Vote fraud? Maybe somewhere else -- but not here

The evidence of election fraud keeps getting stronger -- and stranger.

Vote fraud in the Ukraine. We must consider the Washington Times an authoritative source -- after all, it is owned by an actual messiah. (No, really! He even has a crown to prove his messiah-hood.) I was therefore startled when the Times graced its audience with this gorgeous paragraph:

Election authorities said the government-backed presidential candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, maintained a comfortable margin with nearly all votes counted, despite exit polls showing opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko winning.

The Washington Post concurs:

The outcome of the vote has brought this confrontation to a head. According to exit polls, the democratic opposition won handily, by 54 to 43 percent in one survey. But yesterday the government revealed its intent to steal the election, announcing that Mr. Yanukovych had a decisive lead in the vote count. Tens of thousands of outraged citizens filled the center of Kiev last night to oppose this authoritarian coup. The United States and other Western governments must do everything possible to support them.

All right, class...let's review:

What is the proof of vote fraud in the Ukraine? The final tallies disagreed with the exit polls. Do we have any other mechanism to verify the vote? No, we do not.

So why is vote fraud thinkable there but not here?

Perhaps now even the dimmest of our red state brethren will grasp the real reason Republicans want to eliminate exit polls in this country.

Bev Harris. Blackboxvoting.org tells us to expect a major announcement in the afternoon or evening (November 23). Keep checking there...

Thom Hartmann has a good piece on what Ms. Harris has been doing in Florida.

On Novermber 16, pursuant to a public records request, she asked to see the poll tapes for over one hundred optical scanners used in Volusia county. (A poll tape is the print-out of results made the night of an election.) She was handed a set of unofficial copies, suspiciously mis-dated and lacking signatures. Since genuine poll tapes are signed by officials at each precinct, she had good reason to suspect deception.

When she demanded to see the real poll tapes, she was told to be at the elections warehouse the next morning (the 17th). She arrived early, only to discover election officials huddled over a table covered, apparently, with poll tapes. They shoved her out the door -- where she made a startling discovery:

"On the porch was a garbage bag," Bev said, "and so I looked in it and, and lo and behold, there were public record tapes."

Thrown away. Discarded. Waiting to be hauled off.

"It was technically stinking, in fact," Bev added, "because what they had done was to have thrown some of their polling tapes, which are the official records of the election, into the garbage. These were the ones signed by the poll workers. These are something we had done an official public records request for."

When the elections officials inside realized that the people outside were going through the trash, they called the police and one came out to challenge Bev.

One of Bev Harris' associates caught the shoving match on videotape.

Back at the elections office, Harris was able to compare genuine poll tapes with the fakes originally handed to her. Sure enough, they discovered glaring mismatches. Her team then discovered a second hasty dumping of more original poll tapes.

Florida newspapers covered (covered up?) these events in a biased and deceptive fashion, claiming that the unsigned poll tapes were mere "reprints," and that the signed, original copies were therefore deemed unnecessary. Officials just happened to toss them out while Harris' team showed up to investigate. Pure coincidence.

But were the unsigned poll tapes mere duplicates, as the newspapers claimed?

No.

"The difference was hundreds of votes in each of the different places we examined," said Bev, "and most of those were in minority areas."

When I asked Bev if the errors they were finding in precinct after precinct were random, as one would expect from technical, clerical, or computer errors, she became uncomfortable.

"You have to understand that we are non-partisan," she said. "We're not trying to change the outcome of an election, just to find out if there was any voting fraud."

That said, Bev added: "The pattern was very clear. The anomalies favored George W. Bush. Every single time."

These "duplicate" poll tapes remind me of Dublin's main train station, where two great clocks face each other. They never report the same time. According to those who work there: "If the clocks agreed, then one would be superfluous."

Another expert weighs in. As you recall, the UC Berkeley report found evidence that Bush may have received as many as 260,000 "extra" votes in Florida. Now we have Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips on the systematic shift of votes from Kerry to Bush in Cleveland, Ohio:

I HAVE DISCOVERED WHOLESALE “IRREGULARITIES” IN THE REPORTED VOTES, SOME OF THEM HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS, OTHERS OBVIOUSLY FRAUDULENT. EVERY NUMBER I BELIEVE TO BE UNTRUE I HAVE HIGHLIGHTED IN RED, AND I HAVE WRITTEN A BRIEF ONE-LINE XPLANATION, ALSO HIGHLIGHTED IN RED, IN THE RIGHT-HAND COLUMN NEXT TO THE HIGHLIGHTED NUMBER. THE FOLLOWING WRITE-UP IS THE BEST ESTIMATE I CAN MAKE AS TO HOW MANY VOTES WERE STOLEN FROM JOHN F. KERRY IN CLEVELAND, OHIO. IN SOME CASES THERE HAVE BEEN WHOLESALE SHIFTS OF VOTES FROM THE KERRY COLUMN TO THE BUSH COLUMN OR TO THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES...

(The "all caps" approach is in the original.)

The number of "misplaced" Kerry votes in Cleveland, as identified by this analysis, is not massive: 6032. However:

I may have identified only the tip of the iceberg. I note that there are 17,741 uncounted ballots in Cuyahoga County. Kerry's margin in Cleveland was reportedly 108,659 votes with a 49.89% turnout. The rest of Cuyahoga County had a 71.95% turnout. Such a turnout in Cleveland would have given Kerry a margin of 156,705 votes, left Bush with a statewide margin of 85,007 votes, and with 248,100 votes still uncounted, nobody would be conceding Ohio.

And I can't resist noting this wonderful little detail:

There also seems to be an abnormally high vote count for third party candidates who received less than one-half of one percent of the statewide vote total combined. For example, in precinct 4-F, the right-wing Constitutional Law candidate Peroutka received 215 votes to Bush’s 21 and Kerry’s 290. In this precinct, Kerry received 55% of the vote where Gore received 91% of the vote in the year 200. These numbers suggest that Kerry’s votes were inadvertently or intentionally shifted to Peroutka.

Gotta love that wording: "These numbers suggest..."

Incidentally, these results should be considered separately from the other bizarre report arising from Cuyahoga county -- the one in which 93,136 votes were cast in excess of the number of registered voters.

Here come the Dems! The Ohio Democratic party has officially announced its participation in the recount effort. From the press release:

"As Senator Kerry stated in his concession speech in Boston, we do not necessarily expect the results of the election to change, however, we believe it necessary to make sure everyone's vote is counted fairly and accurately," said Dennis White, Ohio Democratic Party chair.

Anyone who denounces the tepid tone of this announcement does not understand politics. The recount will not proceed efficiently if the Republicans combat the effort with a series of Orwellian hate rallies. At this point, low key is the best key.

Can the recount swing the election toward Kerry, even in the absence of courtroom-quality proof of vote tampering? Yes.

Maryland lawyer Jonathan S. Shurberg has crunched some numbers. At present, Bush is ahead in Ohio by some 135,000 votes. 155,000 provisional ballots remain uncounted. In the last election, 90% of the provisionals were accepted, and 90% of those went to the Democratic candidate. Of course, partisan hack Ken Blackwell will do his best (or worst) to lower those percentages. If 70% of the provisionals are deemed legit, and if 85% of those go to Kerry, Bush's margin of victory shrinks to roughly 56,000 votes.

Here's the zinger: Nothing in the previous paragraph takes the recount into consideration. The recount will force Ohio to take another look at the undervotes -- that is, ballots lacking machine-readable votes for president. And Ohio, unlike Florida in 2000, has very clear state-wide rules on how to interpret punch-card ballots. Yes, we return to the magical land of chad: If one corner of the hanging chad remains attached the ballot is valid. If the undervotes skew Kerry-wise 70-30 (not at all unlikely), Bush's margin of victory shrinks to about 26,000 votes.

The recount, of course, will take into consideration more than just the undervotes. If you've been following this story, you'll know that there have been many, many reports of machine error and ghost voters. A proper recount should lay many a ghost and repair many an error.

Will this effort suffice to put Kerry on the plus side? Maybe. Don't dismiss the possibility. Problem is, the recounters face a very serious deadline (see below).

Also in Ohio... Brad Friedman passes along a fascinating news item: In Columbus, Ohio, 68 voting machines remained in storage, even though a shortage of such machines (particularly in Democratic-leaning areas) resulted in epic-length lines.

Once a machine is recording 200 voters per machine, 100% over optimum use, the system completely breaks down. This causes long waits in long lines and potential voters leaving before casting their ballots, due to age, disability, work and family responsibilities...

The legendary affluent Republican enclave of Upper Arlington has 34 precincts. No voting machines in this area cast more than 200 votes per machine. Only one, ward 6F, was over 190 votes at 194 on one machine. By contrast, 39 Columbus city polling machines had more than 200 votes per machine and 42 were over 190 votes per machine. This means 17% of Columbus' machines were operating at 90-100% over optimum capacity while in Upper Arlington the figure was 3%.

In the Democratic stronghold of Columbus 139 of the 472 precincts had at least one and up to five fewer machine than in the 2000 presidential election. Two of Upper Arlington's 34 precincts lost at least one machine. In the 2004 presidential election, 29% of Columbus' precincts, despite a massive increase in voter registration and turnout, had fewer machines than in 2000... Or look at 23B where voter registration went up 22% and they lost two machines since the 2000 election, causing an average of 207 votes to be cast on each of the remaining machines. In the year 2000, only 97 votes were cast per machine in the precinct. Thus, in four years, the ward went from optimum usage to system failure

(By the by, Brad Friedman may be taking a short vacation from the fine work he has been doing. He also had some very nice things to say about this blog. Thanks!)

How much time do we have? Not much. The deadline is grim: The electors cast their votes (the only votes that truly count in our system) on December 13. The votes are not counted by Congress until January 6. And what if, at some point between those two dates, we receive ironclad, diamond-hard proof of vote fraud in, say, Ohio? All it takes is one senator and one representative to stop the vote.

Then -- alas -- the matter comes up for a majority vote. Since the Republicans control Congress, they will vote to accept the Republican slate of electors from Ohio -- even if a recount proves that such a slate does not reflect the will of the voters.

That's why Ken Blackwell wants to take things nice and slow. Time is his friend. He has said that he wants to begin the recount after December 7.

Florida has taught us that a careful recount may well take longer than six days. We can expect no mercy from the Republicans -- they control Congress and will not extend the December 13 deadline, recount be damned.

Will all be lost after December 13? Not necessarily.

If a recount goes our way, or if some other incontrovertible proof of fraud comes to light, Democrats can initiate a program of non-violent, revolutionary action. I have suggested nationwide work stoppages and demonstrations. Better, Democrats can pledge en masse to withhold taxes. (Even Bush cannot hope to toss 50 million people into the pokey, although the idea no doubt would make him smile.) This country is already on an uncertain financial footing (see here), and our foreign creditors will turn off the money spigot the moment they see our nation in turmoil. Even the most partisan Republican legislators will prefer to avoid such a catastrophe.

But in order to accomplish that goal we will need either the strongest possible evidence of election tampering, or a recount that definitively puts Ohio in the Kerry column. We will also need tons of publicity, a refusal to be shouted down by conservative propagandists, unity, determination -- and most of all, guts.

The kind of guts shown by the Ukrainians.

It's a great time to be a lawyer. If you want to see a list -- a long, long list -- of the lawsuits to arise from the 2004 election, see this page on Findlaw.

Of particular note: A suit by voters in Florida's Broward and Miami/Dade Counties over whether elections supervisors gave voters enough time to mail in their absentee ballots. Broward, you will recall, is the county where the post office allegedly "lost" 58,000 absentee ballots -- even though postal officials denied that the fault was theirs.

Odd, isn't it? Absentee ballots never seem to missing in Republican counties...

The plantiffs in this case are asking that the court recognize that the mishandling of these ballots constitutes a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Did Bush Lose the Election? Margie Burns, in the Baltimore Chronicle, has published what may be the best dissection of our controversial election yet published in a mainstream periodical. The opening sentence is certainly refreshing: "As things stand right now, it seems unlikely that Mr. Bush won the election."

The exit polls were released (not to the general public) at 4:00 p.m. on Election Day by polling consultants Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

These are the genuine exit polls for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, taken before the outcome was known in any particular state. These are not the "exit polls" that organizations including CNN went back and retroactively changed after the election, making them conform more to vote tallies.

The exit poll results are laid out straightforwardly in a very clear list (tabulation). Compared to the vote tallies given the public, they seem amazing. Contrary to results in every election for the past twenty years, the variance between exit polls the published vote tally was more than two points--in other words a swing of 4% or 5% or more to Bush, in 33 of 51 jurisdictions. Regardless of which candidate won in those states, a big variance, always in the same direction, allegedly occurred in every single exit poll in all of them.

Yes! Margie Burns, you are now my fourth-favorite lady in the world (after my girlfriend, my niece, and Bev Harris).

Jeff Fisher: I have held off on summarizing the strange email I received from Fisher for the simple reason that I do not yet know what to make of his claims. Best, perhaps, to have him speak for himself:

This to inform you all that the press has been suppressing the news regarding the recount in New Hampshire, Ohio and the efforts we are making leading to the possible recount of Florida's certified votes...

Last night my website was hacked into and I can't access it. The website http://www.JeffFisherforCongress was altered three times in the past 18 hours by those hackers. The homepage is useless. Most of the links don't work. We also have discovered that the ElectionFraud2004 yahoo group through its moderator has been posting messages to the net. However, since November 16, 2004 none of those messages have reached the Internet after being posted. ElectionFraud2004 acts like a town center for people who want to post suspicious incidents and information regarding this past General Election.

Update to this message: 1:30 p.m. November 20, 2004, the yahoo group, Election Fraud 2004 posted messages finally came through the Internet. Whomever had the capability and technology to stop the messages from going from the yahoo server to the net withheld it for three plus days. That is how they can stop the news from reaching the people in a timely fashion...

That is the act of a group of people who are trying to suppress the truth. I can't prove who they are but let the assumptions begin. I will find another way to get the message out. I have just begun to fight for this nation. If you know anything about the book DUNE, then you will understand "the sleeper has awakened".

Jeff Fisher...

P.S. They have hacked into Bev Harris's computer recently at Black Box Voting and several people that I have been consulting with in the state of Washington, North Carolina, New York, California and Minnesota. As of today I am getting information that blog sites are getting hacked into also.

I can confirm that the Yahoo group mentioned above was indeed blocked for several days. Bev Harris' site is sometimes impossible to reach. My own blog has not suffered from any interference, and I have not heard of any problems besetting fellow bloggers. If Fisher's account is true -- well, obviously, we wouldn't see a cover-up if we didn't have a conspiracy.

Finally... Anthony Wade has published a good story on the allegations of a media blackout. (Incidentally, it is possible that even Olbermann may now be less-inclined to dismiss those allegations, if I read between his lines aright.) An excerpt:

Right now there are going to be recounts in New Hampshire and Ohio , yet there is no coverage from the media. There are additional stories daily about machine problems, voter fraud and statistics that defy logic, yet the media turns their collective heads and then sticks them in the sand. How much is it going to take for the pundits and talking heads to admit there is a story? Pretending that doctorate level citizens are wild-eyed conspiracy theorists is only proving that the media has little credibility left.

Can I get an "amen" on that?