Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman : Defending Democracy Against Stolen Elections

In a landmark report, the NAACP directly takes on the new Jim Crow tactics passed in 14 states. Image from NAACP.org.
Has America’s stolen election
process finally hit prime time?

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / January 3, 2012

It took two stolen U.S. presidential elections and the prospect of another one coming up in 2012.

For years the Democratic Party and even much of the left press has reacted with scorn for those who’ve reported on it.

But the imperial fraud that has utterly corrupted our electoral process seems finally to be dawning on a broadening core of the American electorate -- if it can still be called that.

The shift is highlighted by three major developments:

1. The NAACP goes to the United Nations

In early December, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest civil rights organization in America, announced that it was petitioning the United Nations over the orchestrated GOP attack on black and Latino voters.

In its landmark report entitled "Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America," the NAACP directly takes on the new Jim Crow tactics passed in 14 states that are designed to keep minorities from voting in 2012.

The report analyzes 25 laws that target black, minority and poor voters “unfairly and unnecessarily restrict[ing] the right to vote.” It notes “a coordinated assault on voting rights.”

The Free Press has been reporting on this coordinated assault since the 2000 election, including the heroic struggle of voters in Ohio to postpone the enactment of the draconian House Bill 194 that was the most restrictive voting rights law passed in the United States. (See "Voting rights activists fight back against new Republican Jim Crow attack in Ohio.")

The NAACP points out that this most recent wave of voter repression is a reaction to the “historic participation of people of color in the 2008 presidential election and substantial minority population growth according to the 2010 consensus.”

It should be no surprise that the states of the old Confederacy -- Florida, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina -- are in the forefront of repressing black voters. Three other Jim Crow states with the greatest increase in Latino population -- South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee -- also implemented drastic measures to restrict minority voting.

The report documents that a long-standing tactic under fire since the 1860s -- the disenfranchisement of people with felony convictions -- is back in vogue. This has been coupled with “severe restrictions” on persons conducting voter registration drives and reducing opportunities for early voting and the use of absentee ballots complete these template legislative acts.

Most of these new Jim Crow tactics were initially drafted as model legislation by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a secretive and conservative corporate policy group whose founder, according to the NAACP, is on record in favor of reducing the voting population in order to increase their own “leverage.”

The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that the 25 laws passed in these 14 states could prevent as many as 5 million voters from voting, a number easily exceeding the margin of victory in numerous presidential elections.

Ohio’s HB 194, which awaits a 2012 referendum vote, would disenfranchise an estimated 900,000 in one of our nation’s key battleground states.

An important statistic in all the legislation is that 25% of African Americans lack a state photo identification, as do 15% of Latinos, but by comparison, only 8% of white voters. Other significant Democratic constituents -- the elderly of all races and college students -- would be disproportionately impacted.

Ohio voters have just repealed a draconian anti-labor law passed by the GOP-dominated legislature and the state’s far-right governor John Kasich. Whether they will do the same to this massive disenfranchisement remains to be seen. But the fact that it’s on a state ballot marks a major leap forward. Ohio activists are also drafting a constitutional amendment that includes revamping the registration, voting, and vote count procedures. (See "Post-Buckeye Election Protection?")

The Justice Department has called South Carolina's new voter ID law discriminatory. Image from TPM.

2. The Justice Department awakens

On Friday, December 23, 2011, the U.S. Justice Department called South Carolina’s new voter ID law discriminatory. The finding was based in part on the fact that minorities were almost 20% more likely than whites to be without state-issued photo IDs required for voting. Unlike Ohio, South Carolina remains under the 1965 Voting Rights Act and requires federal pre-approval to any changes in voting laws that may harm minority voters.

The Republican governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley denounced the Justice Department decision as “outrageous” and vowed to do everything in her power to overturn the decision and uphold the integrity of state’s rights under the 10th Amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the requirement of photo ID for voting. Undoubtedly the attempt by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to challenge this will go to the most thoroughly corporate-dominated Court in recent memory. The depth of the commitment of the Obama Administration to the issue also remains in doubt.

3. The EAC finally finds that voting machines are programmed to be partisan

Another federal agency revealed another type of problem in Ohio. On December 22, 2011, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) issued a formal investigative report on Election Systems & Software (ED&D) DS200 Precinct County optical scanners. The EAC found “three substantial anomalies”:

• Intermittent screen freezes, system lock-ups, and shutdowns that prevent the voting system from operating in the manner in which it was designed
• Failure to log all normal and abnormal voting system events
• Skewing of the ballot resulting in a negative effect on system accuracy

The EAC ruled that the ballot scanners made by ES&S electronic voting machine firm failed 10% of the time to read the votes correctly. Ohio is one of 13 states that requires EAC certification before voting machines can be used in elections.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported in 2010 that the voting machines in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County had failed during testing for the 2010 gubernatorial election. Cleveland uses the same Republican-connected ES&S ballot scanners -- the DS200 opti-scan system. Ohio’s Mahoning County, home of the Democratic enclave of Youngstown, also uses the DS200s. The same opti-scan system is also used in the key battleground states of Florida, Illionois, Indiana, New York, and Wisconsin.

Voting rights activists fear a repeat of the well-documented vote switching that occurred in Mahoning County in the 2004 presidential election when county election officials admitted that 31 of their machines switched Kerry votes to Bush.

But a flood of articles about these realities -- including coverage in The New York Times -- seems to indicate the theft of our elections has finally taken a leap into the mainstream of the American mind. Whether that leads to concrete reforms before another presidential election is stolen remains to be seen.

But after more than a decade of ignorance and contempt, it’s about time something gets done to restore a semblance of democracy to the nation that claims to be the world’s oldest.

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books about election protection. Bob's Fitrakis Files are at freepress.org, where this article was first published. Harvey Wasserman's History of the U.S. is at HarveyWasserman.com, along with Solartopia! Our Green-powered Earth. Read more of Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis' writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman : Post-Buckeye Election Protection?

Political cartoon by Steve Bell / About.com.
Can we transform labor's Buckeye victory
into a new era of election protection?

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / November 14, 2011

The crushing defeat Ohio's working people dealt 1% politicians last week has critical implications for a whole other issue -- election protection.

In a voting process that might otherwise have been stolen, a concerted effort by citizens committed to democracy -- NOT the Democratic Party -- guaranteed an official Ohio tally that finally squares with reality. The defeat of millionaire Republican Governor John Kasich's union-busting Issue 2 by more than 20% actually squared with exit polling and other reliable political indicators.

In the 2008 election, Richard Charnin has demonstrated how there was a more than 5% shift towards the Republican presidential candidate John McCain than predicted by the highly accurate exit polls, the gold standard for detecting election fraud. In Ohio’s 2010 election, exit polls revealed a 5.4% unexplained “red shift” towards the Republican Party. The shift led to the defeat of Democratic Governor Ted Strickland as well as Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.

But both of those elections were administered under a Democratic governor and secretary of state. This year's reasonable vote count on Issue 2 came under Republican Secretary of State John Husted and Republican Governor John Kasich who had a strong interest in seeing the opposite outcome. For those of us in Ohio, that was the REAL groundshaker of Issue 2's defeat.

The most shocking news from Ohio’s 2011 election was the inability of Franklin County Board of Elections officials to post election results at the precinct level due to faulty software programming. In a close election, this could have been pivotal in allowing electronic election fraud. See: "Election night computer software meltdown in Franklin County."

Can we now build on this to bring reliable vote counts to the entire nation? See the proposal below.

But first, understand: Since 2004, Ohio has been the poster chlld for the art and science of stealing elections. When Karl Rove and then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell flipped a 4%-plus victory for John Kerry into a 2%-plus victory for George W. Bush, they forged overnight a new frontier of high-tech election thievery. See "New court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio presidential election was hacked."

The fraud was carried out with a stunning array of techniques. More than 300,000 likely Democratic voters were knocked off the registration rolls. Grassroots registration efforts were intimidated and shredded. Voting machines were shorted, manipulated, and flipped. Voters were misled and misguided. Whole bags of ballots disappeared. Electronic screen tallies jumped from Kerry to Bush. Polls closed illegally and often. You name it, the GOP did it... and then some.

In our How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election we documented well over a hundred different ways the Republicans robbed the process to give George W. Bush a second term.

Not only did John Kerry and the Democrats say nothing about it. Kerry conceded with nearly a quarter-million votes uncounted, then used a Republican law firm to attack election rights activists’ attempts to reveal what had been done.

Then, in 2005, Blackwell and Rove outdid themselves. A grassroots-based election reform referendum ran right up to voting day with a 25-plus margin of victory. It mandated extended voting access for all Ohio citizens and a range of other reforms. With clear benefit to the vast majority of Ohio voters, all major polls showed that year's Issue 2 passing with ease. See "Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?"

But somehow, on election day, it went down in flames. Ohio's electoral process remained a thieves' paradise.

In 2006, amidst massive GOP scandals and Blackwell's impossible run for the statehouse, the Democrats swept in. They oversaw Obama's victory in the Buckeye state, a key to all presidential elections.

They did virtually nothing to reform the structure of Ohio's electoral process. But the grassroots strength of those committed to democracy became established.

This year, democracy advocates were again out in force. Independent monitors showed up at polling stations throughout the state, sponsored by the Free Press’ Election Protection project and Green Party observers were active as well. A careful eye was kept on electronic voting machines. Ballot custody was tracked and potential fraud was challenged. Numerous pollworkers contacted the Free Press when they were unable to post precinct-level results.

And thus this critical election was not stolen, as well it might have been. Labor's critical victory was preserved, and perhaps a new era has opened in our national politics, aimed at rolling back the reactionary tide of corporate personhood and its minions of mammon.

But it cannot proceed without election protection. Our voting process is non-transparent, inherently corrupt, unfair, and prone to theft by the highest briber.

So we are now in the process of drafting a constitutional amendment. It can go state by state, and nationwide. Language will vary and evolve. We hope you will join the process and use it to define the electoral process in years to come:

A protection amendment for the states and nation:

1. All citizens shall be automatically registered to vote upon turning 18 years old. Registration is lost only upon revocation of citizenship or death.
2. A legal signature, accurately provided under penalty of felony law, shall be sufficient to procure a ballot
3. Voting shall take place by mail, as prescribed by local officials, and at voting stations open on a designated four-day period including Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
4. All ballots shall be printed on recycled paper.
5. All ballots shall be hand-counted, and preserved for at least 10 years after every election.
6. All polling places shall host exit polls conducted by independent agencies under the supervision of an independent non-partisan agency.

An informed, committed citizenry will still be needed to guarantee fair elections. Reform of the financial aspects of election campaigns also needs to be addressed.

But in terms of guaranteeing an accurate vote count, we believe these six measures are key. We are sure these reforms will come over a long, difficult process.

But paper ballots are used in Germany, where vote counts square to within 0.1% of exit polls, and in Japan, Switzerland, Canada, and elsewhere. Elections on paper can certainly be stolen, but it's a lot harder to do than with the absurdly corruptible electronic voting machines and non-transparent hardware and software manufactured by partisan corporations.

No system is flawless. But think about where America would be right now if the 1% had stolen Ohio's labor law and destroyed its public unions.

Our survival as a nation depends on establishing a fair, reliable voting process. We believe this is a start. Won't you join us?

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books about election protection. Bob's Fitrakis Files are at freepress.org, where this article was first published. Harvey Wasserman's History of the U.S. is at HarveyWasserman.com, along with Solartopia! Our Green-powered Earth. Read more of Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis' writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Supremes Make it Official : Corporations Rule!

High court ruling on campaign finance:
The corporation as supreme being

By Glenn W. Smith / The Rag Blog / January 21, 2010

If you had any doubt about the corruption that has infected the very bloodstream of American politics, look at today’s ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court said corporations can spend unlimited amounts to influence the outcome of elections.

I’m gonna repeat my sad joke: we are approaching the time when there will be “corporate creationists” so convinced of the divine status of the corporate life-form that they will deny vehemently that corporations evolved from human beings. Americans, we are the new monkeys.

At the root of the Court’s attack on popular democracy -- and it is an attack, and it will promote if not guarantee rule by unaccountable corporate oligarchy -- is the Court’s infamous 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision that said money equals speech. Left unaddressed in today’s decision -- and others -- is the absurdity of this formula. When money equals speech, outfits with more money have more speech. And that destroys the very principle of free speech.

Ask yourself this question. If you had to persuade your community about political opinion X, but corporations opposed your view, would you stand a chance knowing that their “political speech” was worth much more than your political speech? The answer is obvious. Mere people have been thrown on the scrap heap. The U.S. Supreme Court is lifting corporations to the top of the evolutionary ladder.

Teabaggers, do you get it now? You are outraged by your powerlessness. Can you now see the real source of that powerlessness? It is not government. Government has been turned into the handmaiden of the corporate oligarchs.

I’m compelled to repeat something else: I’m a fan of entrepreneurship and responsible capitalism. But it’s not the so-called heavy hand of government that is the enemy. It’s the corporate monopolists.

I also share the view of the sanctity of the individual in a democracy. While many anachronistically worry about creeping socialism, it is the unrestrained power of unaccountable global corporatists that threatens individual rights with extinction.

The Supreme Court’s decision should be a wake-up call to America. The corruption has gone far enough. Democracy hangs in the balance. This is not hyperbole. This is a day that will live in infamy.

[Austin's Glenn W. Smith, according to Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, is a “legendary political consultant and all-around good guy.” His excellent blog on politics and culture is DogCanyon, where this article also appears.]

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Rage Against the Machine : Diebold and the Massachusetts Election

Illustration by Doug Potter / The Austin Chronicle.
Hacking the vote:
Will Diebold steal the Senate?

As Bay Staters vote to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, most will be marking scantron ballots to be run through easily hackable electronic counters made by Diebold/Premier.

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / January 18, 2010

The same types of machines that helped put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000, and “reelect” him in 2004, may now decide who wins the all-important “60th Senate seat” in Massachusetts. The fate of health care and much much more hang in the balance.

As Bay Staters vote to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, most will be marking scantron ballots to be run through easily hackable electronic counters made by Diebold/Premier.

A paper ballot of sorts does come through these machines. But the count they generated was seriously compromised in the Florida 2000 election that put George W. Bush in the White House. Similar machines played a critical role skewing the Ohio 2004 vote count to fraudulently reelect him.

In 2004 in Lucas County (Toledo) Ohio, incorrectly calibrated Diebold scantron machines left piles of uncounted ballots in heavily black districts in the inner city.

The Free Press also found that on optiscan machines in Miami County, Ohio the reported totals were significantly higher than the actual number of people who signed in to vote.

Ironically, the cheated candidate in that election was Massachusetts’ now-senior Senator John Kerry. Kerry is circulating email appeals warning that this election is a "jump ball" in which "shady right-wing organizations and out of state conservatives have descended upon the state in droves."

But Kerry himself has infamously said nothing about the theft of the 2004 election. Neither he, the Democratic Party, nor the Obama Administration have done anything to change a system in which elections can be stolen by the very well-funded Republican-owned companies that make and administer the vote-counting machines. A dozen election protection groups from around the country have now issued an "orange alert" warning that the Massachusetts vote count could be "ripe for manipulation."

Thus Kerry’s new colleague could be “selected” by the same means that deprived him of the White House.

According to Selectman Dan Keller of the western town of Wendell, some Massachusetts communities -- including his -- do have hand-counted paper ballots.

But most of the state relies on Diebold scantron counters which can be manipulated in numerous ways, including by switching calibrations and moving ballots from precinct-to-precinct or county-to-county, thus reversing intended votes from one candidate to another.

According to Brad Friedman at BradBlog LHS Associates sells and services many of the machines being used in this special election. Though the vast majority of elected officials in Massachusetts are Democrats, control of the vote count can be a grey area where voting machines are involved, especially given Sen. Kerry’s six-year stupor over the stolen 2004 election, a record of inaction amply matched by the Democratic Party and Obama Administration.

According to Friedman, LHS “has admitted to illegally tampering with memory cards during elections,” and has a Director of Sales and Marketing who has been “barred from Connecticut by their Secretary of State.”

The stakes in this election cannot be overstated. The deceased Senator Kennedy’s seat holds the key to a filibuster-breaking 60-seat Democratic majority in the Senate. State Attorney-General Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate, is a supporter of the Obama health care plan, and an opponent of atomic power.

Coakley’s opponent, conservative Republican State Senator Scott Brown, has been running a Tea Bagger-style “populist” campaign.

Poll results differ substantially as the campaign winds down, but all show a close race. Thus Diebold, a thoroughly tainted player with deep Republican roots, could hold the key to the election by shifting the outcome in just a few key precincts.

After internet-based reporting broke the story of the stolen 2004 election, thousands of election-protection activists turned out to monitor the 2008 vote count. Among other things, careful exit polling was done to provide a close reality check on official vote counts. Poll monitors interviewed voters and carefully scrutinized voting procedures and how ballots were handled and counted.

Often overlooked are voter registration manipulations, which were used in Ohio and elsewhere to strip hundreds of thousands of voters of their right to cast a ballot. In Ohio alone, more than 300,000 legally registered voters were electronically removed from the voter rolls between the 2000 and 2004 elections. Most were in heavily Democratic urban areas.

In 2008, the Free Press found that the number of purged Ohio voters jumped to more than a million.

Thus the fact that the electoral apparatus in Massachusetts is apparently in the hands of Democrats may not matter. Private vendors like LHS and Diebold have the actual control over the final numbers.

In Massachusetts, a recount only occurs if the final results are less than half of one percent, and as election reform activist John Bonifaz points out, Massachusetts does not require random audits of the computerized vote counting machines to compare the computer results to the optical scan ballots marked by the voters. Bonifaz notes that in the Al Franken-Norm Coleman Minnesota Senate race in 2008, “everything was ultimately hand-counted.” The problem in Massachusetts hinges on whether the race is close enough to trigger a recount, which candidates can petition for within 30 days.

Exit polls remain the gold standard for election integrity throughout the democratic world. But in Ohio in 2004, the exit polls indicated that the election results were reversed and that Kerry actually won. Jonathan Simon, election integrity expert, points out that the exit polls in 2008 in Minnesota “had Franken winning by 10%! This is a huge disparity, not remotely reflected by the recount.”

“Could the exit poll have been that badly off? Or could a large number of ballots, 200,000 or so, have been swapped out before the recount? Here is where the chain of custody, or lack thereof, comes in. These ballots were not exactly under heavy surveillance during the month-long period between election day and recount completion,” Simon said.

What will matter in Massachusetts is how thoroughly election-protection advocates are able to scrutinize voter certification, access, and ballot security. Billions of dollars -- and much more -- are riding on the outcome of this election. Those who believe it cannot or would not be stolen are simply in denial.

Given the Democratic party’s astonishing lack of leadership on so many issues, it is entirely possible that Scott Brown could legitimately beat Martha Coakley in this election.

But it is also possible that the outcome could be manipulated by the companies in control of the registration rolls and vote counts. It will be up to citizen election protection activists to make sure that doesn’t happen yet again.

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman broke many of the major stories surrounding the theft of the 2004 election, and have co-authored four books on election protection, which appear at www.freepress.org, where they are publisher and senior editor, and where this story also appears.]

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Diebold and the Electronic Vote : The Rig is Up

Cartoon by M.e. Cohen / HumorInk.com.
Your electronic vote in the 2010 election has just been bought

The ES&S purchase of Diebold's voting machine operation is merely the tip of a toxic iceberg...

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / September 24, 2009

Unless U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder intervenes, your electronic vote in 2010 will probably be owned by the Republican-connected ES&S Corporation. With 80% ownership of America's electronic voting machines, ES&S could have the power to shape America's future with a few proprietary keystrokes.

ES&S has just purchased the voting machine division of the Ohio-based Diebold, whose role in fixing the 2004 presidential election for George W. Bush is infamous.

Critics of the merger hope Holder will rescind the purchase on anti-trust grounds.

But only a transparent system totally based on hand-counted paper ballots, with universal automatic voter registration, can get us even remotely close to a reliable vote count in the future.

For even if Holder does void this purchase, ES&S and Diebold in tandem will still control four of every five votes cast on touchscreen machines. As the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to open the floodgates on corporate campaign spending, the only difference could be that those who would buy our elections will have to write two checks instead of one.

And in fact, it's even worse than that. ES&S, Diebold and a tiny handful of sibling Republican voting equipment and computing companies control not only the touchscreen machines, but also the electronic tabulators that count millions of scantron ballots, AND the electronic polling books that decide who gets to vote and who doesn't.

Let's do a quick review:

1. ES&S, Diebold and other companies tied to election hardware and software are owned and operated by a handful of very wealthy conservatives, or right-to-life ideologues, with long-standing direct ties to the Republican Party;


2. As votes will be increasingly cast on optiscans, touchscreens or computer voting machines in the United States in 2010, the scant few so-called paper trail mechanisms that are in place will offer little security against electronic vote theft;


3. The source code on all U.S. touchscreen machines now used for the casting and counting of ballots is proprietary, meaning the companies that own and operate the machines -- including ES&S -- are not required to share with the public the details of how those machines actually work;


4. Although there are official mechanisms for monitoring and recounts, none carry any real weight in the face of the public's inability to gain control or even access to this electronic source code, whose proprietary standing has been upheld by the courts;


5. With the newly merged ES&S/Diebold now apparently controlling 80% of the national vote through hardware and software, this GOP-connected corporation will have the power to alter virtually every election in the U.S. with a few keystrokes. Unless there is a massive, successful grassroots campaign between now and 2012, the same will hold true for the next US presidential election;


6. Aside from its control of touchscreen machines, the merged Diebold/ES&S also controls a significant percent of the electronic optiscan tabulators to count cards on which voters use pencils to fill in circles, indicating their vote. Accounts of fraud, rigging, theft and abuse of these optiscan systems are well-documented and innumerable. Any corporation that prints these ballots and runs the machines designated to count them can control yet another major piece of the US vote count;


7. The merged ES&S/Diebold now also controls the electronic voter registration systems in many counties and states. With that control comes the ability to remove registered voters without significant public accountability. In the 2004 election, nearly 25% of all the registered voters in the Democratic-rich city of Cleveland were purged, including 10,000 voters erased "accidentally" by a Diebold electronic pollbook system. So in addition to controlling the vote counts on touchscreen and optiscan voting machines, the merged Diebold/ES&S and sympathetic hardware and software companies that service computerized voting equipment will control who actually gets to cast a vote in the first place.

Lest we forget: in 2000, long before this ES&S/Diebold purchase was proposed, Choicepoint, a GOP-controlled data management firm, hired by Florida’s Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris, removed up to 150,000 Florida citizens from voter rolls on the pretense that they were ex-felons. The vast majority of them were not.

Computer software "disappeared" 16,000 votes from Al Gore's column at a critical moment on election night, allowing George W. Bush’s first cousin John Ellis, a Fox News analyst, to proclaim him the winner. The election was officially decided by less than 700 votes and a 5-4 Supreme Court vote preventing a full recount. An independent audit later showed Gore was the rightful winner.

In 2004, more than 300,000 Ohio citizens were removed from voter rolls by GOP-controlled county election boards (more than one million have been removed since).

Various dirty tricks prevented still tens of thousands more Ohioans from voting. The vote count was marred by a wide range of official manipulations coordinated by then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.

Diebold was a major player in the 2004 Ohio elections, but was joined by numerous other computer voting firms and their technicians in "recounting the vote" which confirmed the Bush "victory," despite exit poll results and other evidence to the contrary. In defiance of a federal court order, 56 of 88 Ohio counties destroyed some or all of their ballots or election records. No one has been prosecuted.

In short, the ES&S purchase of Diebold's voting machine operation is merely the tip of a toxic iceberg. Voiding the merger will do nothing to solve the REAL problem, which is an electronic-based system of voter registration and ballot counting that is potentially controlled by private corporations and contractors whose agenda is to make large profits and protect the system that guarantees them.

Although elections based on universal automatic registration and hand-counted paper ballots are not foolproof, they constitute a start. Stealing an election by stuffing paper ballot boxes at the "retail" level is far more difficult than stealing votes at the "wholesale" level with an electronic flip of a switch.

As it's done in numerous other countries throughout the world, the only realistic means by which the U.S. can establish a democratic system of ballot casting and counting is to do it the old-fashioned way. With human-scale checks and balances we might even be secure in the knowledge that our elections and vote counts will truly reflect the will of the people. What a concept!

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection, available at freepress.org at, where this article also appears, and where Bob's Fitrakis Files are also available. Harvey Wasserman's History of the U.S. is at harveywasserman.com.]

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Rag Blog Report : Mauricio Funes Wins in El Salvador

Photos from the elections in El Salvador by Al / The Rag Blog.
Live from El Salvador

One team in San Martin actually was notified that an ARENA representative in a dark corner (pants down) was trying to smuggle out Actas and ballots... An FMLN activist had seen him struggling with his belt and made sure to help, revealing the envelopes he had stuffed in his pants.

By Al / The Rag Blog / March 17, 2009

[This is the third in a series of dispatches from a regular Rag Blog contributor who is writing under a pseudonym due to the sensitivity of the situation in El Salvador.]

I was in the small dusty town of Rosario de Moro where there were sixteen voting tables. Our group left our hotel in San Salvador and got to the voting site by 4:30 a.m. It was in a small school with a covered basketball court which meant that we were in the shade. The FMLN had an office across the street and they had mobilized and were ready for their work.

Each table had four official people sitting at it -- two from the ARENA party and two from the Frente Faribundo Marti for National Liberation (FMLN). Then there were vigilantes (observers) in party vests -- two for each party. Red vests for the FLMN and red white and blue for ARENA. We met two of the police officers and entered the site promptly at 5. Four international observers determined to stay the entire day until the Actas (final reports) were faxed and the papaletas (ballots) had been loaded onto trucks and taken into the Capitol by the police.

I'll jump ahead now because for all the lack of technology, the votes got counted quickly with a lot of transparency. Each ballot shown to everyone at the table and put into the hands of a Party representative. There were checks and balances as each roster (padron) was counted and the corners torn off the ballots. Unused ballots were counted and stamped. We watched as the Actas (table results) were faxed to San Salvador, checking to make sure the verbal results we had gotten at each table had not been replaced.

This is why we were there to guard against fraud -- against the 800 bused in Guatemalans and Nicaraguans, against the replacement of Actas and stolen ballots. DUI (ID cards) for dead people and bought votes.

There is much more to say.

But Mauricio Funes won the presidency and it was known by 6 p.m. (after the polls closed at 5) at my election site. The vice president is Salvador Sanchez Cerena, a former guerrillera in the struggle here. Everyone that speaks of this election says it is dedicated to the dead. To Oscar Romero assassinated as he gave mass in March, 1980. And to the people massacred.

It is a huge turning point. The 1992 UN brokered peace accords here resulted in an end to the civil war, but it has been the relentless organizing of the FLMN in every sector that has resulted in a people's victory. The streets were filled with red shirts and red FLMN banners. Fireworks lit the sky. The man overseeing the polling place said to me: "Sometimes a party celebrates. This time the people celebrate."

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Power Struggle : Shining a Light on the Salvadoran Elections

On March 13, 2009, a pedestrian in San Salvador walks past a mural supporting the FMLN in the upcoming elections . Photo by Daniel Leclair / Reuters.
Live from El Salvador:

We see the electric cable hacked apart and lying on the sidewalk... A delegate asks the driver if the electric company is near. 'Oh, they are here,' he says. 'Great!' she responds, 'they can fix the power.' The driver responds, 'They are the ones who cut the power line.'

By Al / The Rag Blog / March 14, 2009

[The following is the second of a series of dispatches from a regular Rag Blog contributor who is writing under a pseudonym due to the sensitivity of the situation in El Salvador.]

I am part of a huge presence of international observers in El Salvador, preparing for the Sunday, March 15th election here in which the FMLN and ruling ARENA party are the two contenders. There are 4,000 of us here, from the OAS, EU; there are diplomats and representatives from 30 countries.

Imagine an election with a change candidate and a corrupt party in power for twenty years, presiding over an economy that widens the gap between rich and poor, concentrates wealth, starves public services until they break and then uses that opportunity to privatize those services. Two days before an historic election, International Observers are invited to a reception by the opposition party. A similar reception is given by the party in power. The Vice Presidential candidate is present as are many other elected officials and there are hundreds of observers. After food and drinks, there are speeches. Then the power goes off.

Sabotage say those who know. As my delegation goes off to its tour bus, we see the electric cable hacked apart and lying on the sidewalk. When we get into our bus, a delegate asks the driver if the electric company is near. "Oh, they are here," he says. "Great!" she responds, "they can fix the power." The driver responds, "They are the ones who cut the power line." They work for the privatized electric company in San Salvador with U.S. owners, fearful of any change in government. This is the climate here. Highly charged. A climate of fear.

On the other hand, it has been gratifying to see that public pressure has been mounted. The State Department issued a statement of neutrality. Even the Embassy here has echoed these words. Today, we hope that Hillary Clinton will speak out as well. Some of this has been picked up in the press here and it has dampened the words of a small gaggle of right wing Republicans who have likened the presidential candidate Mauricio Funes to a demonic Hugo Chavez, eager to spread red flags across Latin America. More later. We're leaving to see our polling stations.

[See Al's March 13 post on the same subject: El Salvador : U.S. Republicans Meddling in Historic Election]

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El Salvador : U.S. Republicans Meddling in Historic Election

Mauricio Funes, a former television reporter, is the FMLN candidate for president of El Salvador.

It is outrageous to see how a small contingent from the Party of No can contribute to a climate of electoral fear.

By Al / The Rag Blog / March 13, 2009

[The following is a dispatch from a regular Rag Blog contributor who is writing under a pseudonym due to the sensitivity of the situation in El Salvador.]

Live from San Salvador.

I am here as an international observer to an historic election in El Salvador. Before I came here, Rep. Raul Grivalva from Arizona, Senator Bernie Sanders and 31 others signed a letter to the Obama administration requesting that the U.S. remain neutral and support the outcome of the presidential election this Sunday, March 15, 2009. What I have seen here is the way that a few Republicans testifying on the floor of Congress can intervene in that sovereignty.

The front pages of the paper here trumpeted the news that the United States would cut off aid and stop Salvadoran immigrants from submitting remittances to their country. It is outrageous to see how that small contingent from the Party of No can contribute to a climate of electoral fear. The other claim is that the journalist Mauricio Funes from the FMLN party is a terrorist. I was walking in the neighborhood near our hotel two days ago when an airplane dropped flyers over several blocks advertising a documentary. The ad featured Hugo Chavez stabbing his finger at his audience. The ruling ARENA party here is trying to demonize Funes and the FMLN, paving the way for potential violence. Two FMLN activists were murdered last night after they were followed and cornered by a truck full of men.

This is the old El Salvador of death squads and assassinations which our tax dollars supported for so many years. Please pay attention to what is happening here. Call your Congressional representatives and demand that the U.S. remain neutral and support the democratic choice that is made on Sunday. Pressure today has resulted in a statement of neutrality from the State Department, but it is hard to publicize this statement. Read the Huffington Post for more action items

Mil gracias,

Al

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Iraq Elections May Change the Political Landscape

ON ALERT: An Iraqi soldier checks security at a polling station in the southern city of Basra. Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images.
Iraq elections: Security tight for provincial vote
By Tina Susman / January 31, 2009

There is a curfew on cars in cities, and Baghdad's airport is shut as officials prepare for Saturday's vote, which many hope will redress sectarian grievances by giving Sunni Arabs seats on councils.

Reporting from Baghdad -- In elections expected to significantly alter the country's political equation, Iraqis today began choosing new provincial councils to replace the current ones, blamed for fueling years of sectarian strife.

Late Friday, vehicular curfews took effect in cities, Baghdad's airport was closed and borders were sealed, signs of security concerns that remain high despite a major drop in violence in recent months. Polling stations were ringed with razor wire and under 24-hour police guard. At one site, police Lt. Dhia Khadim bragged that voters had to undergo six searches before casting their ballots.

"It's essential," Khadim said as a rooster crowed nearby and wind sent dust swirling about the courtyard of the school serving as polling place.

Saad Hassan was the first in line to vote at a polling station in east Baghdad's Sadr City, the Shiite stronghold of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr. He woke up at 6 a.m., prayed, and brought his family with him, walking in the dim and dusty light of the early morning through an area that less than a year ago was engulfed in fighting between Shiite militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi security forces.

"We are sick of the religious figures, which brought only chaos to our country," Hassan said after voting for a secular party.

Koudir Oudah Kahdum voted at the same station, but for the Islamic Dawa Party of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. As with many Iraqis, memories of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship swayed his decision. "It was Maliki who implemented his execution," Kahdum said, referring to Hussein's hanging in 2006. Maliki "is a brave man and our hero," he said. "He deserves that we vote for him again and again."

At stake are 440 seats on 14 provincial councils, the equivalent of U.S. state legislatures.

The current councils are dominated by Shiites and ethnic Kurds, even in areas where Sunni Arabs dominate, a result of a boycott of the 2005 elections by Sunni Arab parties. The lopsided councils and Sunnis' lack of power served to exacerbate sectarian and ethnic tensions that had boiled over into violence and have continued to hinder political progress.

The elections are seen as a barometer of Iraq's ability to remain relatively calm as U.S. military forces scale back their presence. A smooth process could also boost President Obama's desire to accelerate the U.S. troop withdrawal, something he has said he wants to achieve within 16 months. That places U.S. military commanders in Iraq in a delicate situation. They are eager to highlight Iraq's improved security and point to the elections as a milestone, but they also warn against a hasty withdrawal of the 140,000 American troops here.

"I think over-focus on a single event is always dangerous, be it positive or negative," said Army Brig. Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, one of the top U.S. commanders in Iraq, speaking of the elections as a measure of Iraq's future stability.

"Iraq is on a journey. It's on a journey toward sovereign nationhood," he said, noting that with nearly 14,500 candidates vying for council seats, most would lose. "That's a lot of disappointed people, like about 14,000 of them."

U.N. Special Envoy Staffan De Mistura said he was confident that there would not be a return to violence as occurred after the 2005 elections, because this time Sunni Arab parties are taking part. In addition, he said, Iraq has overcome what he called the Samarra syndrome -- the eruption of sectarian violence after a major attack, such as the 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. The attack led to a steep rise in Shiite-Sunni violence that displaced hundreds of thousands of people and left the capital carved into sectarian-based neighborhoods.

For that reason, Abu Walid Jabouri said Friday, he did not trust any of the more than 300 parties in the fray to overcome the perils of sectarianism.

"I will go to the poll, but I will not write anything. I will just draw a line across the ballot," said Jabouri, out for an afternoon stroll with his wife and young daughter.

In 2005, Mohammed Hussein supported the Iraqi National Accord, a secular party headed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. With security his main concern now, Hussein wasn't sure which way to vote. He planned to decide at the last minute, at the booth.

"We want whoever rules us to be secular, but we also want security," he said, acknowledging that Maliki had impressed him with his crackdown on Shiite militias.

Maliki is hoping the crackdown will help seal a Dawa victory in Baghdad and the southern provinces, where the rival Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council holds sway. Strong showings would help Maliki consolidate power across the country before national elections this year that will determine whether he remains prime minister.

[Times staff writers Ned Parker in Najaf and Monte Morin in Baghdad and a special correspondent in Baghdad contributed to this report.]

Source / Los Angeles Times

H/t Juan Cole / The Rag Blog

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Joan Didion : Election by Sound Bite

Portrait of Joan Didion by Robert Birnbaum.
Obsessed by 'lipstick on a pig,' economic 'free fall' and other 'great stories,' America has failed to see the real challenges it faces.
By Joan Didion / October 17, 2008

This piece appears in the New York Review of Books' election issue, on sale this week. Novelist Didion is the author of "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction" (November 2008).

Midway through August, before the Democratic and Republican conventions, Chris Matthews made an offhand judgment on MSNBC that pretty much summed up the political mood in which the country found itself: "I've seen this election before, I think it was 1988." He was referring of course to what was supposed to have been the certain 1988 victory of Michael Dukakis over George H.W. Bush, and to the ways in which a political party, most reliably the Democratic, can get overtaken by its own enthusiasm for being victimized; but what he said resonated beyond the concerns about Senator Obama's candidacy just then beginning to surface.

It resonated because what seemed striking about the long and impassioned run-up to this election was not how different it had been -- but precisely how similar it had been to previous such seasons.

We had kept talking about how different it was, but it wasn’t.

On a single mid-September morning these phrases would appear on the front page of The Washington Post: "stocks plummet," "panic on Wall Street," "as banks lost faith in one another," "one of the most tumultuous days ever for financial markets," "giant blue-chip financial institutions swept away," "banks refusing to lend," "Russia closing its stock market," "panicked selling," "free fall," and "the greatest destruction of financial wealth that the world has ever seen."

These were not entirely unpredictable developments.

For at least some months it had been clear that we were living in a different America, one that had moved from feeling rich to feeling poor. Many had seen a mandate for political change. Yet in the end the old notes had been struck, the old language used. The prospect for any given figure had been evaluated, now as before, by his or her "story." She has "a wonderful story" we had heard about Condoleezza Rice during her 2005 confirmation hearings. "We all admire her story." "I think she’s formidable," Senator Biden said about Governor Palin a few weeks ago. "She has a great story. She has a great family."

Senator Biden himself was said to have "a great story," the one that revolved around the death of his first wife and child and taking the train from Washington to Wilmington to be with his surviving children. Senator McCain, everyone agreed, had "a great story." Now as then, the "story" worked to "humanize" the figure under discussion, which is to say to downplay his or her potential for trouble. Condoleezza Rice's "story," for example, had come down to her "doing an excellent job as provost of Stanford" (this had kept getting mentioned, as if everyone at Fox News had come straight off the provost beat) and being "an accomplished concert pianist."

Now as then, the same intractable questions were avoided and in the end successfully evaded. The matter of our continuing engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and our looming engagements throughout the region had been reduced to bickering over who had or had not exhibited "belief in the surge." "Belief in the surge" had been equated with the "success" of the surge, and by extension of our entire engagement in Iraq, as if that "success" were a fact rather than a wish. Such doublespeak was rampant. The increasing destabilization of the economy was already clear -- an average of 81,000 jobs a month were lost all through the summer -- but discussion of how to resolve the bleeding still centered on such familiar favorites as tort reform. This word "reform" kept resurfacing, but the question of who exactly was to be reformed was left to be explored mainly on "The View," by Barbara Walters.

The leading candidates duly presented their "health care solutions," not one of which addressed the core problem, which is the $350 billion a year it costs, according to a Harvard Medical School study, to cut in the commercial insurance industry. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we were assured, had run into trouble not because of the systematic deregulation of the financial industry, the delinking of loans from any imperative to get them paid off -- but because, according to Governor Palin (who had apparently missed the briefing at which it was explained that neither entity received government funding until the recent necessity for bailing them out), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "too big and too expensive to the taxpayer."

Time got wasted in the familiar ways. The presence of Barack Obama in the electoral process allowed us to talk as if "the race issue" had reached a happy ending. We did not need to talk about how the question of race has been and continues to be used to exacerbate the real issue in American life, which is class, or absence of equal opportunity. Instead we could talk about what Barack Obama meant by "lipstick on a pig," and whether it was appropriate for him to go off on vacation "to some sort of foreign, exotic place." The "foreign, exotic place" in question was of course Hawaii.

We could argue over whether "intelligent design" should be taught in our schools as an alternative to evolution, and overlook the fact that the rankings of American schools have already dropped to twenty-first in the world in the teaching of science and twenty-fifth in the world in the teaching of math. We could argue over whether or not the McCain campaign had sufficiently vetted its candidate for vice-president, but take at face value the campaign's description of that vetting as "an exhaustive process" including a "seventy-question survey." Most people in those countries where they still teach math and science would not consider seventy questions a particularly taxing assignment, but we could forget this. Amnesia was our preferred state. In what had become our national coma we could forget about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and AIG and Washington Mutual and the 81,000 jobs a month and the fact that the national debt had been approaching $10.6 trillion even before Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke mentioned the imperative need to spend, which is to say to borrow, $700 billion for securities backed by bad mortgages, a maneuver likely to raise the debt another trillion dollars. ("We need this to be clean and quick," Paulson told ABC.)

We could forget the 70 percent of American eighth graders who do not now and never will read at eighth-grade levels, meaning they will never qualify to hold one of those jobs we no longer have. We could forget that we ourselves induced the coma, by indulging the government in its fantasy of absolute power, wielded absolutely. So general is this fantasy by now that we approach this election with no clear idea where bottom is: what damage has been done, what alliances have been formed and broken, what concealed reefs lie ahead. Whoever we elect president is about to find some of that out.

Source / salon.com

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El Salvador : Human Rights Abuses and the Role of the US Government

This mural of the "four churchwomen" is one of many in El Salvador that honors the martyrs who were killed while peacefully advocating for human rights during El Salvador's violent Civil War. The churchwomen were asassinated by the National Guard on December 2, 1980. Human rights abuses, however, are not ancient history in El Salvador.
Report cites human rights violations and threat to 2009 elections.
By CISPES / October 14, 2008

A recently returned delegation to El Salvador has published a report on human rights abuses, the potential for fraud and intervention in the 2009 Salvadoran elections, and the role that the US government has played in the cited injustices.

The delegation was organized by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and was made up of 17 US citizens and residents. The introduction to the report explains its intended purpose of "offer[ing] elected officials, the media, and concerned citizens a description of the deterioration of human rights in El Salvador…[and] the potential impediments to true democracy faced by the Salvadoran people as they approach a crucial election period in their country."

Callie Arnold, a delegate from Seattle, stated "We feel that US citizens and residents should be aware of and concerned by the injustices carried out in El Salvador — particularly the many that our government has a hand in — and we hope this report will get people talking, increase media coverage, and encourage elected officials to take action." The Human Rights section of the report cites evidence that the existence of the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) — a police training institution in San Salvador that is funded and administered by the US — has coincided with "an increase in repression, including arrest and torture of citizens involved in peaceful protests."

The section of the report entitled "2009 Elections and the Electoral Process" further calls into question the role of the US government in the Central American country. It cites instances leading up to the 2004 presidential elections in El Salvador in which the US "interfered with the ability of Salvadorans to choose their preferred candidate." It goes on to discuss "similar patterns of US political involvement in the period leading up to the 2009 elections."

Andrew Kafel, a delegate from New York, says, "The current state of the economy in El Salvador is dire. The Central American Free Trade Agreement has devastated the country and the 2009 elections offer Salvadorans an opportunity to bring about democratic change that will better the state of their country. This is why it is so important that they be allowed to freely choose their next government." On January 18, 2009, El Salvador will hold municipal and legislative elections; on March 15 presidential elections will take place. The leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) holds a significant lead in presidential polls over the ruling right-wing Republican National Alliance (ARENA). Kafel went on, "It is clear the people of El Salvador want change and we believe it is of utmost importance that the US stay out of their elections and allow for self-determination."

The report also describes a meeting with US Ambassador to El Salvador Charles Glazer as "a highly rhetorical and hostile propaganda exercise with the delegates." Rosa Lozano, a delegate from Washington D.C., stated, "The Ambassador’s behavior and demeanor was troubling, but it was especially surprising that when directly asked about US involvement in the 2004 elections, he admitted that the US had intervened. That is why it is so important that this report be published and for US citizens and residents to pressure our government not to repeat this intervention in 2009."

[CISPES is the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.]

The complete report can be downloaded here.

For more information go here.

Source / Upside Down World

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