Election Fraud in Pennsylvania?
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Election Fraud in Pennsylvania?
(Image Source - Diebold Variations)
They've got a Secret
Michael Collins
"Scoop" Independent News
Washington, D.C.
The Pennsylvania primary could lock up the Democratic nomination process once and for all. The campaign that Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean asked to be finished by July 1 could be over this Tuesday. Regardless of your candidate or party, you're probably like the vast majority of citizens who insist on fair elections that are open to the public for examination.
Citizens want to know that the candidate taking office is the same candidate who won a majority or a plurality of the votes. A 2006 Zogby poll of 1018 registered voters nationwide found that 92% believed that they, as citizens, have the right to witness vote counting for the election of their paid public servants.
That will not be the case in Pennsylvania any more than it was the case in Florida, Ohio, California, South Carolina, and most other primary states. Almost all states bar any real inspection of vote counting, the process that determines the election result. Even if they did allow you to watch the count, all you would see is a whirring third-rate computer system run by a private company that won't allow anyone to take a comprehensive look inside.
Post election audits are either absent or randomly selected by the people who run the election. Recounts require an exceptionally close election, less than a 1% difference typically. And citizen recounts after the election, where paper records exist, are barred by law in Florida and Virginia and barred almost everywhere else by bureaucratic fiat.
Even if you got to examine each and every ballot, the chain of custody of those paper records will likely be compromised at several key points. Ballots collected by unaccountable individuals, driven around in the trunks of cars, unsupervised, plus other election board customs, mean you can't track the chain of custody of ballots from collection at precincts to delivery at counting locations. Post-election storage oftentimes reflects little concern for real security. If you can't track the chain of custody, you can't know if the ballots recounted or examined are the original voted ballots, if ballots have been replaced, altered, etc.
We elect people who pass laws that are enforced by bureaucrats who then tell us to take a hike when we want to closely examine an election.
"The results are what we say they are," say the keepers of the vote, our so-called public servants. "Move along, there's nothing to see here" is the prevailing attitude toward inquiring citizens.
Potential Election Fraud in Pennsylvania
When you build any system that conducts "mission critical business," like electing a president, you need to create enough safeguards to make sure that the process is secure. How secure is the voting process in Pennsylvania?
Almost 90 percent of Pennsylvanians will vote using touch screen voting machines that have no paper record of votes cast. Once you touch the screen, the machine can count your vote any way it's programmed. It can even give you a receipt indicating you voted for Smith and count your vote for Jones. These touch screens total their own votes, invisibly and without any outside checks. We can't watch and even if we could, we wouldn't know what to look for. Our election boards routinely sign contracts agreeing that the computer programs that count our votes are the trade secrets of the e-voting machine companies, no peeking. The companies even "refuse to promise that their products will work."
Our election process is not a serious one when you examine it to any degree but it is very popular with the politicians and the election boards that they populate.
Computer scientists at Princeton University and others have been able to hack touch screen voting machines successfully on repeated occasions. A candidate in Florida's 13th congressional district lost at least 14,000 votes and a seat in Congress in 2006 in a county with touch screens only, while surrounding counties had nothing like these vote losses. Congress promised a vigorous investigation but never delivered.
The situation in Pennsylvania is so bad that Common Cause rated the state at "high" risk for election problems in the 2008 election. In addition, a citizens' group in Pennsylvania is suing the state to decertify touch screen voting machines because they fail to provide an accurate vote count. The case was allowed by the Pennsylvania courts and is proceeding through the system.
Those citizens prefer optical scanners because optical scan machines count voter marked paper forms. However, unfortunately for those well intended citizens, optical scanners are no solution for these reasons. While the paper forms are marked by voters, they are counted by optical scanners, computers operating with programs that are "trade secrets." Pennsylvania allows automatic recounts in only races with a 0.5% or less victory margin and lacks a uniform guarantee for citizen examination of any paper trail that may exist. Optical scanners are computers just like touch screens and can be manipulated with detection extremely difficult. Finally, other than the vendors or contractors that sell and maintain the machines, there's no guaranteed access to the inner workings of these e-voting devices, none at all.
Will there be election fraud in Pennsylvania? We'll never know for all of the above reasons. It's all a secret. They have it. We, the citizens, don't
Bethlehem Steel (above) used to be a world leader as was Pittsburgh's U.S. Steel. The mills were closed, the companies gone, and the workers callously strewn along the highway of lost dreams. Pittsburgh's population in 1950 was 700,000.Today it's 300,000. Atomische on flickr.com (cc)
Actual Election Fraud in Pennsylvania
Anyone who doubts the existence of massive election fraud needs to look no further than this primary. Failing to address real needs and issues of citizens is the biggest election fraud of all. Just turn on the television or pick up the newspaper.
The state faces real issues and the voters have very real concerns. The industrial base for the state left the country some time ago. Nothing replaced it except all those "new jobs" from NAFTA. As a result, there was major loss of well paying jobs for the working class and all the benefits that go with that, not the least of which is health insurance.
There are over a million uninsured in Pennsylvania. There are many more underinsured. In the rural areas and small towns, unemployment is a major concern. The tax base has taken a major hit. The state needs roads, bridges, and other vital structures and there's not enough money.
But what are the two hottest topics from this primary election? Obama got slammed for saying small town Pennsylvanians are "bitter" about getting screwed by their "public servants" for the last two or three decades. He was then attacked as an "elitist" and chastised for "talking down" to small town citizens. Instead of pointing out that heroin is more common than hope in too many small towns, Obama backed off and apologized.
The second big item in terms of press coverage is the mockery of a presidential primary debate in Philadelphia. The condescending Charles Gibson of CBS and flighty George Stephanopoulos of ABC spent over an hour talking about totally irrelevant issues. They wasted the time of both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama by forcing the dialog into the three ringed circus of strange mainstream media preoccupations.
While neither Clinton nor Obama openly objected during the debate, the crowd inside the debate hall did. They booed Charles Gibson which puts him in the company of Sean Hannity of Fox News who was pursued by angry Ron Paul supporters. Who needs Nielson ratings?
No Respect for Citizens
The election system in Pennsylvania is not available for inspection by the public, that 92% who said they'd like the option to observe vote counting. The machines don't allow that, they're computers. There's nothing to watch. The laws prevent that. It's a secret that only the election boards and the private contractors who count the vote get to see. The security of voting machines is in serious question and election oversight is conducted by the same people who created the system.
It's all a magic show, a series of illusions that can be manipulated by the entertainers, also known as politicians, or anyone well placed and determined enough to manipulate a system with few if any real safeguards.
The failure to discuss real issues is an insult to all citizens. It might explain why a majority fail to vote in primary elections and why 35% to 40% consistently fail to vote in the general elections for president. A common refrain among those who refuse to participate is "Why bother, they're all a bunch of crooks." Among those who do vote, there are huge doubts about the honesty of elections. A 2006 Zogby poll of 707 likely voters in Pennsylvania asked this question: "Do you think the 2004 election was stolen?" Forty percent said yes.
The public officials who control elections behave as though the people are stupid and ignorant of the questionable practices of secret vote counting and outsourced elections. Wrong! The citizens of Pennsylvania know what the story is. Just add the 40% of likely Pennsylvania voters who thought 2004 was stolen with the 35% to 40% who routinely stay home because they doubt the system. That produces a majority of citizens who have serious doubts about a system created to serve the elected and not the electors.
The news media act like the people are a bunch of sheep who buy whatever the media put out because some people actually watch the news. They fail to note that in polls on public respect for various professions, the television news media gets a 16% approval rating. The people who booed debate anchor Gibson are a perfect reflection that attitude.
The politicians showed their respect for citizens after the 2006 election, when the message was clear. Get out of Iraq. They have their excuses. But the reality of the charade was made crystal clear in at the Philadelphia presidential primary debate. While enduring an hour when no real issues were discussed, did you hear either candidate criticize the news people for their inane questions? Not a word.
Wouldn't it be nice if one or both candidates said something like this?
Charles and George, didn't your networks ignore all the public evidence that the Iraq war was based on lies, evidence available before the Iraq War Resolution and the invasion? Didn't your networks give Alan Greenspan a pass in 2004 when he told people to go out and get an adjustable rate mortgage because things were looking so good even though many told Greenspan he was totally off base starting in 2001?
Gentlemen, what good are you if you can't even spot the obvious scams?
How about some decent questions?
But even if one or both had said something like this and changed the tone of the campaign, it wouldn't be enough. We would still have to contend with outsourced elections conducted beyond the public view. Our elections are shielded by federal and state law to protect the true elitists; those people who tell us who we elected while they do everything that they can to hide the election process from us.
END
Resources:
Special thanks to Jill Hayroot for her contributions
Permission to reprint in part or whole granted with attribution of authorship and a link to this article. See links with images for reproduction rights.
Editor's note: photo of the defunct Bethlehem Steel plant was incorrectly attributed in the original version of this article. The attribution has been changed to attribute the owner of the photo, Tom Giebel (aka "Atomische").
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Maybe the candidates didn't criticize the media
because they were afraid they would end up like Edwards... with literally no media coverage at all.
Someone somewhere else said it here, Intrepid Liberal I think, the media got the candidates they wanted.
Thanks for this essay, Michael. Although I was happy with the way optical scanners worked for us in the primaries because of the paper trail and because of our ability to call for recounts, all voting machines need to be closely monitored.
I know that's how I felt
Before the candidates had even announced, it was obvious to me the media were hell-bent on not allowing a grass roots candidates to rise again. They mad eit very clear from the start that the campaign was a two way fight between Clinton and Obama.
I lost respect for both candidates because neither showed the courage to stand and say, "NO. Each of the candidates has something important to say and Americans need to hear from each of them."
Obama and/or Clinton had nothing to lose by calling Howard Dean and saying, "We need to announce as a group so that each of us gets a chance to be heard."
Anyway...it's pointless to rehash. My vote is clearly meaningless. I just didn't come ot fully realize it until this election cycle.
It may have more meaning than you imagine now
Low turnout is the friend of the status quo politician. They don't have to do as much and there are fewer people to deal with. I was 1/2 convinced that one reason the " violent radicalization" bill got 400 votes in the House is the volume of determined, sometimes irate, communication thet they receive form the aware citizens. They get testy and wonder why we keep bothering them. Then I heard Kucinich's answer to the question - why did only six of you vote against the bill? His response: "Because we read it."
Show up. Bring friends. Ask questions about the process. Call officials and ask questions. A really good one if it applies - since we have touch screens, how can you do a recount? Or, how do I go about watching the vote count? There are no ballots, right? The turnout in 2006 prevented a lot of fooling around (although there was some, i.e., NM1). I think by November we'll see tens of millions of irate people.
Even with what I know, I'll continue to vote for just those reasons. If they're going to dismiss me, I want them to work real hard to do so.
Wow -- your response really resonates with me
... When Lieberman first started his run in CT before Lamont picked up steam, he employed staff who were masters of the low-information / low turnout campaign.
It is a strategy.
Show up is one of the most important messages out there. Quit kvetching and show up. Do the dirty work of constant observation. It's important. Cockroaches thrive in the dark.
Lamont - what a loss
He would have been a wonderful Senator. He was so on target. I was sorry to hear that there's no recall code in CT (although I could be wrong). Surely the people there know this man to be a total egotist and prevaricator;) extraordinaire!
Four more years of that "Lieberman for Connecticut." Such a great state, such a third rate Senator.
I'm going to look at Lamont's campaign again. If you have a link or two drop it off. That's a great model and I recall talk about it at the time.
Yes, he would.
Since we were active in the Lamont campaign in NE CT, I went poking around for some of the old links. Another good source would be MyleftNutmeg.com
Anyway, are you happy you asked...? sorry, Michael. And Luaptifer and Greyhawk wrote up even more, especially on the voting and websites angle. It was a long summer/fall in 2006 -- At least we got "landslide" Courtney elected (by 83 votes and a recount).
Thanks so much. That's great stuff.
I appreciate that. Even though he lost, Lamont's campaign was quite an accomplishment. He was up against a man who dwells on ethics while he endorses sanctions and then a war against Iraq that killed over 2.0 million people. Quite a con artist. I do hope that Lamont runs again. He'll clean up.
Yes, he was a better man
than politician.
We hope he runs again too.
An oldie but goldie
Don't through out the baby with the bathwater.
Thinks could be a lot better, but they could also be incredibly worse. Bush was/is well on the road to creating a de factomilitary dictatorship in the U.S.
Our right to sit down in front of our PC and argue about what should be done about the present mess, magnified by every other political blogger is just one of the real freedoms we have that I will fight for.
Sure we can just be bloviating or blowing off steam individually but not necessarily collectively.
You are absolutely right.
I'm constantly amazed at how many people are able to really speak up and do so with real intensity. It's not like we're cowering. Although the link above on "violent radicalization" is a real attempt to nab people with strong views, frighten them into shutting up. Nevertheless, we found out about it and also discovered the before passage implementation through one of these centers of "excellence."
I have a rather very connected friend who sympathizes with my take on things. He once asked, 'Aren't you worried about writing some of this.' I said not at all and I just assume that my identity is open to anyone who would bother. Of course when you have a mass audience and challenge the core profit generating assumptions, it does get a bit dicey. You get busted for what many others do without harassment, e.g., Spitzer.
It's always good to pause and have a moment of gratitude for being able to speak freely.
You're welcome! Nice "..they got the candidates they wanted..."
Right the ones that they can abuse. But that's all the rage in the halls of, or should I say, dungeons of power in the capitol. It seems Obama knows the score so maybe he'll let loose. I'm thinking of Reagan's mini-tantrum in NH over the microphone - "I paid for this microphone!"
The optical scanners can work if you've got people who are serious and professional, which exists. Ion Sancho in Florida's capitol regoin does this and the scanners work well. Glad you've got a system that works. I can't say the same for my county election board. We're using a touch screen machine banned most places. But the bureaucrats are happy.
I attended a state meeting with "the best" election directors and some state politicos. One of the directors presented on his elaborate security. The others were stunned. Chain of custody and secure storage had never occurred to them.
We'll see how it turns out. Here's an interesting point: the fix for these problems is easy and cheap. It's entirely reasonable to assume that failure to resolve this, particularly after Florida, is a sign that there's no intent to do so. The bureaucrats and politicians like it, for whatever reasons. Go figure;)