As an aside, ACORN has also been involved in the OWS movement. I am sure that is a HUGE surprise – not. And I am sure you would not be surprised to learn they were also shredding documents as fast as they could to cover that involvement up. But I digress.

Yes, former Rep. Davis admitted that the Democrats are essentially using the talking point that Voter ID disenfranchises voters because it would impede their ability to cheat (WordPress won’t allow the embed code, but here is the link to watch the video):

Top Democrats are aggressively pushing the claim that Republicans’ worries about voter fraud are an insincere excuse to suppress voting by African-Americans and Hispanics.

But former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis told The Daily Caller that anti-fraud measures are needed to protect African-Americans from corrupt political bosses — many of them African-Americans themselves — who run Democratic Party machines in the South.

[snip]

“What I have seen in my state, in my region, is the the most aggressive practitioners of voter-fraud are local machines who are tied lock, stock and barrel to the special interests in their communities — the landfills, the casino operators — and they’re cooking the [ballot] boxes on election day, they’re manufacturing absentee ballots, they’re voting [in the names of] people named Donald Duck, because they want to control politics and thwart progress,” he told TheDC.

“People who are progressives have no business defending those individuals.” (Click here to read the rest.)

While I was fairly certain this was going on, especially after the 2008 election, for a former Democratic Representative to confirm it is startling.

And this is especially poignant here in South Carolina, where the Democrats have been screaming bloody murder about the new Voter ID law set to go into effect in January. An anchor at MSNBC claimed it would be “electoral genocide” that would disenfranchise blacks in the state. Even considering the source, that is dangerous rhetoric indeed.

ABC News reported that Voter ID lawwill be taking place in a number of other states in 2012, as well, tripling the number of states requiring a photo ID. But even in this article, the way information is presented seems a bit skewed:

[snip]A report from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice showed that in Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, all of which will enact stricter photo ID laws before the 2012 election, 3.2 million potential voters do not have the state-issued ID that will be required for them to vote.

Lawrence Norden, an author of the Brennan Center report, said he “absolutely” thinks the new ID laws could impact the outcome of the election.

“We’re not claiming that all 3.2 million, in the case of voter ID laws, are actually not going to be able to vote,” Norden said. “But what we are saying is, it’s going to make it harder for those people to vote and some portion of them are probably not going to be able to vote even though they want to.” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Uh huh. No, they aren’t claiming that all those folks won’t get a chance to vote, but they sure do like to IMPLY it, seems to me.

Well, at least here in South Cackalacki, people who could not get to the DMV for lack of a vehicle or ride, people were given the option of getting a ride to the DMV FREE OF CHARGE. Want to know how many residents took the State up on its offer? You might want to sit down for this, if you aren’t already: 25. Yes, twenty-five people used this free service.

Here’s the thing: former Representative Davis has pulled back the curtain on the real reason there is such a brouhaha being waged by the Democrats over voter ID. It will impede Democratic Party bosses from committing rampant voter fraud, up to FIFTY PERCENT in some locales. He is absolutely right when he makes this claim:

“People who are progressives have no business defending those individuals.”

Amen to that. I would extend that to anyone who cares about our democracy, our right to our own vote, our right to have elections that are fair and free of election shenanigans, have no business defending these individuals, or practices. Uh, yeah – not to mention that voter fraud is also ILLEGAL.

And I would take that one step further – it is immoral, and unethical, to commit voter fraud. This “Win At All Cost” mentality that has infected this nation is a blight, and must be stopped. We should guard closely, jealously, the authentic vote, otherwise our entire system is a sham. Never again should we have to question the authenticity of a vote, an election, or even a caucus, as a result of rampant fraud.

But even more, this faux outrage over the alleged disenfranchisement of blacks (and Hispanics) when this sort of fraud is being perpetrated by those claiming disenfranchisement. is insulting in the extreme, and insulting to the hard work of those who fought so hard to get their community the right to vote.

It reminds me of this woman, a Civil Rights Worker, who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., and her “grief” at witnessing disenfranchisement at the hands of young black men in Indiana (4:00 mark to 6:05 mark):

Click here to view the embedded video.

It causes me grief, too, for her community, and for all Americans. As the election season heats up, every single one of us, regardless of race or ethnicity, should be able to count on our vote counting for something. Thank heavens for the courage of people like Artur Davis, for speaking truth to power, and outing the Democrats for their disingenuous claim over Voter ID. It is our right to have free, and fair elections, and anyone found to be committing voter fraud should have the full force of the law brought down upon them.

The right to vote, and the right to an honest outcome, was the American Way. And it needs to be again as we embark upon another election season. Anything less is unacceptable.

What do you think?

I came across an article recently that confirmed what many of us have suspected: the media helps shape opinions on female political candidates. Anyone who has heard the stories about Nikki Haley’s alleged affairs (proven false as her released emails demonstrate, though you rarely hear that), or the alleged one night stand with Christine O’Donnell, which turned out to be hogwash (sexist, misogynistic hogwash at that, so much so that even N.O.W. felt compelled to defend her), or Meg Whitman being called a whore by her competitor’s aide, know of what I speak.

That is to say, the focus seems to be less on their actual political positions than airing unsubstantiated claims, usually of a sexual nature or involving a sexist characterization. That distinction was highlighted in a recent Christian Science Monitor piece, “Ending the ‘Hot Or Not’ Factor For Nikki Haley And Female Candidates.” The authors of this piece, Swanee Hunt and Kerry Healey are mighty powerful women in their own right, the former being an Ambassador to Austria, the latter the former Lt. Gov. of Massachusetts. They know what it is like to be a woman in the political world.

Their commentary is based on the results of a recent survey by the Lake Survey Partners. The entire piece is well worth your time, and I encourage you to read it. Some of the highlights follow:

American women hold twelve percent of governor’s seats and make up seventeen percent of Congress. If these numbers sound low, that’s because they are. The United States ranks a stunning 85 in the world in women’s parliamentary representation. No matter which side of the aisle prevails in the upcoming mid-term elections, both sides can agree the US needs to draw on one hundred percent of its citizens’ talents to meet our huge challenges.

Many factors contribute to the gender gap in political leadership, but a recent study sponsored by the new “Name It. Change It.” campaign highlights the key role of sexism in the media’s treatment of female candidates. This sexism acts both to deter women from running for office and also decreases their chances of success when they do throw their hats in the ring.

[...]

In the past few months, the experiences of South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley (R), Representative Betty Sutton (D) of Ohio, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Elena Kagan have demonstrated how women of all parties and branches of government get slammed by the same denigrating treatment. Despite differences in backgrounds, careers, and ideologies, as they’ve traveled the road of women in public life, their journeys – a congressional seat, a gubernatorial nomination, and the highest bench in the land – have been regrettably similar.

As the piece goes on to say, these women, despite the odds stacked against them by numerous media outlets, persevered. Nikki Haley not only won the primary, but she just received the endorsement of the Post and Courier, Charleston’s newspaper. Haley is no flash in the pan, after all – she has served in the SC House since 2004, and has a tremendous amount of experience preceding her time there. Though one would be hard-pressed to know much more about her than the allegations of infidelity.

Back to the Christian Science Monitor piece:

Now that we know the real and lasting damage to public discourse and political representation caused by offhand sexist remarks in the media, we all have a duty to push back.

Sexist commentary isn’t a harmless joke. Just last week, Boston radio station WRKO plumbed new depths when it stood by a producer’s mocking “endorsement” of Karyn Polito’s campaign for state treasurer that included an obscene comment about her body. That kind of endorsement hurts, not helps, and now we have the research to prove it. In the past two weeks, “Name It. Change It.” has called for public response to this and 12 similar sexist attacks on Republican, Democrat, and Green Rainbow candidates. As a result, WRKO was flooded with calls protesting the producer’s outburst.

Every election day, we two travel to the polls to cancel each other’s votes. But we, and millions like us, must stand together and “name it” until media outlets “change it.”

Amen to that. If you want to make a difference fighting sexism in the media, just click here: “Name It. Change It.”

And don’t forget to vote. One of the other important pieces highlighted by Hunt and Healey was this:

[snip] This makes voters less likely to cast a vote for female candidates who have been the subject of media assaults that target their gender or their sexuality. [snip]

Let’s not allow the media to make our decisions for us. If you have questions about a candidate’s position, don’t rely on the media’s interpretation of their policies. Go to the candidates’ websites and look for yourselves.

We must hold the media accountable for how they present information to us. In the case of women, we cannot allow them to present the candidates solely in terms of their gender, or their sexuality.

But it isn’t just in terms of gender that we must keep an eye on the very institution charged with bringing us the news we need to be informed citizens. As we know, the JournoList gang kept important information that was likely detrimental to Obama from being published, specifically related to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In addition, they targeted Sarah Palin once she gave her acceptance speech, realizing that she was a force with which to be reckoned.

Well, the media is at it again, and interestingly, still in Alaska. It turns out that a CBS affiliate tried to craft – check that- create negative stories against Joe Miller, particularly hoping to find anyone who supported him that may be a sex offender. Wanna know how the Miller camp found this out? The “journalists” left a message on a Miller campaign worker’s cellphone. No, I am not making this up! They were talking about how to gin up a story on Miller, preferably one that involved a child molester. Naturally, the general manager for the affiliate, KTVA, Jerry Bever, came up with a whole bunch of hooey about how yeah, there’s this recording and all, but, um, well, uh, everyone is just misunderstanding what they are saying. Yeah. Right. That’s the problem. Because how could anyone think for one second that’s what these “reporters” mean when they were saying this:

FEMALE REPORTER: That’s up to you because you’re the expert, but that’s what I would do…I’d wait until you see who showed up because that indicates we already know something…
[Laughter]
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: Child molesters…
MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.
[Laughter]
MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: And the one thing we can do is ….we won’t know….we won’t know but if there is any sort of chaos whatsoever we can put out a twitter/facebook alert: saying what the… ‘Hey Joe Miller punched at rally.’
FEMALE REPORTER: Kinda like Rand Paul…I like that.
[Laughter]
FEMALE REPORTER: That’s a good one.

Wow. This is a CBS affiliate. As in, they are using OUR airwaves for this kind of rumor mongering.

Sarah Palin is mighty fired up about this whole Miller thing, as one might expect. I believe she used the term, “corrupt bastards” to describe what they attempted to do to Miller. Given Palin’s own experiences with the press making crap up about her and reporting it as fact, she makes the case for Hunt and Healey. Here she is on Greta Van Susteran discussing the state of journalism in general:

Unfortunately, we cannot have a “Do-Over” before the upcoming election, but we can, we must, demand a Fourth Estate that is reporting, not creating news. We must demand that journalists are not just reporting the pieces that helps their favorite politicians, or conversely, not reporting information that would harm their faves. We must demand that they stop framing women politicians on the basis of their sexuality, and/or gender. They must stop with their sexist and demeaning attempts to tear down women in politics. In short, they must return to being reporters, to journalists in the truest sense of the term. We have our eye on them…

UPDATE: This just out: “Producers Involved In Alaska ‘Phonegate’ Fired.” The article stated that: [snip] KTVA’s General Manager released this statement on the station’s web site:

“KTVA today released findings of its internal assessment of allegations that the “news director for CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA, along with assignment editor Nick McDermott, and other reporters, openly discussed creating, if not fabricating, two stories about Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller,” as alleged by the Miller campaign. KTVA states that its review included multiple staff interviews, a review of that day’s actual news coverage and a forensic transcript of the recorded audio conversation. [snip] (Read the rest here.)

Wow, how about that?

Van Hollen Charges Five With Election Fraud

Five Wisconsin residents have been charged with criminal counts of voter fraud in the November 2008 general election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today.

Two of those charged – Maria Miles, 36, of Milwaukee, and Kevin Clancy, 26, of Racine – worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the embattled community organizing group.

“The complaint alleges that Miles and Clancy submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also were part of a scheme in which they and other (special registration deputies) registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN,” the Van Hollen release says.

Both were charged with one felony count.

Attempts to reach ACORN today were unsuccessful.

Hmmm – I wonder if they have tried the Community Organizations International (COI) name? Just a suggestion.

The ACORN employees were not the only ones:

Also charged was a couple – Herbert, 60, and Suzanne Gunka, 54, both of Milwaukee – for allegedly double-voting in November 2008, once absentee and once at the polls.

Michael Henderson, 40, was hit with two felony charges of being a felon who cast a ballot even though he was still on probation. The Milwaukee man was convicted in 2005 in Rock County with two felonies for bail jumping and one disorderly conduct misdemeanor.

He was sentenced to five years’ probation.

Each felony count for voter fraud carries a maximum penalty of 3 1/2 years behind bars and a $10,000 fine. All five individuals are scheduled to appear in court on April 20.

The charges were brought as part of the Milwaukee Election Fraud Task Force.

Van Hollen’s announcement comes the same day that No Quarter disclosed that the Milwaukee County prosecutor for election fraud accused Milwaukee police of sitting on their hands and failing to investigate these cases for the first half of last year.

The prosecutor, Bruce Landgraf, said the Milwaukee Police Department began looking at election fraud cases last year only after Van Hollen’s agency ” stepped up to start the work MPD should have commenced immediately after your referral.”

Landgraf was addressing a city election official.

Doesn’t this just make you wonder how widespread the voter fraud was in 2008? Given ACORN’s multiple state charges, I think it’s safe to say these are not isolated incidents in Wisconsin.

At some point, Obama’s sycophants are going to have to admit and accept that ACORN is corrupt. These are not the first charges by a LONG shot, nor have all charges been dropped, as many supporters would like to claim (for voter registration fraud).

And even if those folks cannot the reality of what ACORN is, and the crimes it commits in an effort to further its partisan politics, American taxpayers should not be funding this organization. While ACORN may do good work in other areas, it simply cannot be trusted with voter registration in any way, shape, or form. That has become abundantly clear. As they say, where there is this much smoke, there is most definitely fire. To say ACORN has had one brush fire after another is an understatement, as is: STOP GIVING THEM OUR MONEY ALREADY!

Ahem. In this election year, better keep an eye out for more smoke from ACORN. Where’s Smokey the Bear these days? I think we could use him, don’t you?

(As many of you know, I have written on ACORN numerous times, far too many to list here. If you wish to see previous posts, here are two recent ones: here, and here.)

Remember those Black Panthers who were arrested in Philly for voter intimidation? Well, guess who’s got a friend in the White House? That would be the three men charged – amazingly, the charges have been DROPPED by the Justice Department! Oh, you know I’m not making this up:

Charges brought against three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense under the Bush administration have been dropped by the Obama Justice Department, FOX News has learned.

The charges stemmed from an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 when three members of the party were accused of trying to threaten voters and block poll and campaign workers by the threat of force — one even brandishing what prosecutors call a deadly weapon.

The three black panthers, Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint in the final days of the Bush administration with violating the voter rights act by using coercion, threats and intimidation. Shabazz allegedly held a nightstick or baton that prosecutors said he pointed at people and menacingly tapped it. Prosecutors also say he “supports racially motivated violence against non-blacks and Jews.”

The Obama administration won the case last month, but moved to dismiss the charges on May 15.

Click here to see FOX News video from the scene on election day.

Click to watch the incident on YouTube.

The complaint says the men hurled racial slurs at both blacks and whites.

A poll watcher who provided an affidavit to prosecutors in the case noted that Bartle Bull, who worked as a civil rights lawyer in the south in the 1960′s and is a former campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen. (Emphasis mine.)

In his affidavit, obtained by FOX News, Bull wrote “I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters.”

He also said they tried to “interfere with the work of other poll observers … whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically,” noting that one of the panthers turned toward the white poll observers and said “you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”

A spokesman for the Department of Justice told FOX News, “The Justice Department was successful in obtaining an injunction that prohibits the defendant who brandished a weapon outside a Philadelphia polling place from doing so again. Claims were dismissed against the other defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law. The department is committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote.”

Golly, I am just SO surprised, aren’t you? I just never expected that Obama’s Justice Department would let these three men who were engaging in extreme voter intimidation off!! Ahem. Who am I kidding? Of course I did. I’m just surprised it didn’t happen sooner…

One last note – as a follow-up to all of the GM news, including the closing of plants about which I just wrote, I recommend this post by Uppity Woman, “Congratulations, Comrades and Comradesses! You Are Proud Owners Of Government Motors“! That pretty much says it all! What’s next? California?

Below the fold is a video of a speech Mr. Phillips gave in Seattle in September, 2008. It is long, I grant you, which is why I am putting it up today so you can take the time to watch it when you have time. That being said, his talk is so compelling, the time flies by. The information it contains is shocking. What we have heard about what happened in Ohio in 2004 is but a drop in the bucket compared to Mr. Phillips’ findings. Oh, and I should add, he is being humble when he says he is simply a musician and hiker (he helps to make trails). He has four degrees, and was a university professor.

Now I understand that, at least in India, the voting by electronic machines has not been as flawed as it has been, according to fellow NQ writer, pm317. But there seems to be some differences there insofar as their machines are made in keeping with government regulations. Since Diebold (now ES&S) and other companies claim their software is proprietary and NO ONE can know what’s in there, I think there is a difference from the get-go between the two countries. Moreover, according to the post:

Diebold system works on Microsoft software, it has no seals on locks and panels to detect a tempering. It has a keyboard interface (!!!) and the server was tested to have “Blaster” virus. One report on Wired says a lady stumbled upon some files from Diebold, and found that the votes were stored in MS Access files. It also has a PCMCIA SanDisk card for local storage. A touchscreen GUI and a network connection to send the results to a server after encrypting it with DES.

The Indian EVM is just plain circuit, with some assembly code. A few LEDs, and two Seven Segment LED displays. One EVM can list 16 candidates, but up to 4 EVMs can be Linked to accommodate 64 candidates. (In a country of a billion people its possible to have 64 candidates for one single constituency.)

That’s a big difference in terms of security. It’s an interesting read, and adds to this conversation.

At this point, though, it seems that our elections as they stand are fatally flawed, especially as you listen to Mr. Phillips’ experiences. What do you think? Come to our Live Chat at 9:00pm on Weds., May 20th to discuss this critical issue.

Join us on Weds., May 20th, at 9:00 PM for the last chat in our three part series discussing “Hacking Democracy,” electronic voting machines, and paper ballots.

Again, please take time to view the following video of Richard Hayes Phillips’ speech in Seattle in September, 2008, as he enumerates many irregularities he discovered in Ohio in the 2004 election:

We will once again be joined by Kathleen Wynne of Hand Count Our Paper Ballots Now , and we may have a surprise guest expert on the issue of electronic voting machines as well.

DISCLAIMER: We do not personally endorse BlackBoxVoting and, while we are aware of the complex stories behind the controversies, we are not focusing on those stories during this presentation and haven’t any inclination to get into those stories via e-mails or blog posts. What we are concerned about is the legitimacy of voting methodologies in the U.S. We hope that airing this documentary will stimulate conversation and action about voting methods. Of note: The film was reviewed and vetted by HBO Documentaries, including its staff and legal counsel, before its airing on HBO.

KATHLEEN WYNNE – Former Associate Director of non-profit elections watchdog organization, Black Box Voting.org, when the organization was founded in 2004. Founded website HCPBnow.org. She has testified at numerous public hearings and has provided evidence to members of the U.S. Congress, the EAC, and other public bodies. Appeared on Lou Dobbs, Fox & Friends and on various radio shows throughout the country. Her videotaped evidence was used as the best evidence in the trial of two election officials in Ohio, who were convicted of felony charges during the 2004 Presidential Recount. Appeared with Bev Harris in Hacking Democracy. She is one of the experts who wrote chapter in the book, HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America.

VICKIE KARP – PR Director, VoteRescue.org; National Chair – Coalition for Visible Ballots.org; served as a Board Member and as President of the Board for the non-profit elections watchdog organization, Black Box Voting.org; co-edited with Abbe Waldman DeLozier the book, HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America; co-hosted the weekly radio show VoteRescue Radio with Karen Renick on We The People Radio Network Radio in Austin, Texas; has appeared on MSNBC and Austin TV news channels and various radio shows throughout the country.

Now for the disclaimer part. The recent two-part series on Bev Harris and Black Box Voting (second part to appear later today) was to serve as a historical and foundational context on the issue of electronic voting machines as explored in the HBO documentary, “Hacking Democracy.” As is the case with most organizations and the people who represent them, there are some who disagree with where Bev Harris wants to go, and with some of her methods (as I understand it). That is for each person to decide on their own, in my opinion. And, there is disagreement within the various organizations devoted to the issue of how our votes should be counted to ensure the validity and sanctity of those votes. Those are just the kinds of issues we want to discuss during our Live Chat.

Following our last Live Chat on May 20th, Kathleen Wynne will provide a wrap up of the issue from the perspective of her organization, Hand Count Paper Ballots Now. Please watch this space for that informative post and ways in which we can take back the power of the vote.

We had a very lively discussion last week, and I expect more of the same this week, too. Please come join us!

This is Part 2 of the article “Black Box Backlash,” the conclusion of Part 1 on Bev Harris, Black Box Voting, and the issue of leaving our democracy to electronic voting machines. This will be the topic of our Live Chat on Weds., May 13th, at 9:00 PM.

Back to the article:

COMPUTER SCIENTISTS were already hotly debating the issue. Stanford University’s David Dill became interested in computer voting when the state of Georgia had technical problems with its new voting machines in 2002. When Dill discovered his own county, Santa Clara in California, was about to start using electronic voting machines without paper output, he swung into action. Dill started an online petition calling for a paper trail that attracted some of the nation’s premier computer scientists. He put up a Web site that eventually became www.verifiedvoting.org and began speaking out about the issue around the country.

Harris’ instincts about posting the source code proved to be dead-on. Four computer scientists from Maryland’s prestigious Johns Hopkins University examined the code and released a scathing review of it. “Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts,” their report stated.

While the Hopkins review did not cause political pandemonium, it did validate Harris’ gut feelings about electronic voting—our votes were not secure because the software recording them was vulnerable to hacking. The report also attracted major media attention across the country.

Diebold spokesperson David Bear says, “Electronic voting is safe, secure, and accurate.” Bear says the code that Harris found on the Internet was partial and outdated. In addition, Bear points out, the software is not used in a vacuum. Election officials use a variety of checks and balances with any system that they employ to ensure its security.

After the Hopkins report, the state of Maryland had a couple of consultants review the touch-screen machines and the way they will be deployed in elections. The consultants made some recommendations to increase security, but Maryland is proceeding with the elections using the Diebold equipment.

Far be it from me to not believe a Diebold spokesperson, but, I don’t believe him. His contention that the machines are safe and secure flies in the face of a number of reports, including being able to access them with a mini-bar key! So, yeah, I’m not buying what he was selling. Makes me wonder why Maryland did, all evidence to the contrary. But, I’m not the only one who is just a tad suspicious:

AUDIT TRAIL TO CALIFORNIA

Harris, however, was not done with Diebold. Last Sept. 5, someone leaked 15,000 internal Diebold memos to Harris. She says she published 24 of them on her own PR Web site and was promptly hit with a cease-and-desist letter from Diebold. Soon, all 15,000 of the memos were circulating on the Internet. Independent media sites around the world and students at more than 30 universities posted them. Diebold tried to stop the postings by claiming copyright on the memos and found itself entangled in a free-speech battle. Eventually, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, posted them on his congressional Web site. Diebold recognized that Kucinich held a trump card and withdrew its objections to the postings.

Sadly, the memos themselves have not been the subject of any thorough analysis. They are mostly e-mails from Diebold employees and are full of phrases that sound bad but are hard to understand without technical expertise and context.

Diebold’s Bear says, “Those were internal discussions between individuals, not the sentiments of the company.”

HARRIS THINKS the memos contain important revelations. Perhaps the most important, she argues, is that there is widespread use of uncertified software for voting machines of all kinds. Whether we vote on the new touch-screen system or the optical-scan paper ballots in use in King County and elsewhere, computer software counts our ballots. Harris believes a strict certification process where federal and state officials carefully test the election software is central to voting security. Without proper certification, she worries that improper code that would allow for the manipulation of election results might be introduced into the system.

By last Nov. 21, Kevin Shelley, California’s secretary of state, had heard enough. He issued an order that all touch- screen voting machines include “an accessible voter verified paper audit trail.” (Washington’s Reed and Nevada’s secretary of state, Dean Heller, came out in favor of audit trails in December.) The next month, Shelley commissioned an audit into whether uncertified Diebold software was being used in California’s elections. Of the 17 California counties that used Diebold election machines in the last election, Shelley’s auditors found, none was using software that had been properly certified by the state. Diebold insists that the changes made to the software are cosmetic. Shelley says the company might lose the right to sell its touch-screen machines in California.

All in all, 2003 was quite a year for Bev Harris. But she insists she is just getting started.

Bear in mind, this was 6 years ago. So much information came to light, yet, Diebold was still selling machines across the country. Harris wasn’t done yet:

BACK IN THE REAL WORLD

In 2004, Harris and her allies have been working on four new fronts: lobbying, public speaking, litigation, and seeking public office.

At the start of this year’s Washington Legislature, there were two bills about issues related to electronic voting. Harris and her ally, Linda Franz, another voting activist, introduced one with the help of legislators in both the House and the Senate. It died a relatively quick death, however.

The other bill, introduced by Secretary of State Reed, represented a big change in his position. Up until December, Reed and his office had strongly resisted any effort to require touch-screen voting machines to have a voter-verified audit trail. Reed says that as he toured the state talking with ordinary voters, he realized there was a lot of anxiety about the new electronic voting. He has seen this phenomenon before, he says, when other new voting technology—like the optical scan paper ballot—was introduced. “It was one thing to hear from a few people on the Internet,” he says, “but we found ordinary citizens didn’t trust these machines.”

Harris and her allies, however, are furious opponents of Reed’s bill. They say it leaves the door open for insecure Internet voting, takes too long to require a paper trail with touch-screen voting machines, and has an insufficient audit requirement and a host of other ills. “You have a secretary of state that crafts legislation that sounds good but doesn’t deliver,” says Franz.

REED IS RELUCTANT to engage in a debate with Harris and her allies. He says he hasn’t seen their bill and downplays the differences between himself and them. He offers only the mildest criticism and says on the whole their activism has been helpful. He does object to the way they have verbally roughed up elections officials like Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger. “Bob has been on radio shows with Bev Harris. I fortunately haven’t had that experience,” he says, laughing.

As of Tuesday, March 9, the fate of Reed’s legislation was still up in the air.

Wow – this guy can be Secretary of State, but he’s afraid to take on this grandmother? Talk about your lack of intestinal fortitude…I know, I know, that seems to go hand-in-hand with being a politician, but still – c’mon already! Not only that, but saying one thing one day, and another the next seems to be a chronic disease for too many politicians:

Longtime voting-rights activist Janet Anderson questions the wisdom of head-on, fierce opposition to Reed and his bill by Harris and her allies. “The secretary of state changed his position 180 degrees. Instead of being supportive, they are making it clear they don’t trust him.”

In fact, Harris’ right-hand man is running against Reed. Andy Stephenson met Harris through Democratic Underground, a left-wing Web site (www.democraticunderground.com), and they immediately became close cohorts. Stephenson, 42, looks like a shorter, stockier version of talk-show host Conan O’Brien, and until recently he owned the Subway shop on 15th Avenue on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. As a former telephone salesperson, he has skills that Harris lacks: He’s great on the phone or talking one-on-one with people.

Stephenson is running a fiery campaign against Reed. “The secretary of state is accountable to no one,” he charges. His campaign for elected office suffers from a flaw common among impassioned rookies, however: He believes his issue will be enough against seasoned politicians like Reed and Democratic Party favorite state Rep. Laura Ruderman, D-Kirkland, who have name identification with voters and will raise much more money and receive much more institutional support than Stephenson will.

HARRIS HASN’T endorsed Stephenson because she doesn’t endorse candidates. But it’s clear Harris likes him and his tactics, which include filing a lawsuit against Reed for allowing the use of uncertified software in King County. The secretary of state’s office denies the charge. Meanwhile, Harris is a plaintiff in a California lawsuit that seeks to end use of Diebold equipment in that state. She and Stephenson promise more lawsuits in other states, including Washington.

The partisan, rancorous nature of Stephenson’s campaign concerns veteran activist Anderson. “I don’t like it when people start speaking in partisan terms, because we all want honest, safe, secure elections. To turn it into partisan name-calling turns off half the people.”

At a recent forum, Stephenson, who is charming tête-à-tête, looked extremely uncomfortable while making an awkward stump speech. As if to emphasize the protest nature of his candidacy, he endorsed dark-horse presidential candidate Kucinich.

Well, we know that outcome – Reed is still Secretary of State in California.

Back to Bev Harris:

RHETORICAL ROAR

Harris, on the other hand, is a marvelous speaker. As a PR professional, she knows how to present her material in a personable, funny way. She hopes to use public speaking tours as another weapon in her arsenal and took her act on the road to California this month.

The tone of Harris’ rhetoric disturbs Anderson. “Bev Harris is a little more conspiracy-oriented than I tend to be. I don’t believe this is a huge Republican plot to steal elections,” she says. “Maybe the whole matter would have been taken more seriously earlier had not the highly partisan charges been made so shrilly.”

That kind of criticism angers Harris. But there’s no doubt some of her claims have lacked substantiation. Near the end of Black Box Voting, she writes: “There are some who are using election-manipulation techniques to transfer a block of power to their friends. This is a business plan, a form of organized crime. . . . ” Yet Harris rejects any claim she is a conspiracy theorist. “I understand the needs of the press in terms of documentation and not overstating your case,” she says, and she has worked to scale back the hype in her writing.

Yet at a recent forum at the University of Washington, the more outrageous Harris’ rhetoric got, the more the audience loved it. One key to Harris’ success has been her in-your-face style. That characteristic, which brought early success, might not resonate with everyone. She isn’t confident of victory in any case. “Actually, it is going to be a long shot that we will win this battle on voting machines,” Harris says. “We have proven our case, but they are still just barreling ahead.” (ghowland@seattleweekly.com)

Just because someone may be a conspiracy theorist doesn’t mean they are WRONG. There has been AMPLE evidence to support Harris’ contentions about Diebold (and other) electronic voting machines, including by our CIA, for pete’s sake! I mean, really – what’s the point of having highly trained professionals give us their opinion if we are simply going to ignore what they have to say? THAT makes no sense, in my opinion. What Ms. Harris has been saying for years now, does. Especially since she has been backed up by a number of universities and specialists in this area.

The question is: why are we still using these machines?

Please join us for our second Live Chat and viewing of Parts 4 – 6 of the HBO documentary, “Hacking Democracy” Weds. night, May 13, at 9:00pm (EST) to discuss this, and other questions.

Tonight at 9:00 pm (EST) we continue our discussion of the HBO documentary, “Hacking Democracy.” Once again, we will be joined by the founder of Hand Count Paper Ballots Now , Kathleen Wynne, and her colleague, Vickie Karp (biographies below). To join us, you can click the link below at the appropriate time, or sign up for an email reminder:

And now, meet Bev Harris:

America’s leading critic of electronic voting lives on a cul-de-sac in the blue-collar suburb of Renton. Bev Harris drives a gray Dodge Caravan with a bumper sticker that says, “Keep honking, I’m reloading.” Last year, several things broke in her home— the furnace, a sink, and a toilet—and she didn’t have the money to get them fixed right away. In fact, the sink and toilet are still broken.

At 52, Harris worries about being overweight, and she can’t find a hairdresser she’s happy with. In recent years she’s made her living as a literary publicist, hawking such books as Odyssey of the Soul by Hugh Harmon and Pamela Chilton, which is about channeling spirits, and Two Codes for Murder, a true-crime story by Dorothea Fuller Smith. A year and half ago, she admits, “I thought voting was boring.”

Clearly, Harris’ feelings about voting have changed a lot in the past 18 months. Voting has become Harris’ passion and vocation. Voting issues consume her life, even pushing her to work around the clock at times.

Since September 2002, Harris has battled a U.S. senator, large corporations, and election officials across the country in her effort to ensure our votes are counted fairly and accurately. At first, she focused on the problems with computer voting. Since then, the name of her Web site (www.blackboxvoting.org) and her book devoted to the subject—Black Box Voting—have become shorthand for concerns about computers and elections. Moreover, her astounding discoveries on the subject have resulted in damning research by distinguished computer-science professors and numerous articles in major newspapers across the country. Secretaries of state, including Republican Sam Reed of Washington and Democrat Kevin Shelley of California, have responded by proposing key changes in how we will cast our ballots in the future.

HARRIS HAS BECOME a media darling. A major profile is due in Vanity Fair, and her cell phone rings constantly with requests for interviews and documentation, from TV stations and newspapers around the country. Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards, Howard Dean, and Dennis Kucinich all mentioned concerns about electronic voting during this year’s campaign. Former first lady and current U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., are sponsoring national legislation responding to the issues raised by Harris and her allies.

Now she has broadened her critique of election security to include subjects like voting over the Internet and the integrity of the software that counts paper ballots across the nation, including those in King County. More importantly, she wants to focus on solutions to the problems she has uncovered. To do that, she and her allies are taking what has largely been an online movement and bringing it into the real world. They are doing speaking tours, lobbying for legis- lative changes, and even running for office. Will they be as successful in the meat world as they have been on the Internet? Or will they be like presidential candidate Howard Dean—an online tiger and an analog kitten?

Harris’ online success has brought increased scrutiny. Many elections professionals, private and public, believe her alarm over voting security is unfounded. Even some of her allies find her rhetoric hard to take. Harris is unapologetic. She offers a typically unvarnished opinion on elections officials’ understanding of security: “I’ve never seen such a clueless bunch of people.” She feels the mainstream media have begun to back her up. “I’ve been called every kind of nutcase there is, and now I’ve been in The New York Times three times,” she says.

And I wonder just how much investigation the critics put into her claims regarding these voting machines? As Kathleen Wynne is always quick to remind me, it is in the best interests of a number of corporations, and politicians, for things to stay as they are, a point that cannot be overstated enough, in my opinion.

Back to the article now:

TOUCH VS. PUNCH

After the election meltdown of 2000, when an incredibly close race for president shined a very bright light on the shortcomings of the American electoral system, Congress took action. It passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, telling states to phase out the infamous punch-card ballots, with their pregnant, hanging, and dimpled chads. HAVA also required a touch-screen voting machine for every polling place, mainly so blind voters could cast their ballots unassisted. As an incentive, Congress included billions in funding for conversion of local electoral systems. Faced with the need to upgrade technology and some federal largesse, some states, like Maryland, and some counties, like Snohomish here in Washington, decided to convert completely to touch-screen polling places. As a result, more than 20 percent of American voters will use touch-screen machines in this year’s presidential election, according to Election Data Services, a D.C. consultancy.

Voting on a touch screen is like using a bank’s automatic teller machine. There is one vital difference, however: The voting machine does not give you a paper receipt. The absence of a paper trail has alarmed a variety of people, including some of the nation’s most renowned computer scientists. Their bottom line? These machines could be hacked. The solution? An auditable, voter-verified paper trail.

SOURCE CODE MOTHER LODE

For Harris, this all started with a search of the Internet during her lunch hour. She was cruising Commondreams.org, a left-wing Web site, when she noticed an article by Lynn Landes. Since she was still sore about the Florida machinations of the 2000 presidential race, the article’s scathing critique of computer voting piqued Harris’ interest.

She decided to do some research. She learned that Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., had an ownership share in Election Systems & Software (ES&S), whose Web site brags that its equipment counted 56 percent of the nation’s votes in each of the past four presidential elections. Moreover, ES&S voting machines count all the votes in Hagel’s home state of Nebraska, except in those counties that tally ballots by hand. While there is nothing illegal about the senator’s stake in the company, it didn’t seem right to Harris. When she posted the information about the situation on her Web site, she promptly received a cease-and-desist order from ES&S lawyers. She e-mailed the cease-and-desist order to 3,000 of her media contacts. Then she thought she’d better tell her husband, Sonny Dudley, who is African American. She says he framed the issue in terms of civil rights. “‘My people died for the right to vote,’ he boomed. ‘I will vote for who I want and no one’s gonna stop me,’” she recalls in her book.

This was a shocking revelation when I first heard of it several years ago. How it was Senator Hagel maintained his ties to this company while being a US Senator, especially one who ran for re-election in an area using the very machines his company owned, seemed like just a bit of a conflict of interest. Naturally, his office didn’t see it that way:

The issue doesn’t seem so dramatic to LouAnn Linehan, Sen. Hagel’s chief of staff. She says Hagel has never tried to hide his ties to ES&S and that Harris’ claims about the senator run from “inaccurate” to “outrageous.” Says ES&S spokesperson Megan McCormick: “Misinformation and inaccuracies were posted on Bev Harris’ Web site. Because of the extent of the misinformation, ES&S expressed through an outside attorney its concern and requested correction.”

While untangling the specifics of this debate would take an entire article, there’s no doubt that jousting with ES&S and Hagel got Harris hooked on the topic. Although she couldn’t interest mainstream publishers in the subject, David Allen, a former systems engineer turned comic-book publisher, became intrigued with her research. Soon, Harris had a contract with Allen’s Plan Nine Publishing for the company’s first non-comic book.

Publisher Allen’s technical expertise proved to be vitally important. He urged Harris to get a copy of a technical manual for an electronic voting machine. Harris started surfing the Web. On Jan. 23, 2003, she hit the mother lode. On an unprotected Web site, she found 40,000 files of Diebold Election Systems’ source code—the guts of software to run touch-screen voting machines. At first, Harris wasn’t sure what all the weird files were, so she called Allen and directed him to the site. What are we looking at? she asked. “Incredible stupidity,” he replied.

And how. It is remarkable what people “accidentally” end up posting on the internet, but this was a DOOZY:

HARD ON THE SOFTWARE

Diebold is an Ohio-based company with more than $2 billion in annual revenue that was founded in 1859 and makes ATMs and security systems, among other things. In 2002, Diebold got into the election business when it bought Global Election Systems. Diebold is a relatively small player in the industry, with only 33,000 of its voting stations in use across the country, but it is coming on strong. In 2002, Diebold landed a $54 million contract from Georgia that included 19,000 new voting machines. The following year, Maryland signed a $55.6 million contract for 11,000 new machines.

Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia are the big three companies making electronic voting machines. All of them refuse to let outside observers examine their software, citing proprietary and security concerns.

Harris’ discovery represented the first opportunity for the wider world to glimpse the internal workings of the machines that are playing a key role in our democracy. After a little soul searching, Harris downloaded the Diebold software files. It took 44 hours, and they filled seven CDs. By July 2003, after months of informal review and discussion among her friends and allies, Harris decided to allow Scoop, an “unfiltered” news Web site in New Zealand (www.scoop.co.nz/mason), to make the files available to anyone who wanted them. It wasn’t a decision she made lightly. “I knew I had something that could provoke a constitutional crisis,” she says. She hoped that some computer science professors would take an interest.

This pretty much covers what we saw last week in the first three parts of the documentary, “Hacking Democracy.” If you wish to catch up, you can go to THIS LINK to watch the first three parts (Part 2 and 2 will automatically come up at YouTube).

The importance of this topic cannot be overemphasized. We have all been impacted by the “issues” these electronic voting machines have raised, and the questionable tallies they have produced. It is to that, and other related issues, we will direct our attention Wednesday, May 13th, at 9:00pm (EST).

KATHLEEN WYNNE – Former Associate Director of non-profit elections watchdog organization, Black Box Voting.org, when the organization was founded in 2004. Founded website HCPBnow.org. She has testified at numerous public hearings and has provided evidence to members of the U.S. Congress, the EAC, and other public bodies. Appeared on Lou Dobbs, Fox & Friends and on various radio shows throughout the country. Her videotaped evidence was used as the best evidence in the trial of two election officials in Ohio, who were convicted of felony charges during the 2004 Presidential Recount. Appeared with Bev Harris in Hacking Democracy. She is one of the experts who wrote chapter in the book, HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America.

VICKIE KARP – PR Director, VoteRescue.org; National Chair – Coalition for Visible Ballots.org; served as a Board Member and as President of the Board for the non-profit elections watchdog organization, Black Box Voting.org; co-edited with Abbe Waldman DeLozier the book, HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America; co-hosted the weekly radio show VoteRescue Radio with Karen Renick on We The People Radio Network Radio in Austin, Texas; has appeared on MSNBC and Austin TV news channels and various radio shows throughout the country.

We are fortunate to have as one of our loyal readers Kathleen Wynne, founder of Hand Count Paper Ballots Now (HCPBnow.org), and formerly Associate Director of Black Box Voting. I will let her introduce herself and the issue further below, but MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

Beginning Wednesday, May 6th, at 9:00 pm at No Quarter, for the NEXT THREE WEEKS (May 6th, May 13th, and May 20th), we will be showing the documentary, “Hacking Democracy,” in three parts, with live chat with SusanUnPC, me, and Kathleen. Below is an introduction to Kathleen Wynne, and the issues the movie addresses:

My name is Kathleen Wynne. I am the former Associate Director of Black Box Voting.org and Founder of HCPB(Hand Count Paper Ballots)now.org. I cannot express how grateful I am to NQ and to Rev. Amy for graciously agreeing to host a live chat concerning the Emmy nominated HBO documentary film, “Hacking Democracy”. The film features the work done by Bev Harris and me, during our “in-the-field” investigations into the election issue.

Black Box Voting was the first election reform organization to be able to test a fully functioning optical scan voting machine in Leon County, Florida. None of the computer security scientists entrusted to oversee the security of these machines were ever allowed to observe a fully functioning unit while it was being tested for use, which made it impossible for them to determine whether the machine was secure or even functioning the way it was supposed to! The reason was, and still is, because the vendors who manufacture these machines are protected by “proprietary secret laws.” It finally took two determined, middle-aged women to be given the opportunity to test a fully functioning voting system!! What we discovered will shock and disturb you.

After viewing the film, I believe you will agree with me that the PUMA movement and the election reform movement have a great deal in common. I joined the PUMA movement because it was what I considered to be “a great awakening” of American citizens that something was terribly wrong with our elections process. Much in the same way the election reform movement was started. It is because of this common belief that I hope that we can unite our two movements and work together in taking back our elections. For it is only by taking back our elections that we will be able to take back our country. Indeed, the only power citizens have to make such a change possible is through the ballot box and we have literally given that power away. Our elections have been privatized and are becoming more centralized, which totally undermines the principle of transparency and the public nature of elections. The United States Congress has sanctioned this privatization, which in my mind, is a huge conflict of interest. Our elections are now virtually owned and operated by corporations, overseen by “experts,” and strictly managed by election officials. Citizens have been driven from the last refuge we have to remain a government by, for and of the people – our elections.

After over 6 years of investigating the many and varied problems plaguing our elections, I am convinced now, more than ever, that the only way “we, the people” will be able to take back our elections is to junk the machines and return to hand counted paper ballots. This is the primary reason I founded the website “HCPBnow.org” in order to garner a “critical mass” of citizen support for the return to hand counts. I am dedicated to this cause. As Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips wrote in his book “Witness to a Crime: A Citizens’ Audit of an American Election”, which focused on the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio – “paper ballots are the solution, not the problem – but only if counted by hand, at the polling place, in full public view, on election night, no matter how long it takes.”

It is my contention that if we fail in this great cause, we will no longer live in a democracy, but will exist under tyranny. It should also be noted that recently the German Supreme Court banned voting machines as unconstitutional and will be counting the votes by hand in their upcoming elections in June and September! The irony cannot be lost that it was former Nazi Germany who was first in taking steps to preserve election transparency and integrity, instead of America!

Come join us May 6th, May 13th, and May 20th at 9:00 for “Hacking Democracy” and Live Chat!

BELOW, you have to check out an astounding article on a hearing in which ACORN was implicated in voter intimidation and illegal voter fraud, and how Chairman Conyers, caught unaware that ACORN was being implicated in voter fraud and intimidation, along with questionable donation methods, tried quickly to minimize and cover up the damning evidence:
First: The revelations about the New York Times, sadly, are not a shock to any of us. I feel nervous using any Times article as a source because I wonder what has been excised or not investigates, which calls have not been returned or sources not checked. I realized — and so do you — that complete objectivity and “just the facts, ma’am” writing is impossible since all writers and editors are influenced by their conscious and unconscious prejudices and emotions, as well as their reliance on certain sources over others. Stil there should be some effort made, but it’s clear the Times flat out doesn’t care.

The bigger issue here is ACORN. Do you think that Rep. Jerry Nadler will convene a hearing on ACORN? Yeah, me too. Should we compel him to? Shall we raise a stink? I say YES! So, if you have a blog, grab this video, and post it. Link to this video in e-mails and comments at other blogs and in mailing lists. Get the word out.

ALSO: Be sure to include the link to the Townhall article, “ACORN Whistleblowers Produce Shocking Testimony on Capitol Hill.”

Late last week, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, called for a hearing to investigate ACORN. You read that right. At a Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties subcommittee hearing entitled “Lessons Learned from the 2008 Election” last Thursday, witness testimony not only drew Conyers to the subcommittee hearing but events led to Conyers strongly urging that subcommittee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) conduct a full hearing on ACORN, calling allegations made at the hearing “serious.”

The shocking testimony that began the chain of events came from Pennsylvania attorney Heather Heidelbaugh, who in October of last year represented “a candidate, voters and the Republican State Committee of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania” seeking a preliminary injunction against ACORN and the Secretary of the Commonwealth. The complaint alleged violations of the election code, fraud and misrepresentation, and violations of equal protection and due process.

Heidelbaugh brought with her to the hearing ACORN whistleblowers, including Anita MonCrief, a former Washington, D.C., ACORN employee who came forward to testify last October in the Pennsylvania case. MonCrief, a Democrat who voted for and still supports President Obama, made allegations including the exposure of Obama maxed-out donor lists illegally shared with ACORN, allegations of illegal intermingling of non-profit employees between ACORN and Project Vote, and the use of intimidation tactics and training methods to skirt regulations, among many other assertions.

Testimony also revealed ACORN’s unofficial “Muscle for the Money” program directed at fundraising from corporations. Allegations were made of payments from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to ACORN’s D.C office to harass The Carlyle Group and specifically David Rubenstein, a founder of the company. Even though ACORN D.C. had no interest in The Carlyle Group, they were allegedly paid by SEIU to go break up a banquet and protest at Rubenstein’s house.

It was called “Muscle for the Money” because they would go “intimidate people and protest.” Targets of the protests included Sherwin-Williams, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, and Money Mart among others, testimony revealed. The apparent purpose was to get money from the targeted entities for ACORN.

Perhaps the most controversial accusation revealed by whistleblower testimony was the scheme by which ACORN and Project Vote are paid by foundations per voter registered and the submission of copies of actual voter registration cards to the foundations, which is a violation of federal law.

I spoke with whistleblower Anita MonCrief at the hearing. “ACORN itself is sometimes paid by foundations per registration and, in some case,s they would send copies of the voter registration cards straight to the funder,” MonCrief said. “Workers are improperly trained. … They are trained to never ask, ‘Are you registered to vote?’ because if the person says ‘Yes,’ they have to move on. They ask, ‘Did you vote in the last election,’ and if the person says ‘No,’ they register them again. This is how they duplicate registrations and flood the offices.”

When these allegations began to surface in hearing testimony, Conyers suddenly appeared at the subcommittee hearing and asked to be recognized, saying that he was “… unaware that this was a hearing on ACORN.” Conyers probed those assembled, asking if any representatives of ACORN were present to defend the organization. Conyers called the accusations made against ACORN a “pretty serious matter.” When no one from ACORN came forth, he asked subcommittee chairman Nadler to hold a hearing on ACORN so the organization could defend itself, to which a shocked Nadler replied, “I’ll take it under advisement.”

Conyers pressed the matter, saying, “I think that it would be something that would be worth our time. We’ve never had one person representing ACORN before the committee. … I think in all fairness we ought to really examine it.” An exasperated Nadler said he would hold a hearing when he had “credible allegations of misconduct.”

Nadler abruptly dismissed the panel shortly thereafter. …

WHAT A COVER-UP.

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the committee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”

Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her.

During her testimony, Ms. Heidelbaugh said Ms. Moncrief had told her The New York Times articles stopped when she revealed that the Obama presidential campaign had sent its maxed-out donor list to ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.

Ms. Moncrief told Ms. Heidelbaugh the campaign had asked her and her boss to “reach out to the maxed-out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”

Ms. Heidelbaugh then told the congressional panel:

“Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, “it was a game changer.”’

“IT WAS A GAME CHANGER.” Emphasis mine, obviously. The NY Times withheld a critical story regarding Barack Obama because it would impact the election. How can that be viewed as anything less than unethical,immoral, and as a complete and utter failure to do the work the Fourth Estate has been entrusted to do?

There is more:

Ms. Moncrief made her first overture to Ms. Heidelbaugh after The New York Times allegedly spiked the story — on Oct. 21, 2008. Last fall, she testified under oath about what she had learned about ACORN from her years in its Washington, D.C. office. Although she was present at the congressional hearing, she did not testify.

U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., the ranking Republican on the committee, said the interactions between the Obama campaign and ACORN, as described by Ms. Moncrief, and attested to before the committee by Ms. Heidelbaugh, could possibly violate federal election law, and “ACORN has a pattern of getting in trouble for violating federal election laws.”

He also voiced criticism of The New York Times.

“If true, The New York Times is showing once again that it is a not an impartial observer of the political scene,” he said. “If they want to be a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, they should put Barack Obama approves of this in their newspaper.”

Academicians and journalism experts expressed similar criticism of the Times.

“The New York Times keeps going over the line in every single campaign and last year was the worst, easily,” said Mal Kline of the American Journalism Center. “They would ignore real questions worth examining about Obama, the questions about Bill Ayers or about how he got his house. Then on the other side they would try to manufacture scandals.”

Mr. Kline mentioned Gov. Sarah Palin was cleared by investigators of improperly firing an Alaska State Trooper, but went unnoticed by The Times.

“How many stories about this were in The New York Times,” he asked.

“If this is true, it would not surprise me at all. The New York Times is a liberal newspaper. It is dedicated to furthering the Democratic Party,” said Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of Political Science at Grove City College. “People think The New York Times is an objective news source and it is not. It would not surprise me that if they had a news story that would have swayed the election into McCain’s favor they would not have used it.”

Liberal or not, the issue is their integrity as a reputable news organization. That lack of integrity is most troubling.

Naturally, the ACORN people had something to say about all of this:

ACORN has issued statements claiming that Ms. Moncrief is merely a disgruntled former worker.

“None of this wild and varied list of charges has any credibility and we’re not going to spend our time on it,” said Kevin Whelan, ACORN deputy political director in a statement issued last week.

Yeah, okay. Just like ACORN is a NON-PARTISAN organization, too, right, Kevin? That was completely unbiased int his past election? Like this?

Ahem. Just save it already. We’re not buying what you’re selling.

And finally, here is the response from the NY Times:

Stephanie Strom was contacted for a comment, and The New York Times’ Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications Catherine Mathis replied with an e-mail in her place.

Ms. Mathis wrote, “In response to your questions to our reporter, Stephanie Strom, we do not discuss our newsgathering and won’t comment except to say that political considerations played no role in our decisions about how to cover this story or any other story about President Obama.” (Michael P. Tremoglie can be reached at mtremoglie@thebulletin.us)

Yeah, I bet you don’t discuss your “newsgathering” because then you would have to discuss your “newsDUMPING,” Ms. Mathis!

Between the LA Times and the NY Times, with a whole bunch of “news sources” in between, our media has made it blatantly obvious that reporting critical stories that might actually reveal important, RELEVANT information to the people, is squashed. Our Fourth Estate is no more. It is now a part of the Executive Branch.

Lou Dobbs is right: this is “obscene and outrageous.” And an affront to our democracy, such as it is since the “game changer” information was suppressed. The NY Times needs to change its saying from “All the news that’s fit to print” to “all the news we deem fit to print that best protects our chosen candidate(s).” And that makes them a propaganda rag, nothing more.

The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries’ use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines’ vulnerability to tampering.

Appearing last month before a U.S. Election Assistance Commission field hearing in Orlando, Fla., a CIA cybersecurity expert suggested that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his allies fixed a 2004 election recount, an assertion that could further roil U.S. relations with the Latin leader.

In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now.

Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results.

“You heard the old adage ‘follow the money,’ ” Stigall said, according to a transcript of his hour-long presentation that McClatchy obtained. “I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that’s an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to . . . make bad things happen.”

Stigall said that voting equipment connected to the Internet could be hacked, and machines that weren’t connected could be compromised wirelessly. Eleven U.S. states have banned or limited wireless capability in voting equipment, but Stigall said that election officials didn’t always know it when wireless cards were embedded in their machines.

Oh, goodie – yet more ways for people to commit voter fraud! Ahem. As if they NEED any more ways – and I know he is talking about other countries, but the possibility of wireless and Internet voting coming to a town/city/overseas military base is most DEFINITELY possible.

And now, to the good ol’ USA:

While Stigall said that he wasn’t speaking for the CIA and wouldn’t address U.S. voting systems, his presentation appeared to undercut calls by some U.S. politicians to shift to Internet balloting, at least for military personnel and other American citizens living overseas. Stigall said that most Web-based ballot systems had proved to be insecure.

The commission has been criticized for giving states more than $1 billion to buy electronic equipment without first setting performance standards. Numerous computer-security experts have concluded that U.S. systems can be hacked, and allegations of tampering in Ohio, Florida and other swing states have triggered a campaign to require all voting machines to produce paper audit trails.

The CIA got interested in electronic systems a few years ago, Stigall said, after concluding that foreigners might try to hack U.S. election systems. He said he couldn’t elaborate “in an open, unclassified forum,” but that any concerns would be relayed to U.S. election officials.

Holy frijoles, really?? Yikes – another good reason not to do this. Not that we didn’t have foreign interference this past election with campaign contributions, specifically to the Obama campaign (I wonder just how many laws Obama broke getting himself into the White House??)

The expert got more specific about a few countries:

Stigall, who’s studied electronic systems in about three dozen countries, said that most countries’ machines produced paper receipts that voters then dropped into boxes. However, even that doesn’t prevent corruption, he said.

Turning to Venezuela, he said that Chavez controlled all of the country’s voting equipment before he won a 2004 nationwide recall vote that had threatened to end his rule.

When Chavez won, Venezuelan mathematicians challenged results that showed him to be consistently strong in parts of the country where he had weak support. The mathematicians found “a very subtle algorithm” that appeared to adjust the vote in Chavez’s favor, Stigall said.

Calls for a recount left Chavez facing a dilemma, because the voting machines produced paper ballots, Stigall said.

“How do you defeat the paper ballots the machines spit out?” Stigall asked. “Those numbers must agree, must they not, with the electronic voting-machine count? . . . In this case, he simply took a gamble.”

Stigall said that Chavez agreed to allow 100 of 19,000 voting machines to be audited.

“It is my understanding that the computer software program that generated the random number list of voting machines that were being randomly audited, that program was provided by Chavez,” Stigall said. “That’s my understanding. It generated a list of computers that could be audited, and they audited those computers.

“You know. No pattern of fraud there.”

A Venezuelan Embassy representative in Washington declined immediate comment.

The disclosure of Stigall’s remarks comes amid recent hostile rhetoric between President Barack Obama and Chavez. On Sunday, Chavez was quoted as reacting hotly to Obama’s assertion that he’s been “exporting terrorism,” referring to the new U.S. president as a “poor ignorant person.”

Questions about Venezuela’s voting equipment caused a stir in the United States long before Obama became president, because Smartmatic, a voting machine company that partnered with a firm hired by Chavez’s government, owned U.S.-based Sequoia Voting Systems until 2007. Sequoia machines were in use in 16 states and the District of Columbia at the time.

Reacting to complaints that the arrangement was a national security concern, the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States launched an investigation. Smartmatic then announced in November 2007 that it had sold Sequoia to a group of investors led by Sequoia’s U.S.-based management team, thus ending the inquiry.

Again, WHY have we not had this level of investigation HERE??? Blackboxvoting.org has documented instance after instance after INSTANCE of electronic voting machine shenanigans (examples below), and we sure have not had the Treasury Department launching full scale investigations HERE! Pathetic.

As for Chavez allegedly fixing the election in 2004, I think it is safe to say we shouldn’t be throwing stones (as in living in a glass house ourselves), no matter whether you like/hate Chavez. We need only look back at our past 3 elections to prove that point. Unless this is one of those, “do as we say, not as we do” kind of things…

And isn’t it interesting that Obama is picking fights with Chavez, too, just like Bush did? Curious…

Back to the international scene:

In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Stigall said, hackers took resurrecting the dead to “a new art form” by adding the names of people who’d died in the 18th century to computerized voter-registration lists. Macedonia was accused of “voter genocide” because the names of so many Albanians living in the country were eradicated from the computerized lists, Stigall said.

He said that elections also could be manipulated when votes were cast, when ballots were moved or transmitted to central collection points, when official results were tabulated and when the totals were posted on the Internet.

In Ukraine, Stigall said, opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko lost a 2004 presidential election runoff because supporters of Russian-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych “introduced an unauthorized computer into the Ukraine election committee national headquarters. They snuck it in.

“The implication is that these people were . . . making subtle adjustments to the vote. In other words, intercepting the votes before it goes to the official computer for tabulation.”

Taped cell-phone calls of the ensuing cover-up led to nationwide protests and a second runoff, which Yushchenko won.

Election Assistance Commission officials didn’t trumpet Stigall’s appearance Feb. 27, and he began by saying that he didn’t wish to be identified. However, the election agency had posted his name and biography on its Web site before his appearance.

Electronic voting systems have been controversial in advanced countries, too. Germany’s constitutional court banned computerized machines this month on the grounds that they don’t allow voters to check their choices.

Well, there’s a concept. Germany actually cares that the voter can assure his or her vote is recorded accurately. What a concept! Ad more:

Stigall said that some countries had taken novel steps that improved security.

For example, he said, Internet systems that encrypt vote results so they’re unrecognizable during transmission “greatly complicates malicious corruption.” Switzerland, he noted, has had success in securing Internet voting by mailing every registered citizen scratch cards that contain unique identification numbers for signing on to the Internet. Then the voters must answer personal security questions, such as naming their mothers’ birthplaces.

Stigall commended Russia for transmitting vote totals over classified communication lines and inviting hackers to test its electronic voting system for vulnerabilities. He said that Russia now hoped to enable its citizens to vote via cell phones by next year.

“As Russia moves to a one-party state,” he said, “they’re trying to make their elections available . . . so everyone can vote for the one party. That’s the irony.”

After reviewing Stigall’s remarks, Susannah Goodman, the director of election reform for the citizens’ lobby Common Cause, said they showed that “we can no longer ignore the fact that all of these risks are present right here at home . . . and must secure our election system by requiring every voter to have his or her vote recorded on a paper ballot.”

Well, true that, Ms. Goodman. We have our own problems here, like Bev Harris of Black Box Voting finding garbage bags full of CERTIFIED votes tossed out in the trash, while another set were resented as the count. I am not making this crap up. Check it: Certified Votes found in trash in Florida.

Or how about this one: . Oh, now THAT’S some security there, because NO ONE can get a mini-bar key, right??

A NUMBER of states have had issues with voting machine problems. Check HERE – I bet you’ll find your state listed (special nod to my home state, NC, which had some machines that, once they reached their pre-designed total, began to count BACKWARDS.
Mini-bar key can open Diebold Electronic Voting Machines.

The problems in New Mexico were so rampant, it is thought they cost Kerry the presidency. They continued this past year, too, and not just in New Mexico.

Don’t even get me started on Ohio, both in 2004 and 2008 (I have written about the voter fraud issues in Ohio a number of times, as have a bunch of others. You can view previous articles Here, Here, and Here, for starters.)

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of voting machine issues in this country.

Ms. Goodman is absolutely right – we cannot ignore the voting problems we have at home. I sure wish the FBI, Treasury Department, and anyone else in the upper echelons of government, would do as much work here at home as the CIA is doing abroad on this critical issue. In my humble opinion, we have not had legitimate elections since the introduction of the Diebold machines. Add in blatant voter fraud (and one man gleefully acknowledged he voted more than once on national tv), and I think it is safe to say our elections do not “count every vote” (neither does the Democratic Party for that matter – oh, wait – they do, just not the way in which the people cast them).

We need REAL voting machine reform in this country, too, the sooner the better, preferably by 2010 (elections are not THAT far away)…