No matter how long it takes for history to give you the means,
2004 Election Computer Fraud
Painting by Michelle Christides, copyright 2004, all rights reserved Gwen Ifel on PBS Washington Week in Review, November 5, 2004, said philosophically that the Republic goes on no matter who is in the White House. Then I read the following article and found myself painting in outrage and in grief recognizing the intimations from my meditation practice, while listening to The Twelve Caesars, by Michael Grant. This recognition is in knowing that there are means, motive, and opportunity for a crime of election fraud in computer technology.
Is there a crime? We must find out -- as when murder is committed but the body not found, the fact that the computer programming was not verified independently before electronic voting machines were used is an indication that technology has outstripped our elections officials' understanding.
Please follow the investigation in the House Judiciary Committee led by Rep. John Conyers. On December 10, Deputy Supervisor of Elections of Hocking County, Ohio, Sherole Eaton, submitted an affidavit to the Committee that Triad Systems, the manufacturer of punch-card machines used in the majority of Ohio counties, was sending a technician around to the precincts scheduled for the recount occurring before the Electoral College results are ratified by the Senate, January 8, 2005. This technician was swapping parts in the tabulators of the punch-card tallies.
If the exit polls' were "systematically skewed," as Steve Freeman, University of Pennsylvania Professor of Social Sciences, reported to Rep. Conyers, then we must investigate. Prof. Freeman did a statistical analysis of variance which showed that either the exit polls were "skewed" (an impossible pattern in a random poll) or else the count is wrong. Any lapse accepting this statistical impossibility in the exit polls would signal the death of this Republic and its transmogrification to Empire. The Ukrainians first suspected the discrepancy in election results from their own election polls and went camping in mid-winter in the streets before Parliament, while praising American Democracy.
The U.S. media are explaining our results as the will of the people to back the Bush "political capital" -- in Iraq as erroneously but irretrievably linked to 9/11 in public understanding, and at home, in the dismantling of the Federal government since the New Deal. Such explanation of results which could have been fraudulent can only result in the Democratic Party becoming a clone of the Republican and, as a consequence and without our knowing it, in a one-party State. Since the means allowing such unsuspected fraud were there, we must now verify WHETHER they were used. There are two ways computer fraud might have been committed.
Here is the article on hacking into the databases AFTER the precincts have delivered their sealed transfer cases with the machine tallies:
" 'All the different voting machines at all the different polling places, . . .' Bev Harris explained to Howard Dean on the Tina Brown CNBC talk show last summer, 'in all cases, the final tally is sent to a 'central tabulator' machine so it can add up all the votes , , , a Windows-based PC . . . anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator. . . .
" '[There] is the official program that the County Supervisor sees . . . [such as Diebold GEMS software] but the local database program like Excel . . . is where they keep the votes . . . in a file titled 'Central Tabulator Votes.'
"Harris illustrated in a film clip: 'We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds.' It would be nearly impossible for the election software -- or a County election official -- to know that the vote database had been altered.' "
There is a second, more frightening means that could have been used -- and that is the programming software in the electronic voting machines at the polls could have been written to give a random number of votes to make up a certain percentage to the candidates of one party, if they were getting less than 50 percent. It is more frightening because the CEO of Diebold, the manufacturer of voting machinery, actually said he would deliver Ohio to Bush. This type of programming would add a simple algorythm to the voting machine program, and could even be written to delete the lines in its own program that pertain to these instructions after November 2, 2004.
The only way this more frightening fraud could be detected would be through circumstantial evidence of statistics showing that demographic comparisons of precincts using different brands of equipment or different types than computer voting machinery, such as optical scanners or punch-cards, vary statistically by systematic results. Another possibility would be variation in the passage of amendments that could not be programmed due to the highly differing ballots but which people who would vote for the losing slate of candidates would also vote for.
Please refer to this web page of The University of Michigan and search for
Here is the means: that it was possible either to hack into the central tabulators or that the programming software not have been independently verified before the election in the electronic voting machines is so preposterous that for this very reason, it must be investigated for the election to be ascertained. No matter who is put into the White House, the over-turn of an election signals the death of the Republic. Such a crime depends upon means, motive and opportunity. Is there a dead body?
The Statue of Liberty is my most cherished symbol of allegiance to society. My mother sailed by her as one of only 223 women to serve in WWI, as a "combatant" Signal Corps operator. My father was greeted by her, when he sought refuge here after WWI. Yes, she is wearing a burka because the ultimate irony is that the greatest transfer of treasure in history from one region to another is that of the West, particularly the US, to the Middle East for oil. The fundamentalists of Islam are confronting the fundamentalists of Christendom, once again at the turn of the new millennium; and they need not win the military victory, to make US like their culture -- as Karen Armstrong described so completely in The Battle for God.
For a new spiritual democratic vision, here is an article "Democrats Needed and Need a Spiritual/Religious Left" by Rabbi Michael Lerner, 11.12.2004. I refer you to this visionary civic organization, Tikkun for help in translating spirituality into effective ethical action.
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T-shirt with photo print of oil painting or of World-Soul logo
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
Voting Machine Malfunctions,
which states: "Questions were raised prior to the election about the security of Diebold Company's election equipment. The questions resurfaced when malfunctioning equipment was discovered in one Ohio precinct. The discrepancy between exit polls, which showed Kerry a winner, and the final results, which re-elected Bush, also seemed puzzling. The Kerry camp and mainstream media have given minimal recognition to the topic."