Who can say "third world"...

So what's next?

And what can the "6 or 7" do to help?

HAVA guess at the results of the next election 51% to 49% ,exit polls don't work in the US but are absolute proof of fraud in the rest of the world.

"'IMMACULATE CERTIFICATION'" NO you have been F##KED AGAIN.

This is despicable. Democrats are generally running the Statehouse in North Carolina, so this is not some Republican powerplay.

I think I'm suffering from massive bewilderment. Am I having a brain hemorrhage and have just been hallucinating the last five years? Because the web of scandal and corruption seems almost incomprehensibly vast to my mind.

It seems that no matter what is done the corruption just keeps growing into every nook and cranny of our government, like a fungus, even if we think that nook or cranny has been healed and disinfected. How is it that they can insert an "operative" into every critical, decision-making, position before critical decisions are made? There is a hell of a lot of covert planning going on in the smoke-filled back rooms of this country, and a lot of money (our money) being used to pay for the destruction of our Constitution, imho.

It is going to be very difficult for the citizen's of this country to maintain their rights and freedoms from the combined onslaught of corrupt government and large corrupt corporations, short of actual violent revolution. And I'm a little old to get real fired up about that. There must be some solution to these problems that we just haven't discerned yet. What is the best way to get these "Boards of Election" to actually pay attention to the people they represent? Are the board members that are not the operatives (unless they all are) stupid, uninformed, or what?

WOW!!! Now the stupid Diebold company wants to steal the elections for the neocon democrats!!!!!

This has gone FAR enough. Its time to kick these asses out and down while they are on the run!!!!

FULL INJUNCTION AGAINST DIEBOLD IN BOTH NORTH CAROLINA & CALIFORNIA!!!!

They did not, I repeat, did not comply with the law and have repeatedly disobeyed the judges therefore RICO applies...

Send to MSNBC news right away!!!

hardball@msnbc.com, msnbcreports@msnbc.com

Doug E.

It just goes to show that you can never let your guard down. It doesn't matter which party is in power. Power is power.

Sounds like the proverbial fox in the henhouse. I suppose it's possible that the former Diebold rep is being completely on the up-and-up on this issue...but I doubt it. Is there no integrity in this world anymore? Sad.

Somebody got bought off. There's no other possible explanation.

Keith Long, who is in charge of NC's RFP process worked for Diebold from 2002-2005.

He directed the installation of 22,000 Diebold in GA in 2002, and about 5,000 in Maryland.

Our State Board of Elections is predominently democrat, and they refer to The Election Center for advice.

DIEBOLD MIRACULOUSLY IS NOW CLAIMING TO BE ABLE TO COMPLY WITH LAW

Today the SBOE voted unanimously to certify Diebold, ES&S both unconditionally, and Sequoia conditionally.
Bob Cordle led the vote in favor of Diebold.

Diebold is purporting to claim that they will escrow their operating system with an Microsoft approved third party.
Their other software would be escrowed elsewhere, at IronMountain.

Keith Long did all of the explaining of things, as if everything was just fine.

I argued the various things, - Long's claim of "successful" installation of 22,000 machines in GA,
That Mr. Long was very wrong about the success of that, and I named some of the problems, including uncertified patches to the operating system -

The CA SOS official statement that Diebold lied to them, and machines were decertified before Nov 04 election because of -

How can you trust that Diebold means what it says since they are known to lie?

Why would you certify machines that had a 30% failure in California in July 2005?

Paper or Plastic. The US vote is like selecting paper or plastic. In the end it doesn't really matter because you still got BUSHIT ON THE INSIDE!!!

Drew - Not much integrity anymore. Connections have replaced integrity. You see it everywhere. In almost any institution or industry, the goal of corporate vendors is to establish a "relationship", and they have been assiduously working on it for decades - refining it, solidifying it. From at least the '80's on it has been one of the primary characteristics of corporate and institutional practice.

After a point, the little world of symbiosis becomes a way of life, replacing intelligence, pride of work, and integrity. Sad but true.

That's why agitation and incessant activism are essential. It's nip and tuck who will win.

I was so proud of N.C. thought they were going to do the right thing ...I'm from there. So many problems with the '04 election, they didn't have a Sec. of agriculture or education for months. Read in the paper while visiting, Sec. of education wasn't a problem, but going without Sec. of agriculture was. The people I ran into , for the most part were rabid republicans. The state has changed so much since 2000 it is hardly recognizable. The dems. are very bought off. They do have a state dem. chairman who was fought by the old guard just like Dean was for the national chair. I think it is the old KluKluxKlan people dressed up and taking over. The Bush stickers on vehicles were thinning out however. Repubs. need to have machines in place due to the large number of good colleges and universities. I'm sure they are seen as a problem. It's a police state now.

Kudos to Joyce McCloy for effective, dogged persistence and important work.

Drew: Not only have 'connections' replaced integrity, but 'access' has replaced truth.

What I mean by that is this:

Experts and scientists have known of stunning defects for years --- both the memory card executables and the GEMS defect.

I have spoken with scientist after scientist who admit that they knew, but explain that, had they told all they knew to state officials, local officials, congress, and the media, they would have been denied any further role in voting machine examination.

Joyce's work, and the successful muzzling of the US scientific community for more than a decade, proves beyond a doubt that citizens must take control and persist. Not all battles will be won, but the collective effort will prevail, if we persist.

Scientists who tell the WHOLE truth about these systems will not be invited to events, will not be asked to testify before congress, and will lose their government grants. The WHOLE truth includes the persistent violations of FEC standards, the appalling holes in the central tabulators, the stunning tamper-friendly architecture of the memory cards, the utter failure of the ITAs and NASED to protect the American citizenry, and the questionable behavior of public officials and secretaries of state who continue to deny and look the other way.

American citizens like Kathleen and I at Black Box Voting should never again have to find an expert from Finland and another from the Bahamas (Dr. Thompson) just to get someone to tell it like it is.

We shouldn't have a voting system that only experts can understand. The brutal pressures on our academia and our top scientists will always put our access to the whole truth at risk.

Connections do not replace integrity.
Truth must not be sacrificed for access.
Citizens should never allow themselves to be silenced by political correctness --- not when our democracy is at stake.

This is not what our founding fathers had in mind!

I live in NC. I'd be willing to go in with others to get the $ together for an attorney to file an injunction. I'd put in a 1000. North Carolinians who are interested. Contact me at my yahoo acount drrichardduff@yahoo.com. Let's start to fucking do something rather than wait for some one else to do it. If they do it...

Unbelievable! I hope someone sues the state over this. The brazenness of these election officials should not be tolerated.

A Travesty!

I keep hearing about parallel voting. I understand the concept but I'm not sure how it would be put into practice. The current government sanctioned voting system, as it has been evolving, is being completely corrupted for the benefit of the corrupt. Along with that, both exit and pre-election polls (generally also controlled by the corporate powers) are also now being delegitimized in this country by the same corrupt entities that control the voting system. Given that, could a non-government-sanctioned parallel voting system (presumably controlled by citizens, rather than the government, MSM or corporate entities) be designed in a way that would give it the kind of power and validity that would allow it to be used as an effective and, more importantly, popularly accepted check on the corrupted voting system? If it could, perhaps that is where we should start putting our efforts. Anyone out there willing to inform me more on this one?

STEVE if you do ,don't fly in small planes.Follow the money.

Thanks for keeping up on this "real time". We usually find out when voters are getting fucked by the Republicans years later. Now we can read "real time", thanks to Brad, when our voting rights are getting it up the ass!

North Carolina: YOU STINK ON ICE!!!

I stand corrected after reading above. If it's the Democrats, they are also in cahoots with Corporate America. No surprise, but it seems the Dems do it to a lesser extent.

Is wanting my vote to count asking too much? What country do I live in?

Cobb, Bednarik, Nader, where are you on this issue? They seem silent.

There's 1 party in America: The Corporate America party, and all other parties are not allowed to participate in the Corporate America presidential debates.

How about 100,000's of voting rigths activists voting early with hammers! I hope it doesn't come to that but it is an option.

So is EFF rolling over and playing dead, or are they going to seek an injunction in the same court which said Diebold must comply?

Diebold must be stopped.

Big Dan #21 - David Cobb is very active in the voting rights community. He goes to the summits and talks to anyone who will talk about this issue.

Dred #24 - EFF is NOT rolling over and playing dead. Give 'em a chance to dust off and jump back into the fray. More very, very soon on this.

I am a government lawyer and I can tell you that some administrator in the state cannot just "waive state law" with impunity. I think any (or all) voters in NC would have standing to file a lawsuit and someone should do it SOON!

I have been following along with Brad's stories on the voting machines. I have maintained for several years that those in power did not want the people to vote. The less voters, the easier to 'steal' elections. The upside of this whole scandel I hope, is a wake up call to non-voters.

I have been an advocate of doing away with the electoral college and in favor of using the popular vote. I wonder if this is the end game. Perhaps that is the next step, no electoral college, but the president elected by deibold. The fact that those is power would go to such lengths did not cross my mind until 2003 and I starting learning of the corrupt machines. I don't recognize America anymore.

The modis operandi of those in power is always the same....create the problem and then create the solution...the people are too busy being distracted by struggling to survive to be informed.

Thank you Brad for continuing to keep this topic in the public consciousness.

Hmm.. well, welcome to Wonder Land..

I keep telling people that it's Corperations that are causing all the grief in the world, they don't want to listen. You get poor people that want jobs and believe the bullshit of "if you pull down mega-corps, there won't be any jobs".. and "you can't tell Board Members they can't have $50 mill a year, who will do their 'oh so important' job?".. you have middle class "trying to supliment their incomes and build retirement accounts in the stock market", so they are lothe to bump company boats.. if they do, how do they live when they retire? Savings accounts are down to ONE HALF OF A PERCENT interest bearing, and pensions for -most- professional jobs are gone (the rest on the way out the door, and -most jobs- in this country don't have a pension plan anyway).. If you can't convince those two groups that "we need to squarely shove our collective foot up the corperate ass and make them be FAIR and DECENT", we don't have a chance [of solving this peacefully].

Everyone needs money, money is got from "corperations", or so the brain-washing goes. Everyone is afraid to upset the corp because they think they can't get money if they do that.. Yet, when this country was FOUNDED, we didn't have any "mega-corps" like we do now. Money was backed by GOLD, not hot air like it is today.. People got money in trade for something, not by trying to suck it out of people as free money (stock market today).

Our government has gotten WAY out of control. Congress isn't making money, a private bank does.. in violation of the Constitution. Congress doesn't go it's job of making laws that "protect citizens".. Congress doesn't declare war, it just passes the buck to the President and says "the Constitution is out dated".. Congress doesn't bother paying attention to the Constitution any more, and now States are letting themselves get walked over by corperate interests too?

The point of NC having a Democrat laden BoE who certified machines that are PROVED to be faulty just goes to support my (20 year and counting) stance that "all politicians are corrupt". People are being bought off because our values in this country are getting screwed up. Money is all that is important and people are selling their souls (if we have them) to make a buck.. and it's the worst with people who already HAVE MONEY but can't seem to get enough. What happened to "making a living" and "enjoying life"? The POINT of cooperative societies is to make it so you work LESS, not more.. Yet, in this country (and around the world), we have people working 60 - 70 hours a week and STILL not having a decent quality of life.. shameful and disgusting, if you ask me.. and what's WORSE is, 100s of millions of people in the world are starving to death while others piss away resources on a grand scale "just because they can". Impulse buying (great for the board memebers, lousy for our planet), then ending up tossing things in the land fill that you've never used but "had to have"?

What a speices we are. We have the ability for near everyone on the planet to have a "decent quality of life", but instead, we let less than 0.1% of the people here live in insanly lavished luxury while 20% (or more) of the planet's population suffers to allow it. Some days it makes me sick to be a Human, we're supposed to know better, be better than the shit-flinging monkies.. yet, most of them don't even do the despicable things we do. I'm not a Christian, but from all I've read about Jesus, THIS is what he was talking about.. being careful not to shit on your brothers, careful not to quit caring about life and only caring about "things" (all the Holy and Religious stuff aside).

In a nut-shell.. Super Rich = "honestly believe it's ok to kill thousands or more to increase your riches". Most of us aren't rich because we aren't capable of being that "inhumane". The mugger on the street is a "rich guy down on his luck", if you ask me.

Sandy D. #26 and Dr. RW #15... yes, somebody should get in there in NC and sue the bastards before it's too late to affect change prior to the 2006 elections. unfortunately, it is usually up to regular American citizens to get any action these days. "squeaky wheel gets the grease" and all that....

not everybody reads the Brad Blog (they should!) or the election reform sites, so spreading the word is the most imortant thing to do. if you can be the point person for organizing an effort to challenge egregious actions like this one in NC, so much the better.

remember --- you don't have to do it all by yourself! talk to enough people and you will find many voices can often accomplish what only one (or two) voices cannot.

it's difficult to unite The People for something they don't know about.

...and no one's mentioning the Corporate media's role in this...shedding ZERO light on the subject with a blackout on voting news.

What does Bev Harris and EFF suggest we do? There is a tremendous number of bloggers here to help.

I am not an authority on procurement in NC, but it seems that the Nebraska voting system which did meets the requirements could protest the results.

I was wrong. There is a second explanation for this, other than that someone got paid off (albeit that's also likely).

HAVA promised handicapped voters, e.g., blind people, a machine they could use. Companies like Diebold were commissioned to make them. Thus the government had an implied obligation to these companies to follow through and recommend their purchase by individual states. The separate questions, "Will these new machines be hackable, and will their manufacturers have political ties that enable them to be hacked by their friends?" were never considered.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions. The constant pressure being brought to bear in North Carolina, California and elsewhere to certify Diebold might well derive from HAVA. This would explain why Chris Dodd (one of the architects of HAVA) got upset at John Kerry for saying, "You know, there's a problem with these machines." Dodd had made an implied commitment to Diebold:
"Give us machines that blind people can use, and we'll recommend they be certified." In this case, the blind were helping the blind.

Robert, if that is the case, why doesn't someone from Diebold or of authority come out and say so. We have heard far more biased, negative info on Diebold. Okay these machines will help the blind, what about the tabulators and programmers tampering with the votes?

I think I could get 6 or 7 Ukrainians to go over and show the 'murkins how to do democracy. It's clear that next November we're gonna have to just party in the streets, all over America, until the stolen election of 06 is undone and redone in a truly democratic manner (we could probably get volunteers from Canada and Germany, in which, incidentally, the US imposed paper ballots and pencils as part of the Marshall plan, to help out). The Dems may be a sorry bunch, but they're the only alternative right now - however, once they have regained control of the ship of state they MUST be thoroughly scrutinized. The Neocons are scared precisely because the time is coming soon when, in the words of Vaclav Havel, "Love and truth will win out over hate and lies." It's time to go for the jugular, load the silver bullet, sharpen the oaken stake, pack some garlic and a cross...

I favor those who say in the blog: let's go to court. Bev Harris has been (in my opinion) exemplary in picking her fights and going at voting issues head on and in the open. I believe that is what it takes to get the attention of all the sleepy-heads who might glance at a paper once a month. The vested interests will have all the pointed objects levelled at the citizenry who protects in a case like this, including the corporate types and the leaders of both parties. I can tell you what you are going to hear from the most sympathetic politicians among them: NC is broke, we already bought these machines, many of our counties cannot affort the expense of changing things or changing them out--whattaya going to do? I PROMISE that will be what you ultimately hear. It'll be (for media consumption) a poor-mouthin' narrative. It will be another ballgame behind the scenes. The court is the place to support a fight. I want to know who is going to do the fighting. I am also ready to chip into that till.

Poor-mouthin' works in NC because nobody likes the thought of raising taxes or the government spending money on lawsuits unless the public simply gets indignant about something. That is a rare event. That is why ordinary politics is probably not going to work.

For Mugzi: I can only guess at Diebold's motives. They have lawyers on the ground in every state. Lawyers are usually close-mouthed (except those defending high-profile clients like O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson). If the lawyers go public with statements like, "Our client Diebold is fulfilling a contract mandated by HAVA," that merely begs a follow-up question from a reporter, "Why didn't HAVA consider that these machines are hackable?"

In other words, Mugzi, it opens Pandora's Box. The media have been generally silent on whether the 2004 election was stolen. Diebold's lawyers know that if they defend these machines with public statements, it will open up the debate...and next thing you know Bev Harris and Clint Curtis will be interviewed on Larry King Live.

Better for them to keep everything inside a courtroom. The press won't go there unless Michael Jackson is on trial or some white girl has been raped by a black guy.

I have been going to the SecretaryofStateCA voting panel meetings since Sept.03. When the meetings aren't cancelled at the last minute(happened often-good way to weed out the out-of-towners), the public testifies 99.9% against diebold. The state keeps on proceeding for diebold. Last meeting the voting panel was disbanded just before the meeting and some state employees rounded up to sit on stage while the public, again, testified 99.9% against diebold. I'm 56 and I have seen our government employees act like our bosses many times but never so blatantly!
Larry White

Start a movement now, don't pay taxes. Taxation without representation. It's been done and was successful. April 15th have a symbolic throwing tea into Boston Harbor. Invite Bono, Springsteen , and willie. Bet they would all show up. Let's get started.

I wrote to the author of an article about North Carolina certification of Diebold and Keith Long, and received the following reply: (As a journalist, she says she regularly checks with Brad Blog)

Re: THINGS NEEDING THE LIGHT OF DAY
Thank you, Arlene. I regularly link to Brad for additional reading on these type articles.

And thank you for caring about this issue. It's very important.

Kathy

> *Dear Ms Gill,
> *
> NC Approves *Diebold* Despite Refusal to Submit Source Code
> About - News & Issues - New York,NY,USA
> North Carolina's State Elections Board has approved *Diebold* Election Systems, Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems for purchase by the *...*
>
> *Thanks for your article.*
>
> The following is a very important piece of information pertaining to North Carolina's odd decision to certify Diebold in spite of it's intention to maintain the secrecy of its code in violation of the law:
>
> Arlene Montemarano
> Silver Spring, Maryland
>
> ========
>
> "And who made the decision to go ahead and ignore the code and certify Diebold? A gentleman by the name of Keith Long was hired to be in charge of the process for the state. And what are Mr. Long's credentials to handle this job?_* Mr. Long was one of the Diebold representatives responsible for previously selling the Diebold voting system to the state of Georgia.*_
> URL: https://bradblog.com/archives/00002105.htm)"

--
Kathy Gill

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