Re: So, What IS a Fascist, anyway?

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 20:34:36 GMT, Gunner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 19:02:58 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> (Desertphile) wrote:

> >It's entirely possible that Mr. Ball is not aware of Bush2's friends
> >engaging in voting machine tampering in Florida (where Bush2's brother
> >is governor). That might explain his odd claims.

> You have cites? 

How is it possible that this is not widely known?! Good bloody grief.
Just when I thought the state of the informed citizenry is at its
worse, someone comes along and tells me it's ever worse than I had
thought. Yee, ghads.




Subject: Volusia County Memos Disclose Election 2000 Vote Fraud

The Diebold Memos' Smoking Gun
Volusia County Memos Disclose Election 2000 Vote Fraud

By Alastair Thompson

http://www.blackboxvoting.com

"DELAND, Fla., Nov. 11 - Something very strange happened on election
night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia
County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and
learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to
62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half
an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had
dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had
picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600
voters."

- Washington Post Sunday , November 12, 2000 ; Page A22

Yes. Something very strange happened in Volusia County on election
night November 2000, the night that first Gore won Florida, then Bush,
and then as everybody can so well remember there was a tie.

Something strange indeed. But what exactly? In the above report (
click for full version), written days after the election, hotshot
Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank goes on to attribute the strange
16,022 negative vote tally from Volusia's precinct 216 to an
apparently innocent cause.

".. faulty 'memory cards' in the machines caused the 16,000-vote
disappearance on election night. The glitch was soon fixed," he wrote.

But thanks to recent investigations into Black Box Voting by
Washington State writer Bev Harris we now know this explanation is not
correct. In fact it is not even in the ballpark.

According to recently discovered internal Diebold Election Systems
memos, Global Election Systems' (which was later purchased by Diebold)
own technical staff were also stumped by the events in Volusia County/

In Chapter 11 of her new book "Black Box Voting In the 21st Century"
released early today in .PDF format at Blackboxvoting.com and here at
Scoop Ms Harris observes.

"If you strip away the partisan rancor over the 2000 election, you are
left with the undeniable fact that a presidential candidate conceded
the election to his opponent based on [results from] a second card
that mysteriously appears, subtracts 16,022 votes, then just as
mysteriously disappears."

Working in parallel with Ms Harris Scoop has also been inquiring into
the events on election night in Volusia county. Much of the material
that follows is similar to that which appears in Chapter 11 of her
book.

The starting point in this shocking discovery about election 2000 came
in a series of internal Diebold ES technical support memos.

The following is an abbreviated version of the exchange concerning the
peculiar events in Volusia county. For the purposes of research the
exchange is included in full as an Appendix to this report (APPENDIX
TWO). The discussion took place in early 2001 as an audit was underway
in Volusia county into the events.

********** (NOTE: The names below each extract link to the full text
of the emails in the appendices below.)

I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I
have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why
Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will
someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the
auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb".

Lana Hires - Volusia County Florida - January 17, 2001 8:07 AM

My understanding is that the card was not corrupt after (or before)
upload.

They fixed the problem by clearing the precinct and re-uploading the
same card. So neither of these explainations washes. That's not to say
I have any idea what actually happened, its just not either of those.

The problem is its going to be very hard to collect enough data to
really know what happened. The card isn't corrupt so we can't
post-mortem it (its not mort).

Ken Clark - Diebold ES R&D Manager - January 18, 2001 1:41 PM

- the negative numbers on media display occurred when Lana attempted
to reupload a card or duplicate card. Sophia and Tab may be able to
shed some light here, keeping in mind that the boogie man may me
reading our mail. Do we know how this could occur?

John McLaurin - Diebold ES - 18 Jan 2001 15:44:50

The problem precinct had two memcory cards uploaded. The second one is
the one I believe caused the problem. They were uploaded on the same
port approx. 1 hour apart. As far as I know there should only have
been one memory card uploaded. I asked you to check this out when the
problem first occured but have not heard back as to whether this is
true.

When the precinct was cleared and re-uploaded (only one memory card as
far as I know) everything was fine.

.

Given that we transfer data in ascii form not binary and given the way
the data was 'invalid' the error could not have occured during
transmission.

Therefore the error could only occur in one of four ways:

.

[4.] There is always the possiblity that the 'second memory card' or
'second upload' came from an un-authorised source.

Tab Iredale - Diebold ES - 18 Jan 2001 13:31

If this problem is to be properly answered we need to determine where
the 'second' memory card is or whether it even exists. Heh. Second
shooter theory. All we need now is a grassy knoll.

Ken Clark - Diebold ES R&D Manager - 18 Jan 2001 16:42:50

I will be visiting with Lana on Monday and will ascertain the
particulars related to the second memory card. One concern I've had
all along is "if" we are getting the full story from Lana.

I'll be back in touch and thanks for all of y'alls (that's southern
for all of you) help.

John McLaurin - Diebold ES - Thu, 18 Jan 2001 16:56:06

********** Unfortunately whether or not John McLaurin got to the
bottom of the mystery of Volusia County is something the memos cannot
tell us.

Searches of the Diebold memos database find a single followup memo
from McLaurin about the Checksum Errors experienced in Volusia, but
nothing on the mysterious 16,022 negative vote count.

Which leaves us where exactly?

What we know from the memos can be summarised as follows:

- Two memory cards were uploaded from Volusia Couny's precinct 216,
the second one was loaded sometime close to 2am in the morning. It
automatically replaced the first card's results and reduced Gore's
total by 16,022 votes and added several thousand votes to Bush plus a
variety of minor candidates;

- Both memory cards loaded into the system clean and without errors,
indicating (contrary to the official line) that they were not faulty;

- After the error was noticed the original card was reloaded and the
mistake was rectified;

- The error was introduced in such a way that the total number of
votes remained unchanged (again something that could not happen by
chance.);

- According to the technical boffins, the chance of the memory card
being corrupted and still passing the checksum error test are less
than 60,000 to 1;

- The technical managers at Diebold Election Systems considered it a
reasonable possibility that the second card was part of deliberate
conspiracy to rig the election results.

In her book Bev Harris explains the issue of whether the card was a
chance fault or a deliberate example of tampering"

"A memory card is like floppy disk. If you have worked with computers
for any length of time you will know that a disk can go bad. When it
does, which of the following is most likely? In an Excel spreadsheet
that you saved on a "bad disk," might it read a column of numbers
correct the first time: "1005, 2109, 3000, 450." but the second time,
replace the numbers like this: "1005, 2109, -16022, 450." Or is it
more likely that the "bad disk" will fail to read the file at all,
crash your computer, give you an error message, or make weird humming
and whirring noises."

source: page 239, Chapter 11, "Black Box Voting in the 21st Century"

However officially, as we learned earlier, the explanation given
publicly - and accepted without demur by the media - for the strange
events in Volusia county is that there was simply a "faulty memory
card".

The "faulty memory card" explanation is also included in a CBS News
Network investigation into the Election 2000 debacle.

And it is here that we find a considerable amount of information about
just how significant the Volusia County events were on election night.

The first thing we learn from CBS's investigation into the events of
election night is that according to the Voter News Service (VNS) exit
polls for Florida Al Gore should have won comfortably.

7:00 PM: The vast majority of Florida polls close. CBS News decides
not to project a winner in the Florida Presidential race at poll
closing, even though the best estimate, based upon exit-poll
interviews from the 45 survey precincts, shows Gore leading Bush by
6.6 points. The Decision Desk decides to wait for some actual votes
from sample precincts to confirm the exit-poll results.

7:40 PM: The VNS computation shows a "call" status in the Florida
Presidential race. This status means that statistically Gore is
leading, but the Decision Team needs to check more data.

Source

VNS eventually officially called the Florida race to Gore at 7.52pm,
notwithstanding comments early in the vote count from George Bush that
he was confident he would win both Florida and Pennsylvannia (comments
which were never fully explained).

With the benefit of hindsight we think we now know that the VNS data
was wrong. That is certainly what the CBS inquiry found.

In the report attached below there are a range of explanations for
this given [click here to view], none of them adequately explain the
magnitude of the error however.

Most of the news networks followed the VNS call giving Florida to
Gore. And by 8.02pm all networks had announced Gore as the winner in
Florida. And it wasn't till 9pm that some doubts about this call
started to emerge.

First up a significant error - attributed to a typing mistake - was
found in the VNS data at 9.07pm. This led to closer examination of the
rest of the data and the incoming returns. By around 10pm the Florida
calls to Gore were all officially withdrawn. This is recorded in the
CBS report as follows:

9:54 PM: The CBS News Decision Desk recommends that the call in
Florida for Gore be withdrawn. CBS is in a local cutaway at 9:54 PM
(the seven minutes at the end of the hour when local stations
broadcast their own election results), and so CBS does not withdraw
the call until 10:00 PM.

10:16 PM: VNS retracts its Florida call for Gore.

- Source

The CBS timeline then jumps forward four hours to 2am EST.

By now an apparently substantial lead of 29,000 votes has opened up in
favour of George Bush.

2:09 AM: VNS adds Volusia County's erroneous numbers to its tabulated
vote.

With 171 out of 172 precincts in the county reporting, Gore's vote
drops by more than 10,000 while Bush's rises by almost the same
amount. This 20,000-vote change in one county increases Bush's VNS
statewide lead to more than 51,000 votes.

- Source

What the news networks, and the Al Gore, camp do not realise at this
point in the evening is that over 24,000 of votes that make up this
significant lead are attributable to two Diebold Election Systems
computer errors.

First there are the 16,022 votes stolen from Gore in Volusia county by
the "faulty memory card". Meanwhile over in Brevard County another
error - also involving Global Elections System (the predecessor of
Diebold) equipment is responsible for a further 4000 votes being
lopped off the Gore total.

And it is also worth noting that nobody knows whether the Brevard and
Volusia county errors were the only ones in play at this time. These
errors were both big ones. They were noticed and corrected on the
night. How many smaller vote subtractions could have taken place on
the night? Theoretically hundreds. As Dana Milbank's Washington Post
report shows it was only because someone noticed the error in Volusia
that it was corrected and remarkably the software itself contains no
automatic system for rejecting negative vote totals being reported by
precincts, events which by definition can only be nefarious and wrong.

At 2am another VNS error came into play. VNS's estimates of the
outstanding votes underestimated those that remained to be counted by
half, around 180,000. The two errors combined led news executives at
CBS to conclude that Bush's final winning margin in Florida would be
around 30,000 votes. At this stage Bush had a lead of around 50,000
votes and late reporting precincts were expected to pare this back as
many of them were in Democrat leaning counties.

At 2.16am Fox and NBC called the race to Bush, unaware that the
Volusia error had now been discovered. Over at Associated Press - the
news service that Network News controllers do not read - the margin to
Bush had by now fallen to 30,000 after correcting the Volusia error.

At 2.17am and 2.20am the remaining two major networks CBS and ABC
called the race to Bush. Their decision continued to be bolstered by
the VNS data stream - which even at 2.47am - was still recording a
margin to Bush of close to 50,000 votes.

Remarkably it was not till 2.51am that VNS fixed the Volusia error in
its data.

Meanwhile with all the networks showing the race for the White House
won by Bush, the pressure is mounting on Gore to concede.

In the book, "Too Close to Call" by journalist Jeffrey Toobin, the
author gives a behind-the-scenes account of how Gore reacted when the
television networks concluded that Bush had taken Florida.

"Al Gore happened to be in the staff room on the seventh floor when
the votes spiked up in Bush's favor. Dressed casually, the vice
president was watching television while lying on the floor, with his
chin propped up in his hands. As a result of the Volusia votes, Fox
News called Florida- and the presidency- for Bush at 2:16 a.m. CBS and
NBC followed suit a minute later and ABC came in at 2:20 a.m.," Toobin
wrote in his book.

"Following the news reports, Gore was silent and absorbed the news. A
moment later he told members of his campaign that he was ready to
concede the election to Bush, which he did several minutes later over
the telephone.

"Unwilling to take the television networks reports at face value, one
of Gore's campaign staffers did a little investigating and discovered
that the networks erred in stating that 50,000 votes from Volusia
county were cast for Bush. Turns out that Gore was ahead by 13,000
votes in Volusia and trailing Bush by 6,000 votes overall. Something
was wrong in Volusia it would be revealed later.

One of Gore's campaign advisers then checked Florida's law on
recounts. The nearly dead heat between Bush and Gore in Florida and
the fact that Gore was ahead in Volusia County meant a mandatory
recount. It was time to rescind Gore's concession to Bush and
scrutinize the ballots. Gore was traveling in a motorcade en route to
deliver a concession speech to his supporters. His staff stopped him.
At this point, the margin between Bush and Gore was down to 2,000
votes. A recount was all but certain."

Gore called Bush and Gore's staff surrounded the vice president to
listen in on what would become a historic conversation at 2:30 a.m.

"Circumstances have changed dramatically since I first called you,"
Gore said to Bush, Toobin wrote. "The state of Florida is too close to
call."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Bush asked according to
Toobin.

"Let me make sure that I understand. You're calling back to retract
that concession?" Gore sensed an annoyance in Bush's tone and shot
back "you don't have to be snippy about it."

Toobin says Bush then told Gore that his "little brother", Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush, had assured him that he won the state of Florida and
for that matter the presidency of the United States.

"Let me explain something," Toobin quoted Gore as saying in his
response to Bush. "Your little brother is not the ultimate authority
on this."

"You do what you have to do," Bush said and hung up the phone on Gore.
When Gore turned around to face his staff they exploded in cheers.

It is not till 3.10am that the CBS news controllers notice the huge
difference between their numbers and those of AP which by now show the
margin to Bush at under 10,000.

We also know, thanks to the CBS inquiry report, that by around 3.40am
the Gore camp had decided not to concede. Gore Campaign Chairman
William Daley rang CBS News President Andrew Heyward in the control
room and asked him whether CBS would be reversing its call soon.

CBS's Andrew Heyward waited another 15-20 minutes after the phone call
before ordering CBS to officially withdraw the call to Bush. And by
4.05am all the other networks had also withdrawn the call.

By 4.10am the reported Bush lead in the race had dropped to 1800
votes, and thereabouts it remained until the first recount - albeit
the Florida Secretary of State's office website reported the race to
Gore on the day after the vote.

And it is there that the narrative in this tale ends and the analysis
starts.

In its internal conclusions about these events the CBS inquiry team
found the two Diebold County level errors, Volusia and Brevard, were
conclusive in their networks decision to call the race to Bush.

" The mistakes, both of which originated with the counties, were
critical, since there were only about 3 percent of the state's
precincts outstanding at this time. They incorrectly increased Bush's
lead in the tabulated vote from about 27,000 to more than 51,000. Had
it not been for these errors, the CBS News call for Bush at 2:17:52 AM
would not have been made."

- source

You do not get much clearer than that.

The record already shows that events of election night 2000 turned on
the errors in the Volusia and Brevard vote counts. Both of which
occurred on Global Election Systems (now Diebold) equipment.

Of course we now know Al Gore did not concede.

But had he done so would that have altered what followed? Would there
have been the hanging-chad phenomena, the lawsuits over recounts and
the recriminations?

Most of what is contained in the preceding analysis is well trodden
territory. Everybody knows that the TV networks screwed up big time on
election night, and the issue of bias at those networks has also been
well traversed.

What has not been discussed, or even conceived of till now, is that
the events that occurred between around midnight and 4am might have
been the result not of mistakes but of organised voting fraud.

Yet that is precisely what Talbot Iredale and Ken Clark's memos
confirm is a distinct possibility, in fact, reading between the lines
they suggest it is the most likely possibility.

Consider this:

How plausible is it that an error such as this - of such magnitude,
with no apparent physical explanation, and in one of the few counties
still receiving incoming results that late in the night - was really
the simple result of a "faulty memory card"?

We also now know, again thanks to the work of Black Box Voting
investigators like Washington State's Bev Harris and California's Jim
March, that the Diebold vote tallying programme used in several
Florida counties, GEMS, is easily hackable, both by outsiders and by
insiders.

[See. Bev Harris's " Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program "
for details and Jim March's "DIEBOLD'S VOTE-TALLY SOFTWARE- Security
Review Instructions" for a kit to demonstrate the hack on your own
computer.] We do not know what would have happened had a full
state-wide recount been undertaken as the efforts to have one were
blocked in the courts.

Would they have discovered other counties where unusual events like
those discovered in Brevard and Volusia counties?

Is it possible that the original VNS exit polling data was closer to
correct than conventional wisdom suggests?

Is it possible that less egregious vote stealing took place in
counties all over Florida?

Add into the mix the blatant roll scrubbing in Florida discovered by
Greg Palast and exposed in his best-selling book "The Best Democracy
Money can buy" and you have a recipe of reasons to reopen a full scale
inquiry into the Florida debacle.

Perhaps more importantly. With paper-less touchscreen voting systems
in place in many Florida counties come November 2004, should such
events occur again, there will be no record with which to conduct a
recount.

And the other big mystery of course is this: if someone did try to rig
the election returns in Florida in 2000, who was it?

******* STORY ENDS ******* Alastair Thompson is an award winning New
Zealand investigative journalist and the Co-Editor of Scoop.co.nz.

This report draws heavily from the work of Bev Harris in her new book
"Black Box Voting in the 21st Century". California based investigative
reporter Jason Leopold also contributed to this report.

For more information on Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st
Century . See http://www.blackboxvoting.com/ and it's activist arm
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm