Omigod! Vote fraud!

Recount lockdown in Ohio: John Conyers has expressed his concern with Blackwell's shoddy attempt to shut down the recount in Greene County. Blackwell, you will recall, operates under the novel theory that voting records are not public. Any attempt to conduct a recount without data is a bit like trying to make an omelette without eggs, a pan, or a source of heat.

Was Blackwell's decision was a stalling tactic? We now have a better description of the situation at the Board of Elections building, which was left wide open throughout the night.

The records taken from Quinn and Roberson’s hands on Friday stood in an unlocked Board of Elections office Saturday morning, apparently overnight. Several observers arrived Saturday morning, noticing cars in the parking lot, and looked for officials in the office, but found nobody in the unlocked building. Law enforcement and media contacts had been alerted and were at the site before County officials arrived. Deputy Director of Elections Lynn McCoy arrived later and stated that all election records were still “locked down” and remained unavailable to the public. However, metal boxes with sealed locks had been stacked in the unlocked basement immediately accessible to the unlocked entrance. The Deputy Director would not confirm that these boxes contained original ballots.

The recounters have now placed the building under surveillance -- but has the damage already been done?

L'affaire Curtis: As most of you know, Florida programmer Clinton Curtis claims in an affidavit that, while employed by a firm called Yang Enterprises (YEI), he was asked to cobble together a prototype vote-theft program for Republican legislator (now Congressman) Tom Feeney. (Feeney was also corporate counsel for Yang.) An "outside general counsel" for Yang has responded to this affidavit in these terse words:

(1) Mr. Curtis's allegations are categorically false; and

(2) Mr. Curtis is a disgruntled former employee trying to harm a former employer by lying and making false allegations.

Michael A. O'Quinn, Esquire, author of these words, turns out to be a contributor to Feeney. As Brad Friedman notes:

Curtis has told us, and we have confirmed with several additional sources, that he was not fired by YEI, but rather submitted his resignation effective December 2000.

Afterwards, YEI then asked Curtis to stay on until a permanent replacement could be found. One was soon found, but he reportedly quit the same day and Curtis ended up staying at YEI for another six weeks past his original resignation date.

As well, a "Farewell Party" was reportedly thrown by YEI for Curtis upon his leaving!

One thought that occurs to me: If Curtis is lying, he has left himself wide open to a libel action. Neither Yang nor Feeney has filed suit -- in fact, they have not even threatened to do so.

Third party animals: Remember the precincts in Ohio in which right-wing third-party candidates received absurdly high tallies in pro-Kerry neighborhoods? It was all a big goof-up, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The mechanics of the alleged accident are not easily explained, but I'll try: Names of candidates are rotated on ballots. One candidate may be in the top position in one precinct, while another may hold the top spot in the next precinct. In this case, one polling place served more than one precinct. Due to long lines, voters were instructed to use any free voting machine. Thus, many voters were given punch cards not designed for the machines they used.

Maybe I've grown too suspicious, but I'm not sure this explanation suffices. The Bush vote remained unchanged from previous elections; only Kerry lost votes. Across the country, these "accidents" had an unnerving tendency to affect only the Kerry numbers.

That said, I believe that two methods of rigging the vote were used. First: Election officials made the physical act of voting as difficult as possible in Democratic areas. The Plain Dealer article only underlines a complaint that few now bother to deny.

Second -- and much more controversial -- is the allegation that malign forces hacked into the central tabulators. If that scenario occurred (and believe it did), then the manipulation would likely be subtle. The oddity which plagued this one polling place was anything but subtle.

More from Greene County, Ohio: Post 177 of this thread on the Democratic Underground mentions a bizarre situation involving Greene County's precinct 440, which serves a largely black community. Over three thousand African-American voters are (or should be) registered here -- yet Kerry received but 58 votes! (Details are a tad sketchy at this writing; I've tried to contact the original source of this story for firmer facts.)

Can this oddity be explained by a "whoopsie-daisy" scenario similar to the one outlined above? These "accidents," all favoring Bush, do have a tendency to pile up...

The Los Angeles Times published a surprisingly fair article about the continuing controversy over vote fraud allegations.

A Democrat close to the Kerry campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Kerry had received plenty of "do not make this concession" advice from party members.

"It's not just the Internet conspiracy community," said the Kerry ally. "The every-vote-counts community is very strong inside the Democratic Party, and one does not want to discourage them."

I personally believe that Kerry conceded at the right time -- and I'm glad to see that the Times recognizes that this issue is no mere conspiracy theory.

Bob Parry's Consortium News has a new post-mortem on the elections; even if you've read many others, you should check out this one. A few choice bits:

Many political pundits have put forth the explanation that Evangelical voters assured Bush a second term because they see him as the defender of moral "values."

But this conventional narrative can't fully account for Bush's 2004 vote. No less an expert than Bush's political guru Karl Rove estimated that 4 million Evangelical voters stayed home in 2000, meaning that even if they all voted in 2004 for Bush, that would still leave more than 7 million votes to explain.

Plus, think back on Election 2000 when the Republican base was burning with a fierce determination to oust the hated Clinton-Gore crowd. Why would millions of Republican voters stay home in 2000, yet flood the polling places in 2004 despite the discouraging results of Bush's first term and the turnout enthusiasm on the Democratic side?

Author Sam Parry correctly castigates Kerry for going positive and staying positive. Had the Democrat reduced his message to two words -- "Bush lies!" -- he would have undercut the smear campaigns and heightened his numbers to a point beyond the reach of the hackers.

In election after election, the Democrats have refused to go negative early -- and they have always lost, except when they had Bill Clinton on the ticket. The road to electoral hell is paved with positive slogans. I've asked this question before, and have yet to hear a clear answer: What precedent keeps Democratic strategists from going negative? Just which Democratic campaign turned out disastrously because the ads painted an overly harsh picture of the opponent?

A Zogby poll recently addressed the question of whether "problems" with vote counting affected the outcome. 42.5% replied that these concerns were either "very valid" or "somewhat valid." That's a high number, considering the dismissive coverage in the mainstream media, and even in the progressive news organs. Let's keep up the fight!

A note about the Ohio provisionals: 68% of the provisional ballots in Cuyahoga county were counted. (The number was substantially higher in previous elections.) Of the discarded provisionals, the vast majority were tossed because the county could find no registration record on file. Question: Why would anyone wait in line for hours to vote -- yet not register?

A note about the Ohio recount: What, exactly, is being recounted? I have yet to find a specific answer to that poser. If vote fraud occurred via the computers that did the final tabulations, how will a recount help? Seems to me that instead of poring over the registration log books, computer specialists should pore over the code.

Ah -- but the software is, of course, considered a private matter. Trade secret, don't you know...

Finally: All right, I know I should leave this matter behind me. But curiosity compelled me to take one last look at the "Jack Seymour" sideshow.

As some readers may recall, a strange person -- or, more likely, a strange group of people -- has attempted to raise money on behalf of investigative reporters Greg Palast and Wayne Madsen. These pleas for cash are sometimes issued in the names of "Jack Seymour," and sometimes in other names, such as "John Sanders." You may have noted the beginnings of a pattern.

"JS" tried, and failed, to make use of this blog. He became a fixture at other sites looking into the vote fraud issue.

The problem: Madsen and Palast never heard of this guy. Instead of asking his readers to donate money directly to Palast, "JS" set up a seperate PayPal site. I've seen no evidence that any donated monies reached the intended target.

This thread at BlackBox Voting is devoted to this sub-mystery. The research presented here indicates that Florida's Jeff Fisher relied, at least to some extent on information supplied by "Jack Seymour," whoever the hell he is.

The "J.S." motif reminded me of an ultra-bizarre situation from the past.

Years ago, the alt.conspiracy.princess-diana usenet group received a series of breathless postings issued by an alleged Colorado-based bodyguard named Jordan Sage. (Note the pattern again.) Sage insisted that he had solved the "murder" or Princess Di. Research uncovered no information proving that this individual or his putative firm (Jordan Sage Associates) actually existed. The whole matter was a hoax. But the hoax was extremely elaborate -- for example, "Sage" backed up his story with a number of fake web pages of untraceable ownership.

I'm further reminded of the "Brad Menfil" hoax, which also involved the web page of a (fake) local newspaper.

Just what the hell do these fraudsters hope to accomplish?