Apropos of our previous piece — in which we pointed out that nothing exists until the corporate mainstream media says it does — Associated Press has now officially characterized the Florida 13th Congressional Race as a “meltdown” — one which is “a microcosm of the 2000 Florida election fiasco that put George W. Bush in the White House.”
Of course, simply calling it a “meltdown” (gosh, where have we heard that description before?), doesn’t mean the corporate mainstream media will treat it as one. If it’s really “a microcosm of 2000,” one would think the issue would lead to banner headlines everywhere. It should, of course, since the only actual difference between Florida’s Bush/Gore 2000 and Florida’s Jennings/Buchanan 2006 is that, as good luck would have it, the balance of neither Congress nor the White House depends on the final outcome. But that’s just a stroke of luck. One that — one would think — even the CMSM could connect the dots on.
But perhaps not.
Even Sarasota’s Herald-Trib which, as we’ve previously pointed out, has been the bible of mainstream FL-13 coverage, has now disappeared their website link to, and apparently ceased updating, their FL-13 Special Coverage page.
We hope that will change since the story is, quite clearly, far from over down there and we’ve been closely following the Herald-Trib’s excellent body of coverage and archives for reference.
But for now, at least, it’s back to the blogs for the latest. Paul Kiel over at TPMMuckraker has the latest updates on this week’s scheduled and controversial (some would say pre-discredited) state-run audit of the paperless ES&S touch-screen machines which caused 18,000 votes to disappear in the election.
UPDATE: We also meant to point you to this spot-on satire from H-T columnist Daryl Lease, by the way, when we originally published this article.
In case you missed it, over the Thanksgiving Weekend the Orlando Sentinel found that — had the machines actually worked as well-advertised and promised — the Democratic candidate Christine Jennings would have won the race that has since been certified by the state of Florida in favor of the Republican candidate Vern Buchanan.
With that, and the following statement from Katherine Harris (whose U.S. House seat, ironically, is the one at stake in FL-13) quoted by the AP article which kicked off this item — “Now we’re the national model instead of the national concern. There’ll never be a hanging, dangling or pregnant chad again,” she said in 2001 when Florida certified their “upgrade” to the machines they now use — we might suggest the following new slogan for the Sunshine State…even if it’s perhaps too long to fit on license plates:
Florida: Fucking up American Elections Since at Least 2000
For the record…AP also mentions that Florida’s former and now-disgraced Secretary of State — never one previously to let anything get between her and a press appearance — seems to be taking a page from Diebold’s Cut-and-Run PR Playbook at this point: “Harris, who lost her bid for U.S. Senate, did not respond to several messages left this week by The Associated Press.”
I too have been following Florida’s 13th closely; clearly, something screwy surfaced in Sarasota on election day.
On balance, I think the Sarasota Herald-Tribune has been giving pretty good coverage. I’ve been posting my own analysis to their on-line forum there, from the perspective of a former manufacturing executive of equipment that is similar to electronic voting technology, at least in some ways.
To me, the odd distribution of undervotes among Sarasota’s precincts makes it quite likely that there was some form of software manipulation to the vote tally.
By examining the ballots with the 18,000 undervotes, the Orlando Sentinel was able to report last week that the more Democratic a voter’s ballot, the more likely the ballot would show no vote in the District 13 congressional race. That isn’t a random undervote…
Perhaps the mechanism of manipulation came in the form of some low-level subroutine hitch-hiking on the “personalized electronic ballot” memory card that poll workers insert into the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines, which sets up the device just before a voter selects his/her choices. The iVotronic machines are seemingly “stand alone” in nature and they are not tied directly into a network, but malicious code could be carried to the machines in this manner.
Anyway, you can read a more involved discussion, and the comments of Sarasota voters in this thread and others, on the Herald-Tribune forum site. My thread is entitled “vote-machine software contamination??”, see
Theophilus Reed,
My only advise to you folks out in Florida, is start freeway blogging, start stocking the corporate media; stick giant
“MEDIA BLACKOUT
ELECTRONIC VOTING
MACHINE FALIURES
18,000 VOTES GONE!”
signs into their faces. I am sure you can think of something simple. A canvas at the dollar store is a dollar, some black pencils is a dollar, some clear tape is a dollar, Make signs and zip-strip them up to all the FREEWAY ON RAMP fences.
Keep bitching to your senators, and assembly, and secretary of state. The sad fact is the electronic votes are gone, they can not be validated, those 1’s and 0’s are gone to the ethers. Not even GOD can bring them back. If no change happens it may be time to become more aggressively civil disobedient.
This is why in our elections
ELECTRICITY, DIGITIED DATA, AND NETWORKS MUST BE BANNED NOW.
peace to you.
~phil
USE THE TAPE TO WATERPROOF BOTH SIDES OF YOUR SIGN
USE THE PENCIL (NOT INK) TO DRAW THE LETTERS / ART
USE ZIP-STRIPS (6 Ea.) TO ATTACH THE SIGN TO THE FENCE.
Your talking about $5.00 and you can probably make several signs. Take your time, get creative.
If I was a KID still, you wouldn’t wan’t to know what I could do with a can of spray paint.
“Hey there goes the ABC ELECTION FRAUD / MEDIA BLACKOUT Satellite Truck…”
o;)
What in the crap does that mean?
… Larry Bergan said…
“What in the crap does that mean?”
He’s mumbling about the summary screen…
… which is more of the “the machine must be telling us the truth because it said it’s telling us the truth” variety of logic.
What are the odds, that probably the one district in the whole United States that had THE biggest e-vote snafu, FL-13, was also the district of Catherine Harris??? Anyone find that a little more than a coincidence? Is anyone realizing the odds of that??? The person who was responsible for Bush being placed in office in 2000 over Gore…THAT district had the biggest reported e-vote snafu???
That’s WAY more than a coincidence!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is “prima facie evidence” that these machines were tampered with to flip votes and not register votes on largely democratic races. Time for revotes – and back to paper. Send these corrupted machines back to Diebold for a refund (ESS, Sequoia, et al) because they sold us “bogus goods” with “bogus guarantees”. The people want a refund on these machines and want it now. If we fail to have these “damaged goods” returned for a full refund, then why should people continue to pay taxes? Boston tea party time.
This Florida race is an abomination of our democracy – a sham – another “stolen election” and the people need to stop this overt level of corruption by insisting on a “revote”….then the removal of all paperless, touch screen voting machines in this country! Diebold has been in bed with the GOP along with the other voting machine producers so it’s no surprise the “undervotes” were mainly Democratic votes. Amazing how Kathrine Harris’s disgusting karma in fixing the stolen election of 2000 right there is still permeating the place. Anyone smelling sulphur these days?
{ed note: Comment deleted. Disinformation. Also, personal attacks on other commenters are similarly not allowed here. Finally, in yet a third broken rule, this poster has previously commented under different names including “Paco Rivera” and “Hannity Rules!” Why “conservatives” feel they don’t have to follow rules is beyond me. – BF}
Liberals Are Stupid: So, you’re saying that “liberals” said, “Let’s get rid of punch cards, and hopefully, we’d like a more corrupt/hackable system.”
You’re comment makes ZERO sense. That is NOT what “liberals” said.
Liberals: “WE WANT A MORE CORRUPT AND HACKABLE SYSTEM THAN PUNCH CARDS…YES, THAT’S WHAT WE WANT!”
I think “liberals”, oh, and voters in general, want a system that WORKS!
I think it was just a coincidence…that Catherine Harris’s district, out of the thousands of vote districts across the United States, had the #1 biggest electronic vote snafu. Agree??? A BIG coincidence…
What would be the odds of Tom Feeney’s district having the SECOND biggest e-vote discrepancy, when Clint Curtis finishes his recreation of the vote?
Question to Floridians: What exactly is “the fuck” going on down there???
{ed note: Comment deleted. Disinformation. Also, personal attacks on other commenters are similarly not allowed here. Finally, in yet a third broken rule, this poster has previously commented under different names including “Paco Rivera” and “Hannity Rules!” Why “conservatives” feel they don’t have to follow rules is beyond me. – BF}
I was just listening to yesterday’s podcast of Al Franken. I’m disappointed that he still attributes problems with electronic voting to “glitches” and not outright fraud. No wonder he doesn’t want to have Brad on his show, although he says people approach him all the time to discuss voting machine fraud.
I know Al was a latecomer to using the Internet, so I’m guessing he doesn’t have a technical sense of how easy software can be rigged. On the other hand, there’s been a lot of evidence, even on Fox News, of how easy the machines can be rigged to flip votes.
At least Al acknowledges that paper trails are needed, even if he’s still in denial about how deceptive and dirty the neocon authoritarian right is capable of operating.
Wake up Al!!!
– Tom
{ed note: Comment deleted. Disinformation. Also, personal attacks on other commenters are similarly not allowed here. Finally, in yet a third broken rule, this poster has previously commented under different names including “Paco Rivera” and “Hannity Rules!” Why “conservatives” feel they don’t have to follow rules is beyond me. – BF}
#17: Did you and all other “liberals” remember to give thanks this Thanksgiving for the fact that stupidity is not contagious? You sure wouldn’t want to catch it from #10, #16 and #18! 😉
I just love seeing thoughtful discourse on the Brad Blog. Even from followers of the Savage Weiner cult.
America is a truly blessed country.
– Tom
For the record, Florida did not have touch screen voting machines (liberals are whatever your ridiculous moniker is above) so you need to do some credible research before making assertions of which you know nothing.
Katherine Harris and her corrupt cadre of buds (not excluding Jebbie) called the election for numbnuts in 2000 in Sarasota by 537 votes….yeah, right!! Are you kidding me with your level of ignorance or what?
Get a life and get informed. Do some research before coming here and posting bogus information, please. Do yourself a huge favor by not making a total ass of yourself.
Obviously, the rethugs who have shown their own level of sociopathy and who have attempted to destroy this country over the past 6 years are the ones with serious psychiatric disorders. Thank goodness that the majority of americans have realized this and voted the thugs and criminals out of office.
You lost, reighwinger #10,#18 respectively…hahahah….get over it, loser and move on, Mr. Troll.
I smell sulphur….The troll is #10,#18….Phew!
“Florida: Fucking up American Elections Since at Least 2000”
Now THAT’s funny!
What else is funny? Trolls are not conservative. Conservatives want every vote to count, too. I’m not sure WHAT to call people like “liberals are stupid”…they are NOT conservatives. What are they? They are corporate shills or idiots…I tend to think the “former”…because I don’t believe people are that stupid. I actually have faith in people…
I still think that Catherine Harris’s FL-13 district having the BIGGEST REPORTED E-VOTE “glitch”…was a total coincidence…I know this coincidence is a million-to-one…but I still believe it…I also believe there are thin-white aliens living in the earth’s crust, controlling everything…but that shouldn’t “take away” from me believing the FL-13 coincidence…
Anyone “with me” on the “coincidence” angle???
“liberals are stupid”: Still fighting on our behalf, for vote corruption! Gives me a “warm/fuzzy”…knowing there’s someone out there fighting for me/us…
I’ll bet katherine harris puts that makeup on with a mason’s trowel. . . . . I’m so petty. . .