 | Written by Donna Knipp, New York, N.Y. |
It has been five days since the election.
In that time, accounts of voter fraud and
malfunctioning voting machines have flooded into
local newspapers in Ohio, to public-interest groups,
universities and weblogs.
This message is an overview of those reports.The
stories are summarized here, with links to the
original publications.
After seeing this evidence -- and there is more still
to be rounded up -- I am no longer convinced that
Bush won the election.
I hope you will read through these summaries, click on
the links to the original stories, and come to your
own conclusions. I've included all the accounts of
election tampering that I'm aware of, but have not
done a broad search. This is only what I've learned in
the past five days. My education was provided by a
group of concerned journalists who posted reports to
a chat list. This is a compilation of their research.
I believe there is enough evidence to suggest that the
electorate may have actually chosen Kerry on
Tuesday. We don't know for sure -- we can't know till
there is a recount. Or, if that's not possible because
of electronic voting machines, until the election is
held over in Ohio and Florida.
Bush has not yet been chosen by the Electoral College.
The Electors meet and vote on Dec. 13. We need to
raise questions about the results -- and raise them
loudly -- to get an investigation launched before that
date. So far, the mainstream media in not picking up
the story. They moved very slowly after the 2000
election. Here are the accounts of election tampering
from four states, plus reports on multi-state
problems. (Please note: some of the newspaper links
may expire soon. You may want to print out the
stories so that later on, you don't have to buy them
from the newspapers' archives.)
FLORIDA:
The most troubling news comes out of Florida....
Throughout most of the state, new electronic voting
machines were in use. These machines -- many
manufactured by a company called Diebold -- are
controversial because they don't leave a paper
trail. There is no way to double-check the results.
The final Florida tallies on Diebold machines from
Tuesday are literally unbelievable. In 29 counties
where Diebold machines (an optical scanner) were used
to count the ballots, large majorities of voters
were registered Democrats. But the final results gave
all the counties to Bush, sometimes by huge margins.
The individual county data shows how unlikely the
machine results were.
For instance:
- In Calhoun County, 82% of registered voters are Democrats. But Diebold machines
said 63% of the county voted for Bush.
- In Lafayette County, 83% of voters are Democrats, but Diebold said 74% of
the county voted for Bush.
- In Liberty County, 88% of voters are Democrats, but Diebold said 64% voted
for Bush.
- In Washington County, 67% of voters are Democrats, but Diebold said 71%
voted for Bush.
- This same pattern appears in the results for 29 COUNTIES in Florida. In
every one of those counties, the Diebold Optical Scanner produced the results.
The Optical Scanner has been called the voting machine
that is most susceptible to tampering. Many of you
have been watching elections closely for years. Do you
believe that in 29 Florida counties in which
Democrats were in the majority -- in some cases with
4 out of 5 registered voters being Democrats -- they
all voted strongly for Bush?
Here are the links.
- You can find the voter registration/final result data here - http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm
- You can find a story analyzing these results here
- You can read about electronic voting machines -- an untested phenomenon
in American elections, here
THE OTHER PROBLEM IN FLORIDA: In 6 counties -- again, they were all using electronic
machines -- more votes for President were recorded than there were actual voters
in the counties. Altogether, these six counties reported 188,885 more votes
for President than there are voters living there. Right now, no one knows whether
those extra 188,000 votes were cast for Bush or for Kerry. But Bush won the
state of Florida by a 5% margin -- contrary to what all the polls were showing
only days earlier. In Glades County: 2,443 votes for Bush / 1,718 votes for
Kerry / 27 votes for Other. Those add up to 4,188. But the machines recorded
the official turnout as 3,446. That adds up to 742 more votes than voters. In
Highlands County: 25,874 for Bush / 15,346 for Kerry / 271 for Other. Official
Turnout: 33,996. That adds up to 7,495 more votes than voters. In Miami-Dade
County: 358,613 for Bush / 406,099 for Kerry / 3,841 for Other. Official Turnout
716,574. That adds up to 51,979 more votes than voters. In Osceola County: 43,108
for Bush / 38,617 for Kerry / 453 for Other. Official Turnout 63589. That adds
up to 18,589 more votes than voters. In Palm Beach County: 211,894 for Bush
/ 327,698 for Kerry / 3,243 for Other. Official Turnout: 452,061. That adds
up to 90,774 more votes than voters. In Volusia County: 111,544 for Bush / 115,319
for Kerry / 1,495 for Other. Official Turnout: 209,052. That adds up to 19,306
more votes than voters. Use
this link to get to the data.
STILL MORE PROBLEMS IN FLORIDA This account comes from partisans. Four Kerry
volunteers working in Broward County sent a letter detailing election tampering
to one of the reporters on our chat list. All four signed it and included their
email addresses. They report a wide, disturbing range of problems, from voters
saying their electronic machines malfunctioned, poll workers denied them assistance,
to police putting up roadblocks on the routes to polling places, and so on.
The entire text of the letter, along with the signatures, appears at the bottom
of this letter. OHIO In Ohio, there were problems in four counties and one city.
In Howard County, a judge ruled on Election Day that everyone standing in line
to vote at 7:30 p.m. had to eventually be allowed inside. The order said the
ruling was good for the day of Nov. 2. (You can view the order at the website
below.) But maybe it didn't occur to the judge that everybody might not make
it inside by midnight. At the stroke of midnight, when the calendar legally
clicked over to Nov. 3, Republican Ken Blackwell, the secretary of state, told
all the waiting voters to go home. His workers gave them paper ballots (i.e.,
provisional ballots), told them to fill them out and bring them back later.
It was an improvised move that undercut the intent of the judge's ruling, and
created chaos. Many people in Howard County still haven't turned in those ballots
because they don't know where to take them or what the deadline is. The only
kind of ballot in a federal election that people can legally take home, fill
out and turn in later is an absentee ballot, and those are marked as such. They're
marked with clear rules concerning deadlines, postmarking, and so on. So an
uncounted number of people in Howard County--estimated in the thousands-- couldn't
get in and were turned away with what may be ruled an illegal procedure. The
vast majority of those votes wre expected to go to Kerry based on the heavily
Democratic population of Howard County. The Democrats have filed a lawsuit.
You can click on the Ohio State University law school website to read about
it: Meanwhile, in Warren County, election officials locked the doors to the
County building and refused to allow bi-partisan observers to watch the vote-count.
They also denied access to the AP reporter (it is standard procedure for the
AP to observe vote-counting in counties all over the country.) The Sheriff of
the county said he did it for "homeland security" reasons. He never explained
or specified what the security concerns were. Here
is the link to the story in the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Meanwhile, in a Columbus suburb called Gahanna, the same problem showed up
with electronic machines that we saw in Florida: more votes were cast than there
were voters to cast them. In this case, however, the problem was investigated
and the extra 3,893 votes were shown to have been erroneously tallied for Bush.
Here is the link to the story on the Ohio
Network News.
Meanwhile, in Mahoning and Mercer Counties, electronic machines again malfunctioned,
but the effect that had on the vote count is not clear. The machines had to
be re-set, and at one point showed votes of "negative 25 million," according
to the head of the local board of elections. Here is the story from the local
Youngstown paper, called the Vindicator:
INDIANA In Laporte County, electronic voting machines once again appear to
have failed. They tallied results for 22,200 voters, even though there are 79,000
registered voters in LaPorte County. Assuming the county actually had a 65%
turnout rate (comparable to others in the area and its own track record), that
means 29,000 votes were not counted. Here is the link to the story in the Michigan
City News-Dispatch.
NEW HAMPSHIRE This is one of several states where original exit polls (interviews
with voters as they are leaving) do not jive with the results produced by electronic
voting machines. I was told by an administrator at Bev Harris's group, called
BlackBoxVoting (more on this below) that they are urging Ralph Nader to press
for a recount in New Hampshire. Nader was on the ballot there, so he is in a
good position to ask for a re-count. You can read about Harris and her work
at www.BlackBoxVoting.org.
SIX STATES In at least six states, there was a large difference between how
people said they'd voted, and how officials said they'd voted. In Florida, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Hampshire and New Mexico, there was a large
discrepancy between what voters said in the original exit polls, and the final
results claimed by election officials. In each of those six states, electronic
voting machines were used in some or most of the counties. In contrast, in states
where paper ballots were the primary method of voting, there was little or no
discrepancy between original exit polls and official results. To see an easily
viewable graph of this data, go to http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/todays_show.html
That graph was originally compiled by a website affiliated with The Raw Story,
which often gets quoted in the major dailies. So far as I know, it's a reputable
site. You can see their
original posting here.
MORE ON EXIT POLLS These are routinely conducted in elections by major news
organizations. Accounts are surfacing that both the Associated Press and CNN
(and perhaps others) later CHANGED their exit polling data to more closely resemble
the official results. So far as I know, none of the news orgs has offered an
explanation. They may try to justify it on statistical grounds. Here are two
accounts. The first
is very brief, the second
is in-depth.
MORE ON ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES Here is an except from the Moderate Independent
website about Bev Harris's work. She is a freelance journalist who has been
documenting how unreliable the machines are, and how vulnerable they are to
tampering. "Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting and the BlackBoxVoting.org
web site, has documented numerous cases of electronic disasters. One occurred
in Volusia County, Fla., in 2000 in which county election officials hand recounted
more than 184,000 paper ballots used to feed the computerized system, after
the central ballot-counting computer showed a Socialist Party candidate receiving
more than 9,000 votes and Al Gore getting minus 19,000. Another 4,000 votes
were received for Bush that should not have been there. "Election officials
eventually tallied Gore beating Bush by 97,063 votes to 82,214. But the wrong
numbers had already been sent to the media, which were used by FOX and other
networks to erroneously call the election for Bush and swing the public relations
part of the recount battle in his favor." I urge you to get familiar with Harris
and her work as quickly as possible. Three Members of Congress Have Asked the
GAO to Investigate the Election Three Congressmen have asked the General Accounting
Office, a federal agency, to investigate the election, citing questionable results
in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and California. Click
here to see their letter to the GAO.
Remember These Four Points: -- Bush's approval numbers were consistently below
50% throughout the campaign. -- New Democratic registrations in Ohio were 10
times that of Republicans, and in Florida, Democrats held a similar but somewhat
smaller advantage. -- All the polls that were still giving Bush leads after
the debates were within the margin of error, and when the undecideds started
making up their minds over the last weekend, Kerry's poll numbers were surging.
-- the $10 million exit-poll system, specifically designed not to fail this
time, clearly showed, in the original reports, a Kerry victory. Other Voices
to Hear: Other people besides me and the journalists I know are beginning to
question the legitimacy of the election. Here are some of them:
Here is a report of voter
complaints in 7 Southern states: Again, I urge you to realize that there
may still be time to do something about this before the Electoral College meets
on December 13th. The first step is to educate ourselves. The second step is
to educate the mainstream media. The local and regional press, and the alternative
media, have been doing their jobs; now we need the national press to do its
job, too. If you are concerned about this election being stolen, please do two
things:
- Send your concerns to everyone you know, both inside and outside the United
States.
- Send your concerns to the major news organizations. A list of contacts appears
at the end of this message.
Donna Knipp, New York, N.Y.
The Letter from Kerry Workers In Broward County, Fla.: "
On The Front Lines in Florida
Spurred by the unwillingness of the broadcast media to report
voting problems during the 2004 election race, we want to alert our
friends, family and colleagues to the widespread voter suppression and
disenfranchisement that occurred in Broward County, Florida. We staffed
the emergency hotline for the Kerry Campaign Headquarters in Broward
County from late October through the election. All of us were
devastated by the margin of Bush’s win in Florida, particularly since
most polls predicted the race would be extremely close.
Many of the calls to our hotline were from voters who had pressed
the “Kerry” button on their electronic voting screen, only to have
“Bush” light up as the candidate they had chosen. In some cases, this
would happen repeatedly until about the 5th or 6th time the voter
pressed “Kerry” and eventually his name would light up. In other cases,
the voters pushed “Kerry” but were later asked to confirm their “Bush”
vote.
We had calls about a road block, put up by the police at 7am on
Nov. 2, which blocked road access to two precinct locations in majority
black districts. There was no justification for the road block – no
accident or crime scene or construction.
Many of our calls dealt with voter suppression, or manipulation, of
the Haitian population – occurrences which seem too numerous, and their
targets too indefensible, as primarily poor, first-time-voter,
Creole-speaking refugees, to be anything but systemic. In one example,
a voter whose hands were bandaged could not press the touch-screen
himself; he asked the nonpartisan election official to press “Kerry”
for him, but the election official pressed “Bush” and sent his vote
immediately into the machine. Many, many others were denied the right
to vote and were not given provisional ballots, while others were
refused assistance at the polls, even though provisional ballots and
voter assistance are legal rights. Others were told they had already
voted and were turned away, although they had never voted previously.
This latter experience was a complaint not isolated to Haitians but
also included other surprised voters with no recourse except their word
against that of the Supervisor of Elections.
We spoke with hundreds of voters who were certain they had
registered to vote in the past 6 months, well before the October 4th
deadline, but were not on the rolls. And those were just the people who
had the information to contact us.
The local paper, citing the Supervisor of Elections office as its
source, reported that all persons voting by absentee ballot that they
could turn in ballots by hand to any of its six offices on Tuesday,
Nov. 2. Every single one of those offices except one was closed on
Tuesday.
We had numerous calls from voters on Nov. 2 whose precincts had
closed, yet the Supervisor of Elections office had given voters no
notification of the closure, and no notification of where to go to
vote. Thousands of people were likely disenfranchised because of
inexcusable mishaps such as this.
We had many calls from people who had been harassed by poll
workers, who were turned away without being allowed the right to vote
provisionally (another breech of voter rights). Other people were
turned away because the address on their driver’s license did not match
the address on their voter registration card; again, this is in direct
violation of election law.
All of these problems do not even take into account the 58,000
absentee ballots that had been “lost” by the Supervisor of Elections,
in perhaps the most Democratic county in the state, disenfranchising
thousands of people who were disabled, out of the country, or elderly
and unable get to the polls. These events, and many others, have been
documented and also reported to lawyers, but we fear they will not get
the attention they deserve. This is what we witnessed in just one
county. We believe that these “voting irregularities” raise serious
concerns about the legitimacy of the results in Florida, and more
broadly, about the health of democracy in this country. Please
circulate this widely.
Libby Anker Libanker@berkeley.edu
Ryan Centner rcentner@berkeley.edu
Jill Greenlee jillgs@socrates.berkeley.edu
Rachel VanmoSickle-Ward rvansick@berkeley.edu
A list of media contacts:
ABC News:
47 W. 66 St.,
New York, NY 10023
Phone: 212-456-7777
D.C. Bureau phone: 202-222-7777
General e-mail: netaudr@abc.com
ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings:
Phone: 212-456-4040
Fax: 212-456-2795
E-mail: netaudr@abc.com
Nightline:
1717 DeSales St., NW,
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-222-7000
E-mail: niteline@abc.com
20/20:
147 Columbus Ave., 10th fl,
New York, NY 10023
Phone: 212-456-2020
Fax: 212-456-0533
E-mail: 2020@abc.com
November 12, 2004 01:22 PM, by Syd Gris