I only have a second as I’ve got to hit the road to get up to Santa Barbara to speak at tonight’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner (along w/ Wes Clark), so I’ll try to be quick about it…
The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) is a complete and utter failure. The current commissioner, Paul DeGregorio, has done nothing to instill confidence in elections or provide a lick of oversight in the deployment and use of these voting systems across the nation in the Midterm Election. In his latest interviews and editorials, he is reprehensibly doing nothing but echoing Voting Machine Company propaganda and Election Officials who choose to be apologists for them.
See DeGregorio’s latest editorial here from the Tallahassee Democrat, in which he posts completely unfounded and unsupported “opinion” in contradiction of virtually all scientific evidence.
Contrast DeGregorio’s nonsense with the comments of his predecessor, the honest, Bush-appointed, non-crony, Rev. DeForest Soaries, from this unaired network interview, in which he flatly states there are no standards for electronic voting systems in place and that ‘elections in America are ripe for stealing.’
The EAC, under the “leadership” of DeGregorio, has become hopelessly compromised as he’s allowed even the disinformation experts, such as “Thor” Hearne from the phony GOP front-group “American Center for Voting Rights,” to set the agenda for the commission. Note that DeGregorio and Hearne are old St. Louis GOP colleagues. What a scam.
Below are a few choice pieces of information unsubstantiated horse excrement, from DeGregorio’s editorial yesterday.
On this one point only, I can actually agree with DeGregorio: “Americans should be confident that their vote will be counted, whether they touch a screen or fill in an oval.”
Yes, they should be confident, but they have absolutely no basis for that at this time, thanks to folks like you, Paul. Your words do not give such confidence. Transparency gives confidence. We’ve had quite enough “faith-based elections” in this country. Anyway, read on for some of DeGregorio’s most shamelessly misleading garbage… (You can contact the EAC here.)
Hype over hacking shouldn’t shatter confidence
Americans have been bombarded with tales about how easy it is to hack into a voting machine. Academics, computer scientists and others tell us that they have done it and that we cannot trust voting systems, specifically electronic or touch-screen systems.
Ironically, all of these experiments took place in the sterile environment of a laboratory. In each instance, these experts demonstrated only that, with unlimited time and resources, they could hack a voting machine. What does this prove? Nothing. Is there any proof that a voting system has successfully been hacked during an election? No.
…
The real question is whether voting systems are secure enough to withstand potential threats on Election Day. And the answer is yes.
…
Election officials are working hard to make sure that voting equipment is stored in secure locations and that they have established a chain of custody for the storage, maintenance and transport of polling equipment.
…
Debate about making sure our voting systems are secure, accurate and reliable is healthy. Conducting hacking experiments without working with election officials in a real-world election environment is not.
…
The bottom line is that our nation’s voting equipment, election results and election officials can and should be trusted.
…
[Elections Officials] deserve constructive criticism and solutions, not baseless attacks and unfounded accusations about the equipment they use. [ed note: “unfounded”???]
…
Americans should be confident that their vote will be counted, whether they touch a screen or fill in an oval. The integrity of the system is not in hands of hackers, professors, interest groups or politicians in Washington – it is managed by local election officials, as it always has been. No one should be intimidated by the hype over hacking. Vote on Nov. 7. You can count on it.
“In each instance, these experts demonstrated only that, with unlimited time and resources, they could hack a voting machine. What does this prove? Nothing. Is there any proof that a voting system has successfully been hacked during an election? No.”
This guy obviously knows nothing about computer security. Yes, let’s wait until somebody actually uses these proven methods of hacking into election machines before we get concerned about them. While we’re at it, let’s all uninstall the antivirus software from our personal computers too. Because there’s no way that new computer virus that was just announced has any chance of infecting our computers.
also, as long as there’s street lights outside & theft is illegal, there’s no need to lock the doors to my house, right?
.
THE SWIFTBOATING OF “EXIT POLLING”
Last night it started. CNN’s Jeff Greenfield was interviewed about the forthcoming elections, and his parting comment at the end of the segment was what would have appeared to be an off-handed disparaging remark about the reliability of Exit Polls.
Greenfield was/is shilling for Rove ““ and this was a TALKING POINT ordered up by Rove. “Exit Polling” had not been part of the prior discussion, but was something that he slipped in at the end of the segment ““ as if ordered to do so.
Rove has been interviewed in recent days proclaiming that HIS polling (which he proclaims nobody else has access to and is superior to all other polling data) portrays the key races to be very close, not nearly the blowouts that the REALITY BASED COMMUNITY is seeing.
THIS IS A SET UP.
If you are going to STEAL AN ELECTION VIA VOTE RIGGING ““ you need to lay the ground work ““ planting doubt in the minds of the electorate through the media shills.
Exit polling has only been called into question in the last two election cycles ““ but ONLY because the Exit Polling data were not confirmed by the final “official” vote tally. As has now been proven, it was not the Exit Polling data that was inaccurate or unreliable, it was the reporting of the Official Total” that had been tampered with.
It’s time to TAKE THE OFFENSIVE where Exit Polling is concerned and reveal this Swiftboating of “Exit Polling” for what it is ““ a Rovian sham.
The Mainstream Media is fully complicit in the Rovian Brainwashing campaign to discredit “Exit Polling” as unscientific hoohah.
The GOP has employed a firm called Penn, Schoen, & Berland to skew exit poll results in the past in order to achieve their own political ends. They are on Rove’s payroll:
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=70727
Electoral Fraud Is the First Step on the Road to Tyranny
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=70456
November 2, 2004: Overcoming a six point exit-poll advantage by Senator John Kerry, George Bush is re-elected President. Several statisticians have calculated the probability of this anomaly as one in a million — in effect, impossible.
President Bush gently admonished his father for saying he hates
to think what life would be like for his son if the Democrats win
control of Congress in the November 7 election.
“He shouldn’t be speculating like this, because — he should have
called me ahead of time and I’d tell him they’re not going to (win),”
a smiling Bush told ABC “This Week”
http://today.reuters.com/news/a...ss&rpc=22
WHY ALL THE CONFIDENCE, GEORGE?
GOT RIGGED ELECTIONS & MARTIAL LAW?
MC CAIN:
In an interview with Chris Matthews, John McCain was pressed to
explain just where another 100,000 troops are supposed to come from for Iraq:
“I don’t think we need to think of the draft again because I don’t
think it makes sense in a whole variety of ways. But I guarantee you,
if these young people felt that this nation was in a crisis and we asked them to serve, virtually every one of them would stand up because I have the greatest confidence in the young people of America.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15330717/)
CRISIS? WHAT CRISES? ARE WE IN A CRISIS, OR ARE YOU FORETELLING ONE?
See the connection? Both of these men are tipping their hand to a
pending “CRISIS” that will solve both the recruitment problem and
win (OR CANCEL) the elections.
JOHN MC CAIN ““ YOU’VE GOT FOREKNOWLEDGE OF A PENDING
ATTACK. EXPOSE IT TO PREVENT IT ““ OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.
Is THIS the pending CRISIS?
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/104451
US naval war games off the Iranian coastline: A provocation which could lead to War?
by Michel Chossudovsky
October 24, 2006
http://www.globalresearch.ca/in...articleId=3593
Just heard via TPM and nctimes that Byron Bilbray is being investigated for possibly falsifying residency docs…
http://www.nctimes.com/articles...4910_26_06.txt
Denny-boy’s got quite the steaming pile of $#~+ on his doorstep, no?
Break a leg tonight, Brad!!
I don’t get that saying, but you know what I mean! 😉
YO, BRAD! (or other resident BradBlog managers)
Yesterday an online news site for software developers/IT people posted an article titled: “How to Hack the Vote and Steal the Election”. It is written for non-technical people, and begins, “In all this time, I’ve yet to find a good way to convey to the non-technical public how well and truly screwed up we presently are, six years after the Florida recount. So now it’s time to hit the panic button: In this article, I’m going to show you how to steal an election.””
If a lack of knowledge of computers and programming has always made you or your family/friends doubt how much substance there is to this issue, just read the comments at the link to see just how real many current career software developers now realize this threat is very, very, REAL. (Isn’t that story Brad Blog link-worthy?)
http://it.slashdot.org/article....6/10/26/158241
Scary stuff, and I’m glad a genius like Jon Stokes is able to put this stuff into layman’s terms, and show us the peril democracy truly is in.
BTW the direct link to the article follows:
(Please note that you only need to be a subscriber if you want to get a PDF version of the article. Non-subscribers need to only click through the serveral “Next” links to read all the pages in the article.)
http://arstechnica.com/articles...re/evoting.ars
Pass it along, for those who still think the *possibility* of “Hacking the vote” is a “conspiracy theory”! If professional software programmers are sounding the alarm, why aren’t you?
PLUNGER:
You are SPOT ON with your post. BushCo’s attempts to tear down the validity of public exit polls before this election is not only unprecedented, but incredibly telling.
Would the US accept such excuses for a Ukranian election, or anywhere else with a borderline democracy? Of course not! It supposed to be the “United States of America, NOT the “People’s Communist Republic of America”, damn it!
Here is another excellent link to Rove referring to his “Private Polling” on NPR:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/20..._NPR_1025.html
Excerpt follows:
Rove claimed that the polls “add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House.”
“You may end up with a different math, but you’re entitled to your math,” Rove said. “I’m entitled to ‘the’ math.”
I should add to my post above about the article, “How to Hack the Vote and Steal the Election”:
The article does not show people the tiny details of how to go about it, but is written for laymen to understand the concepts behind hacking the election in general terms.
It is a wake-up call for anybody that loves democracy, if I ever saw one.
Yep, Plunger hit the nail on the head. Remember, a couple of years ago, Ed Gillespie of the RNC was advocating stopping exit polling altogether.
I look on the subject as kind of a progressive “global warming” issue. So many just can’t see it…a blind spot. But the highly accurate exit polls (and as they were being refined year by year, being even more accurate) with the widening use of EVMs – all the sudden they are diminishing in accuracy? And people are looking around for an explanation? Well, Stephen Freeman explained it well. Nobody can really dispute that fraud is the overwhelmingly most likely explanation. Yet, everybody is having a fine time analyzing and predicting the outcome of the coming election as if nothing happened…when the crime is right there in plain sight. It’s very sad.
OT — OK, I live in the middle of nowhere using telephone lines I had put in 30 years ago. 29,400bps is the most I can get out of my connection. The last few days, the Brad Blog home page takes about 8 minutes to load to readable form and then “2 items” download forever. (I gave up timing after 45 minutes.) During the time those 2 items are downloading, it is impossible to link to anything. For example, if I want to go to the comments page, I have to disconnect and re-connect on that link. What’s going on?
How about some talking points for the Dems on Election Theft:
“Recently, methods for stealing an election were demonstrated by experts in the Computer Science field & the majority of electronic voting machines in use around the country still have no paper trail. And the GOP are still not concerned. Their policy on preventing election theft is to wait until it happens. They herald the successes of Iraqi elections, but they simply don’t care about our own.”
I still say, when you go to vote, make your middle finger purple, just to mock the evil bastards and show them we’re on to them
Floridiot,
I wish doing things in protest like making your finger purple, or spoiling your ballot, actually made a difference. But in my opinion, it doesn’t.
Several years ago, I had some spare time and took a job working at my local voting station. When it came time to count the votes, I’m sorry to say that myself and two ladies counting the votes for our station were the only people that ever got to see the spoiled votes, or any votes for that matter.
The votes with “F*** Y** Government” or other such messages scribbled on them, of course, got to nobody but us three. I can assure you that none of my voting supervisors gave a damn about these spoiled votes, nor did any of use even bother telling them the details. So, these messages certainly did not get even close to the people, the high ranking government officials, they were meant for. These votes, like any vote that was not properly marked, were simply counted as “Improperly Marked”.
In comparison to your idea…
I like the spirit of making your finger purple, but in my opinion, nobody in the voting hall will know or care. They are just regular people like you and me.
Paul DeGregorio sure is wordy, couldn’t he just put it succinctly like Ken Blackwell did:
The machines are working!
There’s nothing wrong with the machines!
Mikeycan, You did notice I said the MIDDLE finger,
Anyways wait until the next EAC chairperson takes the seat, will it be Caroline Hunter, or some other evil person like one of KKKarls operatives ?
Jen, I think Brad will understand – I believe that “Break a leg!” is commonly used in the theater, sort of as a reverse jinx before your pal goes on stage. Of course the theater connection could also refer, I suppose. to John Wilkes Booth at the Ford…
Break a leg
Meaning: A wish of good luck, do well.
Example: Break a leg in your game today.
Origin: “Break a leg” is sourced in superstition. It is a wish of good luck, but the words wish just the opposite.
It was once common for people to believe in Sprites. Sprites are actually spirits or ghosts that were believed to enjoy wreaking havoc and causing trouble.
If the Sprites heard you ask for something, they were reputed to try to make the opposite happen. Telling someone to “break a leg” is an attempt to outsmart the Sprites and in fact make something good happen. Sort of a medieval reverse psychology.
Of course it has became a popular wish of luck for theater performers.
OT — I guess nobody else is having my tech problems. To make it clear, I can’t turn off those 2 items downloading. It’s why I have to disconnect and reconnect.
I’m afraid I’m being “left behind”. Had to happen someday. 🙁
Arry,.. Comment # 18
You are not alone I have been having a hell of a time entering the Bradblog site. Others have been complaining too. Maybe bu$$hco/NSA is going to crash all the lib sites just prior to the election. Steal the election,.. we did not do that,.. besides there would have been an incredible uproar.
******************
More bu$$hco propaganda,.. “The Economy is Doing Just Great,.. Everything is Just Dandy”. 1.)The market value of private homes plunged by 15% recently,.. This is bad news for the economy because people to keep up with expenses are using their homes as ATM machines. The mortgage of many homes could exceed the market value of the home,.. banks will then force owners to increase their financial equity. 2.) Foreclosure rates for home mortgages are up drastically,..
Article about housing foreclosures.