Reply #28: One of my theories about the 2004 election was that the electronic voting [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

systems had to be pre-programmed to certain percentages, that Rove & Co. were caught off guard by the size of Kerry's win, and that's why Ohio happened. They had the Republican election theft machine all primed to go in Ohio, if needed, as Plan B. I had wondered to myself why, if they have TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code in all the new and extremely insider hackable voting machines and central tabulators--controlled by Wally O'Dell and Howard Ahmanson (80% of the nations' vote)--did they risk the blatant, egregious, broad-daylight Voting Rights Act crimes in Ohio? Why not just tweak the code a little more? And I think the answer IS access. It's not so easy to change the programming code on election day.

It was just a guess. They couldn't count on the Democratic Party leadership just ignoring the broad daylight robbery of black, student and other Democratic votes in Ohio. So it was a risky business. And, even with John Ashcroft as A.G., providing immunity from any prosecution, still, it looks really bad, and, even if they could count on the war profiteering corporate news monopolies to place an "Iron Curtain" over the whole thing, Ohioans might get uppity about it, and kick up a fuss (and some tried damned hard, bless them forever!!!). So why do it?

Answer: They had to. I toyed with the idea that they did it out of pure malice. They had the power to stomp all over black and poor voters, so they did. Smash 'em down. Crush all the little people. Beat 'em up so bad that they can never rise up to vote Democratic again. And I don't doubt that Bushites get their thrills stomping on the helpless for no reason at all. But I'm pretty convinced now that it was necessity. TIA's latest, here, helps confirm it. Likely, they underestimated the American people's determination to throw them out. The machines (and central tabulators) have to be pre-programmed to steal, switch or eat votes, in the factory or opportunistically during "servicing" (or maybe they do it when they conduct their secret industry "testing" of the machines--a nice irony), but there are too many safeguards and eyes watching on election day to alter the code to meet changing circumstances. So, with Kerry surging to victory--even with the secret formulae in place--Plan B had to be activated. (I've sometimes wondered, too, how it could be predicted, ahead of time, that it would "all come down to Ohio"? Everybody kept saying this, and I kept wondering--why? The answer may be that Rove/Diebold-ES&S directed it there, into Blackwell's corrupt jurisdiction--a state that Rove could count on to steal, suppress, switch, disappear, or throw away as many votes as needed--and Rove planted the "meme" with the usual suspects.)

I have my thoughts about Plan C, which I won't go into here. (Okay, it has to do with Cheney running off to Hawaii two days before the election--odd choice, Hawaii, not a lot of Republican votes there--and Cheney's plane being out over the Pacific on election day; all those phony "terrorist" alerts seeded into the newsstream leading up to election day, including a really odd one involving a school in Los Angeles; and, if you wanted to shut down the voting on the west coast, or seriously disrupt it, how you would do it, combining these elements?)

But Plan A and Plan B combined well enough to flip a 3% Kerry win (reflected in the exit polls) into a 2.5% Bush win (as "tabulated" by Diebold/ES&S's secret formulae). Kerry probably won by more like a 5% margin, if all those who wanted to vote had been able to. The 3% margin is the poll of those who made it to the voting booth and actually voted. (Greg Palast estimated that a million black voters had been purged from the voting rolls before the election ever started.)

Another thing that was happening that year was CA Sec of State Kevin Shelley's lawsuit against Diebold, which included a demand to see Diebold's source code. This was in late spring 2004, six months before the election. What strikes me about the whole arc of the Shelley story now is the Dark Lords' desperation to get him out of office before he could go any further. He was clearly onto Diebold. He had decertified their touchscreens. (I think now he must have been suspicious about the Recall, too.) And he certainly would have pursued it--he is a bulldog. So they had to cripple him--ruin his career, his credibility, drive him out in disgrace. And that's what they did. That's how important it was to them to NOT have a smart Sec of State opening up their machines.

ES&S is playing games about the code, too--in FL-13--saying they may or may not cooperate with examination of their code (--in the most blatantly fraudulent election of them all!) (--even the NYT thinks it was bad!). (18,000 "undervotes", the bulk of them Democratic votes, who voted for all the Democrats, but couldn't be bothered to vote in the hottest Congressional race in years.)

I have insisted on these statistical threads that CONTEXT is important. If known criminals have the means to commit a crime, undetectably--and have also gone out of their way to set up the conditions for the crime--in this case election theft--then you have to start with the presumption that election theft has occurred, and use what tools you can to figure it out--as TIA has so magnificently done. It violates logic and common sense to presume that vote tabulation with secret formulae, owned and controlled by people with very close ties to the Republican Party and far rightwing causes, is correct, by default. That is "faith-based" voting. It's nuts. The opposite presumption should be made: Means--yes. Motive--yes. Opportunity--yes. Known criminal history--yes. All in spades. Easy, undetectable means. Massive coverup of other crimes, and the opportunity for the more massive looting of our treasury, provide plenty of motive. Opportunity--every opportunity, from the factory to selective "machine breakdowns"--all controlled by rightwing corporations. Known criminal history--100,000 murders, at least.

Another test is the political landscape around the election theft, and resulting from the theft. In this case, Bush's 30% approval rating (and rarely over 40% for a two year period--since his "re-election" in fact), and all the other many indicators of citizen disgust and rebellion (including the huge increase in requests for Absentee Ballots for these midterms--indicating vast distrust of the machines and their "results"). SEVENTY-PERCENT of the people wanting the Iraq War ended. EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT wanting no part of a widened Mideast war.

And the result? "Impeachment is off the table." Bush, Cheney, Abazaid and others STILL saying "stay the course." Congress critters discussing various plans to "withdraw" U.S. troops a year from now, or two years from now (to nearby emirates). And a group of Democrats in Congress, like the ones who voted for torture and suspension of habeas corpus last month--Bushite Democrats--poised to block moves to end the war, to reduce funding for the war, to impeach the perpetrators of the war, to enforce subpoenas against the perpetrators, and to achieve any real reform. Even with the Democratic wins, the new Congress is still not very representative of the American people. And you have to ask why. And, if you have a nearly completely non-transparent vote counting system run by rightwing corporations--in both the PRIMARIES and the general election--you're really damned stupid not to start there. (I really think the primaries need close scrutiny, too. Who was selected out?) I heard the Iraq vets didn't do well--but I don't have stats on it. If I was a warmonger, those are the people I would LEAST want in Congress, and, if I had the secret power to select some of the Democrats out, via "trade secret," proprietary programming code--in craftily designing a Congress that looked like a win for the people, but wasn't really--that's where I would start. Analysis is needed, not just of Dem vs. Repub, but which Dems lost? What was their policy on the war? Were the strong antiwar candidates the ones weeded out--or particularly progressive or populist candidates, who might tend to scrutinize war spending and support other serious reform?

Another reason that the new Congress is still not very representative of the American people is that only one third of the Senate was up for re-election. And in the Senate, we have a big blockade against the wishes of the American people--a very tight Dem majority with Joe Lieberman as the pivot. The people changed the Senate as much as they could--even with only one third of it open to change, and rigged voting machines. But it's still full of Bush "pod people," and War Democrats. That is where most progressive proposals will die--in the Senate--including, possibly, election reform with any teeth. (Diane "You too can learn to love the Corporate Rulers" Feinstein heads the Senate elections committee.)

One final thought on additional analysis that is needed: Lieberman's election. I understand that CT still has the old reliable, and virtually unriggable lever voting machines, but I picked up that CT introduced an electronic central tabulator between the primary and the election. I'm still wondering about that. The pre-election polls showed Lieberman ahead--and it may turn out that war profiteers simply bought the election (poured money into it), that Lieberman had too many chips he could cash in (while Lamont had none), and that the Democratic Party failed to support the choice of the rank and file. It all seems very corrupt. Lamont did a magnificent thing in running, and at last eloquently expressing the American people's overwhelming opposition to this war, in a political forum. He is the "Eugene McCarthy" of this era--the harbinger, the political catalyst. If he did lose it, in truth, I'm sure it was the forces that were arrayed against him, and not anything he did wrong. But it doesn't make much sense. I repeat, SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people want the war ended. EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT want no part in a widened Mideast war. So what is it about CT that caused it to buck this tremendous trend? Or did it? It needs an explanation.