Guest blogged by Winter Patriot
Check this out: I have a great new idea for scamming an election. What do you think of this?
Suppose you took a filled-in ballot, used a blank sticker to cover the oval filled in by the voter, colored in a different oval, and then fed the ballot into an optical scanner. How do you think the machine would count that ballot? Pretty slick, no? I am so clever! Nobody else would ever think of doing something like this, would they?
On second thought, maybe somebody else would think of it. And according to this article from RAW STORY, it’s already been done. Quite recently, in fact. And you’ll never guess where!
Tough question, no? OK, here’s a hint: What’s round on both ends and high in the middle? Did you say “Ohio”? Well, maybe you will guess after all. But you’ll never guess which ovals had stickers on them…
Several volunteer workers in the Ohio recount in Clermont County, Ohio have prepared affidavits alleging serious tampering, violations of state and federal law, and possible fraud. They name the Republican chief of Clermont’s Board of Elections and the head of the Clermont Democratic Party Priscilla O’Donnell as complicit in these acts.
These volunteers, observing the recount on behalf of the Greens, Libertarians and Democrats, assert that during the Dec. 14, 2004 hand recount they noticed stickers covering the Kerry/Edwards oval, whereas the Bush/Cheney oval seemed to be “colored in.”
Some witnesses state that beneath the stickers, the Kerry/Edwards oval was selected. The opti-scan ballots were then fed into the machines after the hand recount.
Well, what do you think about that? I thought I had a good original idea here. Apparently it is a pretty good idea, but it’s not exactly original. Oh well…
Read the entire story here. Then come back and scream and yell all you like. This really does call for a good rant.
But don’t just rant here. Spread the pressure around.
Or as Brad would say: Go Make Some Noise!!
The allegation of stickers covering the oval of Kerry/Edwards on the ballots was made very early on during the recount. It wasn’t widely publicized then. Nothing was done about it then, and I have serious reservations that anything will be done about it now. But one can still hope I guess.
They’ll do everything, won’t they? Pre-punch for Bush (and who really studies their ballots before heading to the booth, anyway?), jump to Bush after Kerry is "touched," default to Bush, void Kerry into the ether of lost causes, bully for Bush, telephone for misinformation, scrub registrations, create machine shortages and outages…and now STICK(ER) Kerry and "correct" for Bush! Wow! How many have I missed? A few. Phantom voters got lost in there, many of them. As did hacking and fiddling in general.
But the head of the Clermont Democratic party? Now, how could that be? Should I add, "Buy someone good and invisible for Bush?"
Oh, UGHHHHH………
Peg C–I think you very well coverd the misdeeds of the Repigs during the election. The part I found interesting was that all the election emploees were appointed by the Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, and basically served at his pleasure. About those stickers covering the ovals on the ballots. If they managed to put them on there on Election night, they sure aren’t still there with three months time to remove them. So good bye evidence.
Bet all those little white stickers are gone now , but it really doesn’t matter. They will continue to ignore Rep. Conyers and the people. Who’s gonna make em have a legitimate investigation? Will they volunteer? Yeah, sure. No , just get more vicious and sarcastic every time anyone questions the validity of the vote. Evidence means nothing to these people. They got the money and the power, oh, and god too. So we’re all just SOL.
Read the story carefully. When this first arose back in December, the Republican in charge intimidated Democratic workers into silence and hung up the phone on a reporter snooping into the accusations.
This isn’t a new allegation. Rather, it’s people now coming forward who were intimidated a month ago. Absent the efforts by John Conyers to gain a full hearing at the House Judiciary Committee, this and other examples of fraud would have stayed hidden. Conyers, bless his heart, has given people a place to go, free from intimidation and confident their complaints will be heard.
Today my Congressman, Chris Shays, happened to answer my complaint from two months ago. He said he didn’t sign on to the election challenge because there was fraud on both sides and he saw the whole thing as partisan. Obviously, most of his colleagues on Capitol Hill, including most Democrats, felt the same. If Republicans cheated in Ohio, Democrats cheated in Wisconsin, yada yada yada. So let’s "move on."
But revelations like this one about oval stickers placed on ballots after the fact suggest to me that what the election was really about was, "Which
party did a better job at committing fraud?" I think we know the answer to that one.
Hi, Robert #5 – Are you going to let your Congressman Shays get away with that? If he is aware of any specific fraud committed by the Democratic party, then he DAMN WELL should report it! His attitute of "we are all crooked, so who cares" is disgusting. He should be FIRED, removed from office, along with EVERYONE ELSE who thinks and acts like he does! Boy, am I disgusted. I hope you find someone DECENT to vote for in the future. What a slimey politician he is!
So if there is much fraud on the Democratic side, let’s hear from Taco Tom, AKA Atty Jimmo, about these numerous cases. So far from what I have read it is about 50,000 instances of cheating on behalf of Bush vs. 1 for Kerry. Only 49,999 cases for Taco Tom to come up with. Can he do it?
I agree. If there was massive fraud on the Dem side, we need to know about that too. For example, what are they hiding in New Mexico?
I am sad to see the notes of despair in the comments here. Persistence is the key. We need to keep at it in a way they did not count on, the way I see it. The really cool thing is that we seem to be building up mountains of affadavits. We need to keep doing that.
I may be fooling myself, but I think we are getting warmer.
I keep seeing this image of us as the trumpeters circling the walls of Jerico.
Careful what you say – you dirty commies are only tarnishing the good name of Amerikan Demokracy you know… 😉
Welcome to the new CCCP – The Corporate Cabal of Corrupt Politicians.
Or how about the new USSR – the United States Sold up the River.
Vive le revolution de velours, comrades. 😉
The truth will come out eventually. Everyone has to hang in there and keep chipping away. This crap would not be tolerated in Canada and once again goes to show that the only way to conduct legitimate elections is with paper and pencil.
Hang in there people!
BTW Riverbend has a new posting today.
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
Cheryl –
Oh, we are, we are! Trumpets and all!! MSM should watch its back and prepare for wholesale humiliation, because I’m pretty sure they’re about to be scooped, big time. But in the meantime, the nailbiting is becoming painful – we’re down to the quick.
These little stories are supportive, however, the big story is the exit poll story, and its cover up.
It includes a major fraud perpetrated by NEP insiders, and promulgated by the MSM. Think about it … major, major money went into the exit poll project.
Some discussion is at black box voting here, here, and here.
It was also mentioned here at BradBlog and Raw Story.
This exit poll thing should not, under any circumstances, be underestimated. The other things, altho important, must get in line behind it.
There are over 3,000 counties, with various additional voting subdivisions. With a cadre of conflicting and confusing regulations.
There is only a short time to litigate challenges before the Congress certifies the electoral results.
In this hodge-podge we must focus on a large issue and talk about it, talk about it, talk about it.
It is about the exit polls with these little things for additional interest.
It will stay this way forever, because of the impossible logistical conditions within an impossibly short span of time (Nov 2 – Jan 6) to challenge.
They have us exactly where they want us.
Solution? Federal Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing the individual citizen the right to vote for president.
That will cripple the fraud covering conditions we face and cannot overcome one voting precinct at a time.
There are about 65 days between the Nov 2 election and the Jan 6 electoral college certification.
If there are only 6,000 precincts, that means looking at about 92 precinct data-sets per day and deciding which to litigate, litigate them, win a recount, then recount … ??? Not gonna happen.
Yea, when you get to court you must be incredibly specific. That much data no lazy judge is interested in.
In today’s world we must have an apparatus that is not based on a 200 year old design when there were only perhaps a few hundred thousand voting.
One set of rules would apply to a federal constitutional right to vote scenario.
I neglected to link our BRADBLOG discussion on the exit poll matter…
winter patroit
Lets here the "other story"!
Peter in Oregon-where mailin ballots rule!
In fairness to Chris Shays, I paraphrased his comments. He didn’t use the word "fraud" in his letter to me.
Here is what he wrote, word for word.
"I didn’t join the investigation request submitted to the GAO by Congressmen Conyers, Nadler and Wexler on Nov. 5, because I view (sic) this not as a good-faith effort to investigate any potential irregularities at the polls, but rather as a partisan effort designed only to cast doubt on the results of the November elections."
And…"IMPROPRIETIES favoring both candidates were widely reported on and after election day, and I believe states are investigating these claims."
And…"…the GAO report was requested as a political, rather than as an educational, device."
He then went on to take credit for having cosponsored H.R. 2239 (requiring a paper trail), and H.R. 4187 (doing the same). Six paragraphs later, Chris wrote "Unfortunately, neither bill came to the floor for a vote…(last year)"
Well, Chris, they didn’t come to the floor for a vote
because YOUR PARTY CONTROLS CONGRESS AND WOULDN’T ALLOW A VOTE TO HAPPEN! Now, please tell me…WHO IS PARTISAN HERE AND WHO IS NON-PARTISAN? And, if there were "widely reported" improprieties favoring both candidates (I think it’s really about 50 to 1, favoring Bush), then why shouldn’t somebody cast doubt on the results? We did that in the Ukraine, didn’t we?
Sorry guys, I still think paper and pencil is the way to go. Machines make counting easy, but as we’ve all seen, thay also make MISCOUNTING easy.
Another corporate, expensive, good ‘ol american hi-tech solution to an obvious lo-tech problem (see footnote). Why don’t TPTB like the paper ‘n’ pencil solution? Well here’s a couple of ideas;
a cross in a box on a paper ballot slip is damn hard to misinterpret and is easily recounted, (and just as important)
Republican lackeys won’t make millions out of pencils and paper.
Please don’t think that I’m a Luddite, I’m a qualified IT professional and I think that it’s just too important to be left to the gizmo’s. Any technical solution to the mass counting issue will be expensive, that means it will almost certainly be centralised, THAT makes it easier to subvert.
The PnP solution works in Australia, Canada and here in the UK and it could just as easily work for you. We get our results within hours of the polls closing, as demanded by the MTV generation. 😉
Vive le revolution de velours, mes amis.
Footnote:
It’s a bit like the contrast to the old question of how do astronauts/cosmonauts write in space?
US Solution: Spend millions of dollars and years of RnD time developing an (admittedly funky) pen that will not freeze, boil, leak or explode in the extreme environment of space and still write.
Soviet solution: Use a pencil.
My engineering instinct says when you have two solutions to a problem, go for the simple one.
Ya think maybe congress can get some election reform in, I mean in between us invading other countries???
re: comments #7 & #8, about the possibility that massive fraud may have occurred on the Democratic side as well …
About a month before the election, I started seeing all kinds of stories about Republican ‘dirty tricks’. Many of these stories are familiar to most BradBlog readers, so I won’t detail them here. It seemed that the number of such stories was increasing every day as the election approached. And I never saw anything about dirty tricks being done by Democrats.
So I started to think that either [1] the Republicans were engaged in a nationwide program of systematic and targeted abuse, or [2] similar things were being done by Democrats but I just wasn’t hearing about them.
Considering how eager the major media were to participate in the smear-job being done against Kerry, and how reluctant they were to say anything negative about Bush, I figured that if the Democrats were doing anything wrong, we would probably be hearing about it. But I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, so I decided to keep an open mind and await developments.
Then shortly before the election, I saw two different segments on TV which were eerily similar. In each case, there was a host and a representative from each party, and they were talking about these stories that were coming from all over the country, concerning what seemed to be widespread suppression of Democratic voters. In each case, the Democratic representative rattled off a list of abuses which was quite familiar to me, and in each case the Republican representative just sat there, saying nothing.
Of course, the hosts needed to present at least the appearance of fair coverage, so they both turned to the Republican guests and asked: "Are the Democrats doing dirty tricks too? And if so, what are they doing?" This was when I started paying close attention, because I figured I was about to learn something. And here’s the strange part:
Both Republicans said exactly the same thing: "They keep saying there’s going to be a draft even though the President has said many times that it’s not true."
That was it! That was the extent of their complaint against the Democrats! They had a national forum in which they could have accused the Democrats of virtually anything, and this was the only thing they had to say!
So … I still think my first idea was the correct one: the Republicans were engaged in a nationwide program of systematic and targeted abuse!
And I don’t think they have stopped, either. But that’s another story…
re #9:
That’s a great image, Alwaysfree!
When do we start with the trumpets?
It’s another nail in the coffin for the past election.
Hi, Robert #20 – Well, what Shays "actually" said is just as bad, if not worse, than your paraphrase. Your last paragraph makes the point. And I remain disgusted with Shays. In my opinion, he’s unfit for public office.
Peggy…Chris started out on Capitol Hill as a maverick. He was very independent. Around
Fairfield County a lot of Republicans hated him for not following the party line on many issues. He was more popular with Democrats, actually. Repubs loathed him for voting "not guilty" on Clinton’s impeachment. But he’s changed a lot since then.
I think he got scared when Delay came to power. Delay eats mavericks for lunch. Suddenly Chris was toeing the line more. What soured me on him was seeing his photo on the front page of the New York Times, KISSING ALLAWI ON THE MOUTH!
Anyway, I could send him another letter. But I don’t think it would do much good.
He’s supposed to be investigating a fraud for me (I was fired by my brokerage firm in 2001 for having blown the whistle on the forgery/theft of my late wife’s money market account by her relatives while she lay in a coma, near death), but after writing two letters to the SEC in my behalf, he seems to have dropped the ball on that.
My former in-laws are just like the Bushes. Rich, powerful people who think they can get away with anything…forgery, fraud, election theft, lies, avoiding the draft. Guess what? They’re right!