Election Reform

Election Crime Scene-2004
"We the People Do Not Concede"
By Carol Sterritt (published in January 2005 article in The Coastal Post, monthly newspaper out of Bolinas Calif. editor: Don Deane) I currently own all rights )

John Kerry did not lose the electoral votes in Florida. They were stolen.

Nor did he lose the electoral votes in Ohio. They were stolen as well.

And with these two states being a rigged game, suspicions multiply. Suspicion falls especially hard upon the supposed three and a half million votes that Bush now claims as the popular vote margin. Across the nation, at least 400,000 people used voter hotlines to report the difficulties noticed on election day. Among those complaints, a full 50,000 instances were outright malfunctioning voting machinery. And in each of these 50,000 instances the vote went to Bush. If election day machine malfunctions were random, then logic dictates that Kerry must receive the benefit of the machine failures at least a few times. Unless the breakdowns were not random. And if not random, then they must be considered part of a network of fraud.

This indicates one thing: a major crime was committed. Perhaps like Richard Nixon's Watergate, the process may take more than a year-but in the end, the trail will lead back to the White House. Election 2004 looks, walks, talks and smells like racketeering. There is evidence of criminal conspiracy, evidence of obstruction of justice, forgery of government documents, misuse of the Postal Service and crime committed through and across wires. Also one instance of intimidation demands justice, when late at night on a dark Ohio highway, a young voting activist was run off the road by a gang of thugs. So this is not your simple voting fraud case with several election officials being over- zealous for their party or candidate. This is fraud -carefully coordinated and plotted out. The threads of this particular spider web lead back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We stand in the midst of a nightmare whose ending will either be the destruction of this country, or else through our citizenry proving a case of Presidential racketeering, the dissolution of this ill-begotten Presidency.

Sixty one million votes were counted on machines that would allow for no paper trail. The existence of these machines made the crime of the century possible. Andrew Card, Chief of Staff to President George W Bush, may well live to regret his announcements at 5 AM on Nov. 3rd. But at the time he was exultant at what the voting machines had wrought. His voice rang out resonant and a tad bit festive, happily victorious, "I'm Andy Card. I am President Bush's chief of staff. We are convinced that President Bush has won re-election with at least 286 electoral college votes. And he also had a margin of more than three and a half million votes. President Bush's decisive margin of victory makes this the first Presidential election since 1988 in which the winner received a majority of the popular vote. And that in this election, President Bush received more votes than any other presidential candidate in the history of our countryÉ In Ohio, the President has a lead of at least 136,000 votes. The Secretary of State's office has informed us that this margin is statistically insurmountableÉ So President Bush has won the state of Ohio."

What did Andrew Card know that John Kerry did not? Card knew who Kerry's real opponent was. Kerry thought his opponent in this election was George W. Bush. His real opponent was the rigged voting machines. If we the people of the United States possessed an election system with the integrity of Canada's paper ballot and pencil system, Kerry would be President. He was defeated by a modern technology so tamper friendly that major alterations to any district's vote tally could be made within 90 seconds and without leaving a trace.

This explains the flip-flopping of entire counties and even states-that exit poll numbers were reversed to give Bush the margin predicted for Kerry. And it explains how Bush "shaved" down the margin in voting districts predicted to give Kerry a sizable lead. Because of the duplicity of the voting machinery it is not possible to say how many votes were cast, or for who. The switch was possible, and not just in Florida or Ohio, but across the nation.

In Volusia County, Florida, Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, and Kathleen Wynne undertook a month long investigation. The Black Box Voting team found enough "irregularities" in 236,000 Florida ballots that they began to use the "F" word-FRAUD. The problem facing them was that state law requires that 336,000 ballots be seen as questionable. Election officials stonewalled them so that they could not come up with the extra 100,000 problem votes. In thirteen voting districts, officials withheld the hard physical evidence until the clock ran out. Without those polling tapes, memory cards, actual paper ballots, or access to the machines, the three intrepid investigators could not force that state to conduct a revote. But the hard evidence that Black Box Voting did uncover could serve us well in a criminal case against Florida officials leading from the smallest election officer up to the grand master of them all, Governor Jeb Bush.

The progressive Community in the USA should be celebrating this election. We did everything right. We insured a higher turnout than ever recorded in modern history. We saw to it that there were 4.2 million new registered young voters. We urged everyone registered to vote. And vote they did-despite the long lines, despite the weather, despite the denial of regular ballots and the forced issuance of provisionals. As we watched the election returns, we were encouraged by the major exit polls telling us that John Kerry held a decisive margin over George W Bush. But the exit polls, viewed across the world as the results of infallible science, fell apart at the last minute. No other explanation can account for this, except for fraud. Yes, because of Republican criminality, we are about to witness the JANUARY 20th inauguration of George W. Bush.

When A Crime Is Committed, You Must Act Quickly

It was the progressive community that acted immediately after November 2nd. First progressives made protests and then they undertook legal action demanding a recount. These actions proceeded quickly, with John Kerry missing in action. Within days after Kerry's Nov. 3rd concession, both of the men who ran for president as progressives, Badnarik, and Cobb, put into motion a chain of events leading to a vote recount in Ohio.

Countless lawyers, voting rights experts, computer experts, and also Ohio's common citizens were part of the effort. They worked fourteen hour days. Among the pieces of the stolen election puzzle that they uncovered: deliberate withholding of voting machinery badly needed in Democratic neighborhoods where voter numbers had soared; deliberate misinformation from election officials to voters, so that the votes would be disqualified; and machinery rigged during the actual recount.

Even more unbelievable, an entire county, Warren County, was illegally shut down from any oversight on Nov. 2nd. Election officials there claimed that a terrorist attack alert forced this. Only after the election was it realized that neither Homeland Security nor the FBI had requested that Warren County do this. However, some election workers explained to the press that they had been told the previous Thursday, October 27th, that there would be a "lockdown" of the polling place.

The Washington Post reported new affidavits from Mahoning County documenting electronic "vote hopping" from Kerry to Bush. Before the voter had a chance to record his or her vote, the voting machine highlighted Bush as their choice. The legal team has been told by a computer expert that this could indicate the machines were pre-set with a Bush vote as the default. Dozens of other individuals have brought forth sworn statements to the same effect. The legal team is also exploring new evidence that in Coshocton, Ohio, write-in votes wrongly defaulted to Bush when run through the voting machine.

As the recount cast light on so much criminal behavior, it became apparent that Badnarik and Cobb needed to file another lawsuit. This time, the filing was for the preservation and augmentation of evidence and is centered on Hocking County, Ohio. According to a sworn affidavit by Sherole Eaton, Hocking County deputy director of elections, a technician for Triad Systems entered the elections office on Dec. 10th and dismantled one of the vote tabulation computers. And at a Dec. 14th evening hearing in Toledo, stunning new sworn testimony revealed that Diebold technicians have tainted official voting machines before a recount could be done, irrevocably compromising the process.

Although John Kerry finally joined the lawsuit, questions remain as to why the presidential candidate was slow to respond. When a crime is committed, a solution begs for quick action, to ensure that evidence is observed and preserved. The longer one waits, the more likely that key evidence will be destroyed. Kerry acts as though he is not on his own team. This begs the question, was the fix in? Was this election nothing but an elaborate sting?

John Conyers Asks for Hearings and Investigations

Revelations of the most startling order surfaced in regards to Ohio's presidential vote. They came to light during the Dec. 13th field hearing brought about by John Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee. Joining him were Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones. Conyers has taken the concept of the stolen election to heart. Because of his efforts, hearings conducted in Columbus, Ohio were well-attended and recorded by C-Span. Citizens, poll workers, computer experts, and voting record examiners were able to relate their election day experiences. Conyers also attempted to have testimony from Kenneth Blackwell, the infamous Ohio Secretary of State, but the man refused.

"I know that Kenneth Blackwell made some decisions that were blatant and outrageous for a secretary of state," said Conyers. "How he felt that his head was big enough to be chairman of the 'Re-elect Bush' committee and also head of the administration of the electoral vote for the president in that same state was beyond me. There are very few people who did what he did."

Among those criminal activities that Conyers finds most scandalous is Blackwell's decision to "lockdown the ballots." One website, Democratic Underground, filed this report: On December 10th, Ohio election volunteers were denied further access to public voting records. At the Greene County Board of Elections in Xenia, two California women from the recount coalition (CASE and the Green party) were copying public records and requesting access to other voting records, per Ohio statute. The Board was told by Secretary of State Blackwell's office to deny any further access to voting records, a clear violation of law. Apparently, the quote was: "These records are no longer public. There is a lockdown on all Ohio voting records." Ohio is no longer the Ukraine. Ohio is now the Soviet bloc and Blackwell has made his office the Politburo.

There Is Nothing Wrong With Conspiracy Theories

There are three choices when it comes to truth and events of significance in America:

1) accepting, in the words of Janet Reno, that "we will never ever know;" 2) accepting what New York Times/Pravda, Chicago Tribune/Pravda, and all of Mainstream Media/Pravda states the truth to be, or 3) believing what seems to be the facts as we are observing and intuit them. In 1972, two reporters, Woodward and Bernstein of the Washington Post, began hearing testimony and seeing evidence that brought about their investigation into the Watergate Burglary. "Conspiracy" said all the many Republicans of the time. "Absurdly stupid and silly news story," said all the other newspaper editors in the country. But their editor, Ben Bradlee, let them run with it. And the result was the 1974 resignation of Richard Nixon.

When it comes to labeling a discussion as that of conspiracy buffs, we must learn to say, "Bring it on."

A Change In Tactics Ensures Victory

Up until now, Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE) was seeking only the examination of all things related to voting. They were concerned with voter signatures, memory cards for voting machines, polling tapes, county voting tabulators, GEMS and other proprietary software that counts and manages the vote, etc. But after tonight December 28th 2004, they will be interested in things related to criminal prosecution. Among these might well be the phone records of various Ohio election officials and workers. Those of us acquainted with local election officials know how unlikely it is that Warren County officials, on their own, dreamt up the idea of a Homeland Security polling place lockdown. They acted on instructions from someone(s) higher up. Susan Truitt, who heads Ohio CASE, is enthused about the idea of sniffing out the actual workings of the illegal enterprise. She is willing to find out who talked to whom, and on what date. By next month, she may well have assembled important information for Coastal Post readers, and hopefully the world.

Meanwhile please visit www.themmob.com to connect with one of the most effective organizations in grassroots activism.

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