorant, or doesn't give a damn about the sanctity of our vote or the eventual cost to taxpayers."

Acting Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold is recommending the county purchase a "blended system" comprised of precinct-based optical scanners supplemented by one to two "touchscreen" DRE machines per precinct. DRE, or "direct record electronic" machines record votes internally on software, and must be fitted with a printer to produce a paper trail record of the otherwise invisible electronic ballot. DRE machines have been promoted as the solution to requirements of the federal Help America Vote Act to improve voting accessibility for non-English speakers and persons with physical disabilities.

Opponents of the DRE machines say there are HAVA-compliant alternatives that better address physical disabilities at far less cost, that haven't received adequate consideration. "Voter assistive devices" are relatively low-tech, cardboard-and-plastic templates that sheath a "tactile ballot" supplemented with an audio playback unit. The designers of one such device, the "Equalivote," will be on hand to demonstrate their device, which is distinguished by a light-sensitive wand that provides vibratory feedback to the voter.

Members of the Voting Rights Task Force are available for phone interviews and can transmit a two-page position paper that describes voting security and auditing measures they urge be implemented now, while pursuing a phased transition to the all hand-counted paper ballot voting system they advocate as the ultimate goal and standard for secure, transparent and verifiable elections.
-30-
--
Dan Ashby

E-mail: [e-mail]
Phone: [phone]
Voicemail and Fax: [phone]

Press 1 to send voicemail
Press 1 followed by 2 to send a numeric page
Or stay on the line to send a fax
All messages will be transmitted as e-mail attachments.

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected.
To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery. . . Thomas Paine

[Algorem]

11. "Rove said the Republicans defied the oddsmakers by winning in Ohio

in the last presidential election...

"The experts said we should look at the Democratic vote in Cuyahoga County and said we can't win," Rove said, referring to the 2004 election. "But I said, 'Look at northwest Ohio and the rest of the state.' And we did win.". "

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1142156002145160.xml&coll=2

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2161576

[FogerRox]

12. looking for volunteers

to help post news articles for the ERD.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=652657&mesg_id=652657

[Catherine Vincent]

13. Deos this article count? I'm not sure if this is what I'm supposed to do.

This article talks about voting and a brief mention of electronic voting.

POLITICS IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT
by Randolph T. Holhut

DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- "People often say, with pride, 'I'm not interested in politics.' They might as well say, 'I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future.' Politics is the business of being governed and nobody can escape being governed, for better or worse. ... If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics."

Journalist Martha Gellhorn wrote those words in 1984, when Reaganism and Thatcherism were at high tide and conservative philosophy had suddenly became respectable. Little did we know that, 20 years later, the world would change and not for the better.

A great deal of that change, I think, stems from the reality that so few Americans bother to get involved in the political process. When barely half of the nation's eligible voters bother to bestir themselves from their respective sofas and cast their ballots in a presidential election, something is wrong.

There are two ideas that have polluted our democracy in the last century - that money equals free speech and that corporations are entitled to the same rights as individuals. Together, they have contributed to the increasing concentration of wealth in the U.S. into the hands of fewer and fewer people. The top 1 percent of the U.S. population has nearly as much wealth as the bottom 95 percent combined.

With this wealth, the powerful can control our elections and our democracy. We have a single-party system (masquerading as a two-party system) that's under the near total control of corporate America. Voter turnout has steadily decreased over the past 50 years as Americans are turned off by the lack of real choices and the pervasive influence of big money in politics.
http://www.american-reporter.com/2,851/661.html

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14. Just right!!!

:applause:

[Peace Patriot]

15. Hope these days is a "thing with feathers" that is flying SOUTH. Yup, to

South America, where the people have been electing leftist/socialist governments, often by big margins, over the last several years--in a profound revolution that is sweeping the continent. Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia--peoples who have suffered the most horrible exploitation and oppression by their own rich elites in alliance with U.S.-supported dictatorships, death squads and assassination teams and U.S. corporations, are in full scale revolt against fascism and corporate rule. Peru will be next to elect a leftist, anti-imperialist gov't (Ollanta Humala). And the revolution is moving north--Mexico City's leftist mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as "Amlo") will likely be elected president of Mexico this year.

The stories are amazing. In Chile, the first woman president was just elected, socialist Michele Batchelet, who was tortured by the U.S.-backed dictator Pinochet! In Bolivia, an indigenous Indian was just elected president--also a first--Evo Morales, who campaigned with a wreath of coca leaves around his neck. His election followed the Bolivians' grass roots rebellion against Bechtel (which had privatized the water, then jacked up prices to the poor; the Bolivians threw Bechtel out of their country). In Brazil, a former steel worker is president, Lula da Silva (known by the nickname "Lulu"), who led the third world revolt at the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun a few years ago. And, of course, Hugo Chavez--part black, part Indian--the firebrand of the continent who wants to finish Simon Bolivar's revolution (empowerment of the indigenous and the former slaves, and creation of a regional economic/political alliance if not union of the South American states.) The vast poor of Venezuela are now, at long last, receiving some benefit from Venezuela's oil--schools, medical centers, grants/loans for small business, farming land. Chavez has been elected and re-elected, in the most highly monitored elections in the world, with a third big win in legislative elections recently--after the failure of a U.S.-backed coup attempt.

The times they are a-changin'!

One of the keys to this peaceful, democratic revolution is TRANSPARENT elections--the result of years of hard work by grass roots activists, local civic groups, the OAS, EU election monitoring groups and the Carter Center.

Transparent elections = good, leftist government--of, by and for the people.

Non-transparent elections = the Bush junta.

It's a no brainer.

We in the U.S. tend to have a myopic view of the world--the result of corporate-controlled news. Great things are happening outside our borders--by people who have much sympathy for us, as a matter of fact; people who know dictatorship first hand, and have overcome incredible oppression themselves.

If you're disheartened, fly south! And if you can't fly, go to www.venezuelanalysis.com (a good place to start understanding what is happening in South America).

Have heart. Democracy is not easy to come by, and not easily recovered, once it is lost. But it CAN be done! Recovery of democracy CAN happen. Look south!

:applause: Hugo! :applause: Evo! :applause: Michele! :applause: Lulu! :applause: Ollanto! :applause: Almo! :applause: