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Perhaps this will 'shake the Bushes'...
By Brad Friedman on 11/10/2004 6:18pm PT  

This just in...

Justice Through Music, which strongly supports the democratic principles of transparency and honesty in the electoral process, is offering at least a $100,000 reward to any person or persons who provide conclusive and verifiable evidence that the results of the 2004 presidential election were not correctly tabulated because of one or more of the following reasons: 1) hacking into the voting machines; 2) software or coding problems with voting or tabulating machines; 3) multiple counting by machines or humans, 4) improperly implanted codes in voting machines; 5) tampering with voting machines, voting cards or final tabulation numbers; 6) officials or machines not counting all the votes or adding votes; 7) official influence which changed vote totals, or 8) other problems with vote tabulation not noted here. All information and evidence should be submitted to reward@jtmp.org. Questions should be submitted to questions@jtmp.org.

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The Higher the Vote Turnout, the Fewer Votes for Kerry!
Go figure!
By Brad Friedman on 11/10/2004 4:54pm PT  

There's been much talk about the 97,489 more votes than voters cast in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. A plausible explanation for the huge difference between votes and actual voters, as reported via the Cuyahoga County website), is being attributed by County Officials to the strange method they have for including absentee ballots into the vote counts separately from the Election Day voters. Or something.

So setting that oddity aside for the moment, take a look at this interesting graph. I have not been able to confirm the specific numbers it shows, so I can't testify to it's accuracy, but I'm posting it here because, if accurate, this seems worth getting out to the world for further scrutiny.

Though it's difficult to read this small, the trend-lines are all that really matter here (The full sized graph is here).

If correct, this graph would seem to show that precinct-by-precinct in Cuyahoga County, Ohio --- where Cleveland is, and thus it's a heavily Democratic county --- the larger the turnout in each precinct, the smaller the percentage of the vote for Kerry!

The GREEN trend line is the size of voter turnout in each precinct, and the BLUE trend line is the percentage of votes for Kerry.

While conventional wisdom is often wrong, if the above numbers are accurate, it does seem a bit odd to say the least that the higher the turnout in a strongly Democratic county (Kerry won Cuyahoga 63%-33% if I recall correctly), would result in a smaller percentage of votes for the Democrat!

I don't know what to make of it, or how to explain it, but it seems worth putting out there for the armchair investigators.

UPDATE: I was asked what the balloting/counting methods are in Cuyahoga County. Apparently punch card, as counted by machines made by our old friends at ...Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S). Source

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By Brad Friedman on 11/10/2004 4:25pm PT  

Apparently this story appeared last Friday, but I missed it. I'm trying to keep all of these stories straight, report them only once, and attempt to confirm them before passing them on.

In this case, as many as 22,000 miscounted votes were caught in time to reverse the results of two different races in state races in North Carolina according to the Charlotte Observer.

Agriculture, education races change as counties fix vote-tally errors

The Guilford totals didn't change President Bush's win in the state, but did shift the vote total by 22,000.

Please remember the announced margin of "victory" for Bush in Ohio was about 135,000 in a state of 5.5 million. How many of these types of errors went undetected and/or unreported in Ohio?

How many more of these types of articles do you we need, folks? The system is a disaster, and Congress is sitting on their hands waiting for the Electoral College deadline to pass.

Sign this online letter now if you haven't already! And this one too!

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...While Democrats solidly take the state.
By Brad Friedman on 11/10/2004 2:49pm PT  

MyDD has a telling analysis of the situation in North Carolina where problems with vote counting (some votes apparently counted twice in some places, 4,500 votes completely lost elsewhere, etc.) may require a re-vote in all, or part, of North Carolina.

Nonetheless, it's telling that, though the Republican candidates for President and U.S. Senate were able to claim victories down there, Democrats somehow had virtually all the rest of the success in NC.

The NC Democratic candidate for Governor won in a landslide (55%-44%), Dems won control of the NC House by at least 3 seats, and in the NC Senate the Dems added to their "already healthy" margin. Additionally, the first openly gay lesbian to be elected to the NC statehouse was also victorious in her Senate race!

That victory on the state level mirrors other results around the country, where Dems solidly increased their foothold, or took control of many State Legislatures and Governships.

Even Dallas, TX(!!!) elected a lesbian/hispanic Sheriff!

All of which just serves to make me even more suspicious of the election results.

Republicans control the "Solid South" says conventional wisdom --- but then how does one account for North Carolina? "Value voters" showed up and gave Bush his victory, says CV, and yet gay and lesbian candidates had unprecedented victories in "solid" GOP strongholds.

It's certainly reasonable to assume that voters preferred the GOP at the national level while opting for Dems back at home...for whatever reason. Had there not be so many other oddities in the days following this election, I'd likely not have given it all too much thought. But taking everything we now know about highly improbable disparities in the Exit Polling --- where alleged "inaccuracies" just happened to only benefit Bush and never Kerry in the final results --- along with everything else we now know about the manufacturers of the E-Voting and Counting machines, their secrecy and their exceedingly close ties to the Republican party, it all just adds to my existing suspicions here that something stinks. Bad.

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What the hell?!
By Brad Friedman on 11/10/2004 1:16pm PT  

I've lived in L.A. for nearly 10 years now. I've never seen armored tanks in the streets.

Last night, during an otherwise peaceful anti-war demonstration in front of the Federal Building in Westwood, two armored tanks were called out.

Here's the story, here's the QuickTime video. What the hell is this country coming to?

(Via Raw Story)

UPDATE: The links above are not broken as one reader reported, but traffic at both the page and the video is now very heavy, so keep trying. Here, in the meantime, is the text of the article:

LOS ANGELES, November 9, 2004 - At 7:50 PM two armored tanks showed up at an anti-war protest in front of the federal building in Westwood. The tanks circled the block twice, the second time parking themselves in the street and directly in front of the area where most of the protesters were gathered. Enraged, some of the people attempted to block the tanks, but police quickly cleared the street. The people continued to protest the presence of the tanks, but about ten minutes the tanks drove off. It is unclear as to why the tanks were deployed to this location.

UPDATE: AMERICAblog now has more details on this.

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Ask everyone you know to do the same!
UPDATE: 'Act for Change' Also Gets in the Act!
By Brad Friedman on 11/10/2004 12:19pm PT  

Please sign this Online Petition calling on Congress to open an immediate investigation into possible fraud and/or mistabulation of votes by the American People in Election 2004.

Then use this link to ask everyone you know to sign it as well!

(A reader points out that your name, city and state will be available to those who choose to view the petition signatures. Obviously, I have no fear of publically speaking out against what's happening, but if you have any privacy concerns, just enter your first initial, last name, city, state. E-mail address is required for cross verification; but if you check the box for "privacy," no one will see your e-mail address. What's important is that you sign it and stand up bravely to demand that our votes be counted properly! Go sign it now!)

UPDATE: Act for Change --- a rather large activist group --- is finally getting into the game! They too have an ONLINE PETITION / EMAIL DUMP! They will send your Email straight to your U.S. Congress people for you! Please sign that one as well! And again, let your friends know about it!

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Your Standards of 'Proof' Sure Do Change Alot!
A BuzzFlash Editorial Contribution...
By Brad Friedman on 11/10/2004 12:11pm PT  

BuzzFlash is running a recent editorial of mine. It begins this way:

Dear Right Wingers,

I hope you've been having a pleasant week! It certainly seems like you have been enjoying yourself! It's so nice to see you in a good mood.

Though if you would, please remind me again...were you guys actually able to prove that the memos Dan Rather used in his report on Bush's National Guard service were actually fraudulent? Or did you just come up with enough questions about them that you found enough confidence to go ahead and label them as frauds? Enough certitude about a purposeful case of attempting to disrupt a Presidential campaign that you were able to go ahead and create a whole "Gate" out of the matter ("MemoGate", "RatherGate") and then feel confident enough in what you had found to call for the resignation of the reporter who ran the story?

Click here to read the rest at BuzzFlash...

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While 150,000 Votes Already Miscounted or Lost!
By Brad Friedman on 11/10/2004 11:50am PT  

Yesterday Bev Harris' BlackBoxVoting.org site began issuing "Bandwidth Exceeded" messages to users attempting to access the site. Such a message generally occurs when more users are attempting to access the site than the server can comfortably handle or when the bandwidth allocated by the domain's Internet Provider is exceeded.

Today, attempts to access the site now simply return a "Cannot Find Server" page, leading me to believe that hack attempts and/or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been successful for the time being. [UPDATE: BlackBoxVoting.org is now finally back online. At least for now.]

We have had such attacks here at the BRAD BLOG for the last three days which have taken us similarly down and/or greatly slowed page retrieval at various times. Given the much higher profile BBV has had, it's little surprise that folks who'd rather see patriotic efforts like theirs discontinued would work feverishly to disrupt it.

Ms. Harris and BBV has been spearheading a huge "Freedom of Information Act" filing to collect and review audit logs and other materials from the election in some 3,000 US counties, and thus, her group has attracted quite a bit of attention in the past week. BBV has been attempting to warn Americans for at least the past year about the ticking time-bombs of unregulated, unauditable, and privately owned Electronic Voting machines and their corporate owners (the vast majority of them very closely tied to the Republican party).

Attempts to silence and/or disrupt sites like hers and ours, I believe, speak volumes in support of the underlying charges that we've been making. If there was nothing to fear in examining the inner-workings of these companies, and the way that our votes our counted --- specifically in last week's election --- there would be no reason to attempt to silence and disrupt those who are attempting to do so.

In other words, if the election was clean and fair, what's the fear of giving it a close inspection?

Now perhaps the problem at BBV really is simply related to an overage of bandwidth demand, however, given past attacks the site has received, similar attacks here, and the message changing from "Bandwidth Exceeded" to "Cannot Find Server", I'm inclined to believe that the problem is hostile attacks.

To those who claim that the roughly 150,000 (so far) documented votes that have been reported and confirmed by Election Officials as being mis-allocated would not have changed any election results, I'd point out:

1) Those are just the numbers reported by a mainstream media which by and large went "on vacation" after Kerry's "concession" last Wednesday.

2) Many of those mistabulated and/or lost votes discovered were due to software errors that likely exist on many other identical computers in many other counties in America where they may not yet have been noticed and/or reported.

3) The results of at least one ballot initiative last Tuesday has already been reversed when 70,000 previously mis-counted votes due to "software error" were "discovered" in Broward County, FL!

4) There has been a long record of elections in this country being mis-tabulated and/or reversed due to Electronic Voting Machine error in recent history.

Chapter 2 of Bev Harris' book, Black Box Voting outlines tons of those recently overturned elections. Here's the PDF version of Chapter 2, but since it's currently offline as of this posting, here's a summary of just a few such recent incidents summarized courtesy of Hunter over at DailyKos:

In the 2002 general election, a computer miscount overturned the House District 11 result in Wayne County, North Carolina. Incorrect programming caused machines to skip several thousand partyline votes, both Republican and Democratic. Fixing the error turned up 5,500 more votes and reversed the election for state representative.
...
Voting machines failed to tally "yes" votes on the 2002 school bond issue in Gretna, Nebraska. This error gave the false impression that the measure had failed miserably, but it actually passed by a 2 to 1 margin. Responsibility for the errors was attributed to ES&S, the Omaha company that had provided the ballots and the machines.
...
An Orange County, California, election computer made a 100 percent error during the April 1998 school bond referendum. The Registrar of Voters Office initially announced that the bond issue had lost by a wide margin; in fact, it was supported by a majority of the ballots cast. The error was attributed to a programmer's reversing the "yes" and "no" answers in the software used to count the votes.
...
Software programming errors, sorry. Oh, and reverse that election, we announced the wrong winner. In the 2002 Clay County, Kansas, commissioner primary, voting machines said Jerry Mayo ran a close race but lost, garnering 48 percent of the vote, but a hand recount revealed Mayo had won by a landslide, receiving 76 percent of the vote.
...
In the November 2002 general election in Scurry County, Texas, poll workers got suspicious about a landslide victory for two Republican commissioner candidates. Told that a "bad chip" was to blame, they had a new computer chip flown in and also counted the votes by hand --- and found out that Democrats actually had won by wide margins, overturning the election.
...
In 1986 the wrong candidate was declared the winner in Georgia. Incumbent Democrat Donn Peevy was running for state senator in District 48. The machines said he lost the election. After an investigation revealed that a Republican elections official had kept uncounted ballots in the trunk of his car, officials also admitted that a computerized voting program had miscounted. Peevy insisted on a recount. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "When the count finished around 1 a.m., they [the elections board] walked into a room and shut the door," recalls Peevy. "When they came out, they said, `Mr. Peevy, you won.' That was it. They never apologized. They never explained."
...
A software programming error gave the election to the wrong candidate in November 1999 in Onondaga County, New York. Bob Faulkner, a political newcomer, went to bed on election night confident he had helped complete a Republican sweep of three open council seats. But after Onondaga County Board of Elections staffers rechecked the totals, Faulkner had lost to Democratic incumbent Elaine Lytel. Just a few hours later, election officials discovered that a software programming error had given too many absentee ballot votes to Lytel. Faulkner took the lead.
...
In a 1998 Salt Lake City election, 1,413 votes never showed up in the total. A programming error caused a batch of ballots not to count, though they had been run through the machine like all the others. When the 1,413 missing votes were counted, they reversed the election.

If an official investigation doesn't take place immediately, there is little hope of determing the correct winner of any number of races from last week's election. Not the least of which is the race for President of the United States. And I would think, especially after four years of questions about George W. Bush's legitimacy as "President" that even the Right Wingnuts would like to be able to demonstrate once and for all to the American People that he was, in fact, legitimately elected this time.

For more on the suddenly silent Right Wingers, see my recent BuzzFlash Editorial. And be sure to sign this Online Petition calling for an immediate investigation!

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Apparently, it's up to us to find the answers.
(Sshhh...Don't wake media.)
By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2004 9:25pm PT  

Excellent and cogent analysis and action items concerning Florida and the Exit Polls from Ian Welsch over at BOP. Please give it a look and see if you can help.

I would add one further question/action item to Ian's list. It would be useful to learn what type of counting machine was in use in Broward County when it began subtracting votes from the tally, due to a bug in the software, and what other counties in Florida and/or the rest of the country used the same machine and software. 70,000 votes were "found" in that incident, and a local initiative overturned with the discovery of them.

The code used in these machines is not written separately for each individual machine that I know of. If the error occurred once in Broward (and was reportedly noticed), where else did it also occur and not get noticed?

Ditto for the UniElect machine in North Carolina that entirely lost at least 7,000 votes in a single county because it's memory chip only held 3005 votes instead of the 10,000 that manufacturer UniLect had promised. Where else was the same type of computer in use? I know Ohio used UniLect machines, and they reported unfixable problems with them on Election Day, but I haven't been able to tell if they were the same type as those in North Carolina.

(It must be up to us to figure this crap out, because the MSM is enjoying their well-deserved nap.)

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By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2004 8:50pm PT  

The headline --- courtesy of The Onion's Election Coverage --- is funny.

The fact that it seems to be true --- with MoveOn.org remaining mum so far about what could potentially be the biggest crime in this country since...the last election --- is not.

A couple of other funny Onion headlines from the same page...

  • "Bush Does Victory Lap Around World Trade Center Site"
  • "Despite Republican Victory, Bush Supporter Has Tiny, Tiny Penis"
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    ...And thanks for nothing.
    By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2004 3:15pm PT  

    Both Attorney-General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans were booted resigned just moments ago.

    And they were so darn effective! What a shame that, like Fallujah (where at least 16 American troops have been killed in the last 48 hours), this terrible news just happened to break after the election! What luck!

    UPDATE: In related news...in case you didn't notice...The "Orange" security alert in both D.C. and NYC was lowered back to "Yellow" for the first time the day after the election and today pedestrian traffic was once again re-opened on Pennsylvania Ave. in front of the White House. The timing for all of these events should continue to not be noticed in any way. Thank you.

    UPDATE: Looks like Ashcroft submitted his resignation on Nov. 2. Election Day. But, always in the service of politicizing justice, he remarked in his resignation letter:

    It would be my pleasure to structure the announcement of this resignation and the ensuing transition in conjunction with you so that your administration and the cause of justice are served optimally.

    I have handwritten this letter so its confidentiality can be maintained until the appropriate arrangements mentioned above can be made.

    But rest easy! He also informed the "President-Elect":

    The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

    Phew! Thank you Mr. A-G!

    And now, ladies and gentlemen, for (hopefully) the last time...The Attorney General sings.

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    'Moral' Values Edition
    By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2004 2:09pm PT  

    UPDATE: While I thought the above toon was clearly absurd, apparently, it may not be. See this post on the Conservative Leader who seems to now be claiming "God is indeed a Republican". (Via AMERICAblog)

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    The World is Watching
    By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2004 1:34pm PT  

    American democracy is the beacon and light and hope for the rest of the world. While their emerging democracies may not always take the exact form that ours does, central to all of them is --- and must continue to be --- "the expression of the will of the people" via clean and open elections.

    Emerging democracies in the world, however, are taking note of the debacle we've had here again. Twice now in a row with our most important election. And with so many countries that we are attempting to push towards delicate democracies at this time, it's more important than ever.

    This is the story running today Russia's PRAVDA: "Did Bush fix the elections? - Why did Kerry throw in the towel so soon?"

    If we are unable to demonstrate to world an example of how clean, fair and transparent elections must be run, what in God's name gives any of you people the illusion that other countries will do any better? And what of the Moral Authority that we must have to require of them that their elections be clean, fair and transparent?

    I don't care which side of the political winds you're on (Bush's, Kerry's or anyone else's), if America doesn't have a national election that we can proudly hold up as a shining beacon of democracy in our own country, we'll hardly be able to demand the same from any country in the rest of the world.

    Wake up, America.

    UPDATE: For more on all of this from "the Internationals" see this from The International Herald-Tribune as reported by AltWeeklies.com:

    [A] group consisting of 92 international election monitors, invited by the State Department, gave a rather dim assessment. The International Herald Tribune reported, The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system.

    (Thanks Fin for the tip!)

    CLARIFICATION: The Pravda article reported above is from Pravda Online - a distinct publication from the old Communist Party-Controlled Pravda Newspaper. Though Pravda Online is published in Russian as well as English, and it's journalists are made up of reporters from the old Pravda Newspaper, I should have made that distinction in my original article. See the comments on this item for more detail. Thanks Raw Story's John Byrne for calling the issue to my attention.

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    Mainstream Media Coverage, DNC Press Release & 97,000 Extra Votes in Cuyahoga County, OH!
    By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2004 12:07pm PT  

    Okay, lots of stuff now beginning to come out this morning, folks.

    First, credit where it's due to MSNBC's Countdown for being amongst the first and only major Mainstream Media to give full coverage to this scandal. You can watch most of the full 17-minutes report they did last night courtesy of our bandwidth friendly friends at "Crooks & Liars" (via Windows Media Player here) and Brian Duffy (via QuickTime version here).

    Second, it looks like the DNC is finally beginning to show up and play. Ever timidly, as we'd expect from them, but they're beginning to show up nonetheless and have now issued a Press Release calling for accounting from the 50 Secretaries of States on their counting practices. Read their Press Release here. More on this later today. (and thanks to reader Mazelle for the tip!)

    Also, according to that MSNBC report, 3 more House Democrats have now joined the call of the original 3 Dems (Nadler, Wexler & Conyers) on the House Judiciary Committee asking the GAO for an investigation. That's good news, but we're still waiting for the rest

    Last, for the moment (though certainly not least!) --and I will have more detail on this shortly --- it looks as though 97,000 more votes than voters have been added to the tallies in Cuyahoga County, OH! Now that's where Cleveland is, so it's a heavily Democratic district (I believe it went 63%-33% in favor of Kerry), and it was that counties totals that everyone was watching on Tuesday night to see if it would close the previously announced gap for Bush in Ohio.

    In some precincts, the vote tallies show as being some 1000% (yes, that's thousand!) higher than the number of actual voters in the precinct! I will have much more on that later today.

    Could that mean too many votes were added for Kerry there? Yup. Could that mean too many votes were added for Bush there? Yup. Could there be an innocent explanation for it? Yup.

    Would I like to see this cleared up even if it means fewer votes for Kerry in the end? Yup.

    Do I think elections should be a helluva of a lot cleaner and more organized than the mess we're seeing in Election '04? Hell yeah.

    Check out the DailyKos story and see what you think. More on that one in particular, shortly...

    What's clear is that your hard work is beginning to get the traction it deserves! Keep making noise! Pass these links around, and demand that the Media and the Politicians account for whatever the hell is going on with these increasingly pungent smelling election "results"!

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    It Gets Curiouser and Curiouser...
    By Brad Friedman on 11/8/2004 10:09pm PT  

    I referred to Auglaize County, Ohio in the previous item as having the 4th highest percentage of votes for George W. Bush in all of Ohio.

    The Evening Leader is reporting on some very strange goings on in that county just prior to the election when the entire Elections Board was notified by Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's office that they were being placed on "administrative oversight". No explanation was has yet been given by the Ohio Sec. of State's office.

    The nugget that caught my eye was this report of an ES&S employee reported using the main vote tallying computer --- against election protocol --- about two weeks prior to the election:

    In a letter dated Oct. 21, Ken Nuss, former deputy director of the Auglaize County Board of Elections, claimed that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the company that provides the voting system in Auglaize County, was on the main computer that is used to create the ballot and compile election results, which would go against election protocol. Nuss claimed in the letter that McGinnis was allowed to use the computer the weekend of Oct. 16.

    Nuss, who resigned from his job Oct. 21 after being suspended for a day, was responsible for overseeing the computerized programming of election software, according to his job description. His resignation is effective Nov. 11.

    I've attempted, to no avail, to get more information on this story since the original report is not particularly well written, and offers quite a few vagaries. I couldn't reach the original reporter and Mr. Nuss did not return my call. Few other reporters seem to be looking into it. So at this point, I think it's important to get the story out there, and let the Internets take over. (Since apparently the Mainstream Media is more interested in Scott Peterson's hung jury, than the will of the people in the world's most important democracy.)

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