Political Capital

Das Kapital.

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

[Here in Oregon we have universal absentee (mail-in)
ballots. I suggest that those in other states might look
into instituting this system.--Dan Clore]

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1529
Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms
key 2004 stolen election findings
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 26, 2005

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the
Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report
shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged
election to the White House is crumbling.

The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the
election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful,
penetrating report from the Government Accountability Office
that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.

The government's lead investigative agency is known for its
general incorruptibility and its thorough, in-depth
analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed
as "conspiracy theories" adds crucial new weight to the case
that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White
House.

Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John
Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic
voting machines as they were used during the November 2,
2004 presidential election. The request came amidst
widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often
shocking irregularities defined their performance.

According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee
received "more than 57,000 complaints" following Bush's
alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized
under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits in
public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by the
Free Press and other election protection organizations.

The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, "some of
[the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been
realized and have caused problems with recent elections,
resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."

The United States is the only major democracy that allows
private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate
the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev.
Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that "public
elections must not be conducted on privately-owned
machines." The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of
electronic voting machines, Warren O'Dell of Diebold,
pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus
the presidency to George W. Bush.

Bush's official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775
votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection
advocates argue that O'Dell's statement still stands as a
clear sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the
White House.

Among other things, the GAO confirms that:

1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast
ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter
both without being detected." In other words, the GAO now
confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open
door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes
were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven
times Bush's official margin of victory.

2. "It was possible to alter the files that define how a
ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate
could be recorded for a different candidate." Numerous sworn
statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in
Ohio 2004.

3. "Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system
software at the local level." Falsifying election results
without leaving any evidence of such an action by using
altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.

4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network
was easily compromised because not all digital recording
electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions
password-protected, so access to one machine provided access
to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that
rigging the 2004 vote did not require a "widespread
conspiracy" but rather the cooperation of a very small
number of operatives with the power to tap into the
networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at
will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in
Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could
be easily done by just one programmer.

5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by
repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily
guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could
have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.

6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily
picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting
into the system was an easy matter.

7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a
rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine
would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the
fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the
United States was decided.

8. GAO identified further problems with the security
protocols and background screening practices for vendor
personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.

In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank,
grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its
business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily
manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election turned.

The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the
context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State
simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney
campaign. Far from what election theft skeptics have long
asserted, the GAO findings confirm that the electronic
network on which 800,000 Ohio votes were cast was vulnerable
enough to allow a a tiny handful of operatives -- or less --
to turn the whole vote count using personal computers
operating on relatively simple software.

The GAO documentation flows alongside other crucial
realities surrounding the 2004 vote count. For example:

# The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an
unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush.
Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and
New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility.

# A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former
ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the
ballot-making machine in Auglaize County.

# Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at
least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to
Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry's name saw Bush's name light
up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim the
problems were quickly solved, but sworn statements and
affidavits say otherwise. They confirm similar problems in
Franklin County (Columbus). Kerry's margins in both counties
were suspiciously low.

# A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25
million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed.

# In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a
so-called "electronic transfer glitch" gave Bush nearly 4000
extra votes when only 638 people voted at that polling
place. The tally was allegedly corrected, but remains
infamous as the "loaves and fishes" vote count.

# In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that
their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper
trail.

# In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the
county's central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote --
19,000 more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for Bush
at the same percentage as prior to the additional votes, a
virtual statistical impossibility.

# In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals
turned up for obscure third party candidates in traditional
Democratic African-American wards. Vote counts in
neighboring wards showed virtually no votes for those
candidates, with 90% going instead for Kerry.

# Prior to one of Blackwell's illegitimate "show recounts,"
technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up
unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and
removed the computer hard drive.

# In response to official information requests, Shelby and
other counties admit to having discarded key records and
equipment before any recount could take place.

# In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff
Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry
confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that had
a touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no correlation
with ethnicity, social class or traditional party
affiliation -- only with the fact that touchscreen machines
were used.

# In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that "by and
large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter
is getting a lemon -- the Ford Pinto of voting technology.
We must demand better."

But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting
machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly
engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with
minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough votes
to put George W. Bush back in the White House.

Given the growing body of evidence, it appears increasingly
clear that's exactly what happened.

GAO Report

Revised 10/27/05

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE
GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008,
available via
http://freepress.org
and
http://harveywasserman.com
Their WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO, with Steve Rosenfeld, will be
published in Spring, 2006, by New Press.