AFTERMATH 2004: COUP II

Was the Election Stolen?
by Allen Roland

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge – even to ourselves – that we've been so credulous: Carl Sagan

I want to know the truth and I'm not afraid to acknowledge that it appears that we have been bamboozled again in this election. There is too much evidence and I'm throwing a red flag on the field. Let's take a timeout, have an instant replay and review the evidence from all angles and then make an informed decision. The stakes are too high. Here's what makes me very uncomfortable;

1. WASHINGTON – November 4 – Teresa Fedor, [via Greg Lestini]
Ohio State Senator Teresa Fedor said today: "There was trouble with our elections in Ohio at every stage. It's been a battle getting people registered to vote, getting to the ballot on voting day and getting that vote to count. There is a pattern of voter suppression; that's why I called for [Ohio Secretary of State] Blackwell's resignation more than a month ago. Blackwell, while claiming to run an unbiased elections process, was also the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. Additionally, he was the spokesperson for the anti-business, anti-family constitutional amendment "Issue 1," and a failed initiative to repeal a crucial sales-tax revenue source for the state. Blackwell learned his moves from the Katherine Harris playbook of Florida 2000, and we won't stand for it."

2. Susan Truitt, Co-founder of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, Truitt said today: "Seven counties in Ohio have electronic voting machines and none of them have paper trails. That alone raises issues of accuracy and integrity as to how we can verify the count. A recount without a paper trail is meaningless; you just get a regurgitation of the data. Last year, Blackwell tried to get the entire state to buy new machines without a paper trail. The exit polls, virtually the only check we have against tampering with a vote without a paper trail, had shown Kerry with a lead. ... A poll worker told me this morning that there were no tapes of the results posted on some machines; on other machines the posted count was zero, which obviously shouldn't be the case."

3. Bob Fitrakis, an attorney who monitored the election with the Election Protection Coalition, said today: "There were far fewer machines in the inner-city districts than in the suburbs. I documented at least a dozen people leaving because the lines were so long in African-American areas. Blackwell did a great deal of suppressing before the election – like attempting to refuse to process voter registration forms. The absentee ballots were misleading in Franklin County. Kerry was the third line down, but you had to punch number four to vote for him. Bush was getting both his votes as well as Kerry's."

2. John Zogby, considered to be the "gold standard" of presidential polling, predicted that John Kerry and John Edwards would win with over 300 electoral votes. Following Zogby’s prediction to the letter, the preponderance of the exit polling stated that John Kerry would carry all of the major battleground states: Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Oregon. These exit polls were interpreted as further confirmation of Zogby’s final predictions.

3. When comparing the exit polls to the actual "official" final results, it appears that EVERY state that had electronic voting, without paper trails, had an "unexplained" advantage for Bush of about 5%.

And it appears that EVERY STATE that had paper trails on their Electronic Voting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error.

So it appears that they remotely electronically messed with the electronic voting results in every state where they could get away with it (because there was no paper trail to disprove it in those states).

Does this sound like something Karl Rove might do to guarantee a victory for Bush? Don't answer – it's a rhetorical question.

SO HOW WAS THE ELECTION TECHNICALLY STOLEN?

Roz Hill explains how easy it is to steal an election with paperless electronic voting machines.

So, here are the numbers (so far): 112,596,922 voters counted in the presidential race. Bush has been consistently polling at 45%, which SHOULD have given him 50,668,614 votes, instead of 58,073,612. This translates into 7,404,998 votes being siphoned off from Kerry votes. Now, how does that magic work???

Taxpayers get hit with a bill for $3600 (or more) for EACH of the touch-screen "voting" computers, which are nothing more than dedicated COUNTERS except that they are marketed by Republicans (who vowed to ensure Bush's victory); and the American people have not been allowed to examine or certify the software in these units.

Here is how easy it is to "make magic";

We need COUNTERS - (B) = Bush; (K) = Kerry; (V) = Vote; (T) = Tally

If V = B, add 1 to B
If T = 8, add 1 to B; Clear T; Skip 3
If V = K, add 1 to K; Add 1 to T
This extremely simple bit of programming would shift 12% of the vote from Kerry to Bush, it would defy exit polls, and it would make it look like Bush had a huge popular win, which is precisely what happened.

At this point, why has no one raised the spectre of criminality or a criminal conspiracy to inflate votes for Bush and deflate tallies for Kerry via hacking the computerized voting machines?

In addition, it is highly suspicious to note that the scale of Bush’s vote far exceeded the best of the pre-election polling, which could certainly be explained by this scenario.

Time out is over and you've seen the evidence.

Is it too painful to acknowledge that we have been bamboozled or are you going to demand the truth?

November 8, 2004

Allen Roland is a practicing psychotherapist who shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website. He also guest hosts a weekly national radio show on Conscious talk radio.


Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/roland2.html