Votescam says GHW Bush stole the 1988 election by computer fraud

[eomer]

In a recent thread (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x339622), Mistwell claims among other things that computer tabulation was not used as far back as 1988 and therefore it would have taken thousands of co-conspirators to steal an election back then. Mistwell has not backed up that claim with any evidence.

In fact, apparently computers were used in 1988. James Collier, in Votescam, says that George H. W. Bush stole the New Hampshire primary by use of computer fraud and then stole the general election the same way.

Here are a few snippets:

The voices most of us really heard that day were the voices of computers — strong, loud, authoritative, unquestioned in their electronic finality. The computers counted more than 55 million American votes in 1988 — more than enough to swing election after election across the nation. In that election, a difference of just 535,000 or so votes would have put Dukakis into the White House.

The computers that spoke in November 1988 held in their inner .workings small boxes that contained secret codes that only the sellers of the computers could read. The programs, or "source codes," were regarded as "trade secrets," The sellers of the vote-counting software zealously guarded their programs from the public, from election officials, from everyone — on the dubious grounds that competitors could steal their ideas if the source codes were open to inspection.

<snip>

Among the wickedest recent examples of possible computerized vote fraud, of the sort that has disillusioned millions of Americans, is the 1988 New Hampshire primary that saved George Bush from getting knocked out of the race to the White House.

<snip>

Yet in New Hampshire, there was some wonderment expressed in the press, and little more. There was no rechecking of the computerized voting machines, no inquiry into the path of the vote from the voting machines to the central tallying place, no public scrutiny of the mechanisms of the mighty peculiar vote that saved George Bush's career and leapfrogged the relatively obscure Sununu into the White House.

Sounds an awful lot like 2004, doesn't it?

There are lots more details in the book. Here's a link to Chapter One:
http://www.votescam.com/chap1.php

[Kelvin Mace]

1. I have read the book and find it fascinating

but it REALLY needs footnotes for sources.

[eomer]

4. The fact that the book could be written in 1992 is sufficient rebuttal.

Your point about sources is well taken but the book in and of itself is a sufficient rebuttal to Mistwell's claim. Collier provides names and details of computer systems in a book written in 1992. He could not have written the book at that time if Mistwell's claim were true.

[sacxtra]

2. Can you SEE electricity? No? No Evidence then.

That was then, this is NOW.

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. Wow, that's an amazing picture!

Bush the First is an amazingly creepy man, with all sorts of ugly things strongly suspected about him for various episodes in his career. I can certainly imagine him stealing an election. How strong is the evidence that he did?

[sacxtra]

5. Amazing argument

Quote:
How strong is the evidence that he did?
Unquote



Baaaaa. Wrong question.


The Senate could NOT verify the vote
The House could NOT verify the vote
The Local Precints could NOT verify the vote

GOD can NOT verify the vote


Don't EVEN try to spin it.

Prove he didn't!

Or REMOVE DIGITIZED DATA from the SYSTEM

[anamandujano]

22. Thank you sacxtra.

You win this one, for the good guys, needless to say.

I'm saving your post, it cheers me to no end.

[eomer]

7. Ironically, Mistwell makes the point for us

that the 1988 exit poll, just like the one in 2004, provides evidence that something is amiss.

Just like Freeman's approach to 2004, there are two coherent theories:
1) The exit poll was incorrect
2) The actual vote count was incorrect due to fraud, mistakes or both.

There is no reason to choose the first theory and discard the second. There is not much evidence to use to argue for one over the other because no one thinks we should bother to look into this kind of anomaly. Nothing to see here... move along.

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. Yeah, no wonder the Rethugs want to suppress exit polls.

They are very revealing of election fraud, which is of course why they have been used to confirm the fairness of elections in a number of places. But not where the Thugs want to cover up fraud.

Chilling.

[Bill Bored]

6. "In that election, a difference of just 535,000 or so votes..." ???

The official difference was about 7,000,000 votes.
What did the exit polls say????
Where does he get 535,000?

In 1992, Clinton won by about 6,000,000 votes, against the same guy.
In 1996, by 8,000,000 votes against Bob Dole.
Both with large electoral vote margins.

Sure, Ross Perot was a factor in '92 and '96, but if you were going to hack the vote, it would have been a simple matter to shift equal numbers of votes to Perot from Dems and Repubs, nullifying him.
So was Bubba in on the fix or didn't the Repukes care who was President for those 8 yrs? Or was the software too dumb to handle a large third party vote? And if it was is this why Perot threw his hat into the ring? Did he know this too? Was he in on it, or was he hoping to reveal it to the American people? You can speculate forever!

And if they had this capability, why was 2000 so damn close? Why did they even need butterfly ballots and a bogus felons list in FL to confuse and disenfranchise people? That alone was enough to decide the election.

How do we explain the decisive Clinton victories?

Sure, anything is possible. We need a more transparent process or else we have to audit this stuff like crazy, at any cost.

We need to sue the states to prove our votes are being counted as cast.

We may even need to go to paper, hand counted ballots, but a well tested precinct count OpScan NOT exported to proprietary tabulators such as GEMS (which can import totals from BRC and IMARK OpScans) would probably work. And all the OpScan totals should be checked and tabulated openly by citizens from each precinct.

But unless some of the above questions can be explained, the evidence for 1988 seems a bit weak to me.

[Wilms]

9. Why is everyone so sure that Clinton wasn't who they wanted in '92?

Just prior to that election, it looked to me as if GHWB was bowing out of the race.

I figured it was decided that it would be best for him to be on the lam.

:shrug:

[Bill Bored]

10. I assume by "they" you mean the election fraudsters?

It might be better to define them a bit. If we assume they are the Bush family and friends, it doesn't seem likely they would give up the Presidency for 8 long years. If 41 wanted to bail out, he could have done so sooner and been replaced in time for the election. And this doesn't explain '96.

This sounds like the "Clinton is a Republican" theory. It's probably the only explanation for what happened if you accept that the fraud goes so far back. But then how do you explain the fact that "they" were also trying to get him out of office from Day 1?

[Wilms]

11. I'm only hypothesizing, but yes, the fraudsters is who I meant.

And from this view, it's not a Dem/Repub thing.

That "they" were trying to get him out of office could be...

It's a different "they". The guys that did that may not be the fraudsters, but just another group-perhaps used by the fraudsters to create a distraction

And with all the talk about Monica, we missed a discussion on Mena.

[bitchkitty]

18. Clinton won both elections -

by virtue of his appeal of course, but also because BBV voting was not as widespread. If they could have stolen it, they would have.

This is the first I've heard of the vote being hacked in '88. Knowing Poppy Bush, like I said - if he could have, he would have.

[eomer]

12. Bill, it looks like it is possible, more or less

I found the 1988 election results and checked to see whether
it was possible to change the winner by flipping 535,000
votes.  I found that I could flip the electoral vote count to
a tie by flipping about 525,000 votes from Bush to Dukakis if
I choose the states carefully.

The official electoral vote result was Bush 426, Dukakis 112. 
To make it a tie I have to flip 157 electoral votes from Bush
to Dukakis, for a count of Bush 269, Dukakis 269.

Here are the results and the votes I needed to flip to achieve
that result:

          BUSH     DUKAKIS  EVS     MARGIN     VOTES  EVS
DC      27,590     159,407    3   -131,817                
MA   1,194,635   1,401,415   13   -206,780                
IA     545,355     670,557    8   -125,202                
MN     962,337   1,109,471   10   -147,134                
RI     177,767     225,123    4    -47,356                
HI     158,625     192,364    4    -33,739                
OR     560,126     616,206    7    -56,080                
NY   3,081,871   3,347,882   36   -266,011                
WI   1,047,499   1,126,794   11    -79,295                
WV     310,065     341,016  5/1    -30,951                
WA     903,835     933,516   10    -29,681                
VT     124,331     115,775    3      8,556     4,278    3
IL   2,310,939   2,215,940   24     94,999    47,500   24
PA   2,300,087   2,194,944   25    105,143    52,572   25
MD     876,167     826,304   10     49,863    24,932   10
NM     270,341     244,497    5     25,844    12,922    5
MT     190,412     168,936    4     21,476    10,738    4
SD     165,415     145,560    3     19,855     9,928    3
CA   5,054,917   4,702,233   47    352,684   176,342   47
MO   1,084,953   1,001,639   11     83,314    41,657   11
CT     750,241     676,584    8     73,657    36,829    8
DE     139,639     108,647    3     30,992    15,496    3
ND     166,559     127,739    3     38,820    19,410    3
WY     106,867      67,113    3     39,754    19,877    3
CO     728,177     621,453    8    106,724    53,362    8
MI   1,965,486   1,675,783   20    289,703                
AK     119,251      72,584    3     46,667                
ME     307,131     243,569    4     63,562                
LA     883,702     717,460   10    166,242                
KY     734,281     580,368    9    153,913                
NV     206,040     132,738    4     73,302                
KS     554,049     422,636    7    131,413
AR     466,578     349,237    6    117,341
OH   2,416,549   1,939,629   23    476,920
TX   3,036,829   2,352,748   29    684,081
TN     947,233     679,794   11    267,439
OK     678,367     483,423    8    194,944
NJ   1,743,192   1,320,352   16    422,840
ID     253,881     147,272    4    106,609
NC   1,237,258     890,167   13    347,091
MS     557,890     363,921    7    193,969
NA     397,956     259,235    5    138,721
NH     281,537     163,696    4    117,841
SC     606,443     370,554    8    235,889
AL     815,576     549,506    9    266,070
GA   1,081,331     714,792   12    366,539
AZ     702,541     454,029    7    248,512
IN   1,297,763     860,643   12    437,120                
VA   1,309,162     859,799   12    449,363                
UT     428,442     207,343    5    221,099                
FL   2,617,775   1,656,701   21    961,074

TOT 48,884,993  41,809,094  537  7,075,899   525,843  157

To flip to Dukakis as a clear winner rather than a tie would
require flipping more than 600,000 votes but still in the same
ballbark as Collier's claim.

I thought your challenge was a reasonable one and was a bit
surprised when I found that in fact you can flip the result
with that few votes.

Link to my source of 1988 election results:
http://www.presidentelect.org/e1988.html


By the way, I don't know what the deal is with WV showing 5/1
electoral votes.  Could this be a case where a Dukakis elector
voted for other than Dukakis because it was known not to make
a difference?  If so, then add that vote for Dukakis and the
269/269 tie becomes a 270/269 win by Dukakis.


Edit: turn on plain text so columns line up

[BeFree]

13. Well, I'll be....

Just flipping 600,000 votes and history is changed.....

I remember the 1988 vote, it didn't seem right then, it seems even worse now. 17 years ago they were just figuring it out; in 2004 they nailed it.

[eomer]

14. Of course, in reality it would have been more than the 525,000 votes shown

because the pre-fraud results being an exact tie in the 14 states chosen is a statistical impossibility.

So maybe 1 or 1.5 million votes flipped is a more realistic figure.

But that's still possible if Collier is correct when he says that 55 million votes were tabulated by computer.

[Amaryllis]

15. Glad you are posting this. I have posted this also and have posted several

threads on Votescam but none have really taken off. This is very important info to get out. What concerns me the most is the complicity of the media in all this. They are as dangerous as e-voting.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

16. Danaher DREs in North Carolina in 1986, optical scanners too

Welcome to North Carolina, where the state bird is the DRE.
With over 7,363 we boast a wide variety, including the Danaher DREs from as far back as 1986.

North Carolina, although majority registered democrat, has not given it's electoral votes to a democratic presidential candidate since Carter.

*punch cards are read by electronic tabulators.
*optical scanners, also read by electronic tabulators.
*Most if not all of the optical scanners have modems.
I don't know about the punch cards.

[Wilms]

17. kick n/t

[brindis_desala]

19. Ohio has a long history of computer "irregularities"

In JERRY SCHUTZMAN, Plaintiff-vs- MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ELECTIONS, HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO and THE CITY OF CINCINNATI, Defendants
< >

The Judge had stated in his ruling that: "There is no adequate and proper safeguard to prevent the computers from being programmed to distort the election results." This is one of the most superb statements ever issued by any computer expert since computers began to be used to count votes in the United States circa 1974.

http://www.networkamerica.org/expert.htm

The Greatest Coverup Begins

About 1974 a sinister development was in full swing all over the United States. In many areas, especially high populations regions, the votes were no longer being counted in the precincts by neighborhood people. The switch was on to computer vote counting systems. Typical was Cincinnati, Ohio where votes were bundled up immediately after the polls closed and sent to a mysterious central computer room to be counted by secret computer codes. To add insult to injury, the votes were counted away from the watchful eye of the entire electorate and the press.

Despite the brutal cover up that has been conducted for going on three decades by the news media and the major parties to prevent you from hearing about this issue, some major media news items have appeared. In a rare but superb news story on the eve of the 1988 Presidential election, Dan Rather (CBS Evening News) engaged in this exchange with computer expert Howard J. Strauss of Princeton University:

Rather: "Realistically, could the fix be put on in a national election?"

Strauss: "Get me a job with the company that writes the software for this program. (ed: Strauss was referring to the most common computer program in use) Then I'd have access to one third of the votes. Is that enough to fix a general election?"

http://www.dpoe.org/issues/votingfraud.html

Bush I was probably a hack job. His buddies dumped him over his tax hike probably the only decent thing he ever did.

[Wilms]

20. Oh, please, please, please...

Make this post it's own thread!

[eomer]

21. I agree with Wilms

Great post brindis!

I say it warrants its own thread.

[Wilms]

23. Wish that had worked out better.

Thanks for threading it nevertheless.