ARRGH!

I just spent over an hour preparing a long piece about various matters -- particularly Ohio and Wayne Madsen -- only to discover that Blogger seems to have eaten it. Well, I'll try again tomorrow. (Note to other bloggers: Always make a "safety copy" for Word before posting anything...)

Hot links on vote fraud

The former Soviet bloc: The Ukraine may well hold a revote, while the Romanian election has come under fire.

Bev Harris did not receive the public records she asked for, and has therefore officially filed a lawsuit.

The Kerry campaign in Ohio has, as noted before, joined the Green/Libertarian effort to recount the votes in Ohio. A Delaware County judge issued a restraining order preventing an early recount on November 23; Kerry/Edwards attorneys are filing an appeal on a higher level. (Are my ladyfriend and I the only ones who distinctly recall Blackwell's election-night promise to complete a count of the provisionals in ten days?)

Yes, the Kerryfolk are acting in a quiet, fanfare-free fashion. That's a good thing. Note, though, that Jesse Jackson has been in contact with Kerry, and reports that the senator supports a full and fair investigation.

The New York Daily News today presents powerhouse evidence of vote fraud in Ohio. Previously, we published a brief squib on the black precincts where Kerry votes seem to have been siphoned off into the tallies for right-wing third party candidates. Here are the details:

In precinct 4F, located at Benedictine High School on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Kerry received 290 votes, Bush 21 and Michael Peroutka, candidate of the ultra-conservative anti-immigrant Constitutional Party, an amazing 215 votes!

That many black votes for Peroutka is about as likely as all those Jewish votes for Buchanan in Florida's Palm Beach County in 2000.

In precinct 4N, also at Benedictine High School, the tally was Kerry 318, Bush 21, and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik 163.

Back in 2000, the combined third-party votes in those two precincts - including the Nader vote - was 8. Cuyahoga, like most of Ohio's 88 counties, uses punch-card balloting...

But Peroutka and Badnarik polled unusually well in a few other black precincts. In the 8th Ward's G precinct at Cory United Methodist Church, for instance, Badnarik tallied 51 votes - nearly three times better than Bush's 19. And in I precinct at the same church, Peroutka was the choice on 27 ballots, three times more than Bush's 8. In 2000, independent candidates received 9 votes from both precincts.

The same pattern showed up in 10 Cleveland precincts in which Badnarik and Peroutka received nearly 700 votes between them.

In virtually all those precincts, Kerry's vote was lower than Al Gore's in 2000, even though there was a record turnout in the black community this time, and even though blacks voted overwhelmingly for Kerry.

If this same pattern held true in other cities around Ohio, then quite possibly thousands of votes meant for Kerry somehow ended up in the tallies of the two independent candidates.

To those tempted to ask whether this problem would have swung the election, I direct your attention to the "parable of the pie," as recounted below (under the title "Eat it").

Every "misplaced" vote helped to widen the Bush/Kerry gap -- a gap which, incidentally, narrowed by nearly 10,000 votes when the provisionals were counted in Cuyahoga county, not to mention the additional 1000-or-so votes Kerry gained in Montgomery county.

Recounts in New Mexico and Nevada. The Greens are also initiating a recount in New Mexico and Nevada:

The New Mexico presidential election was marred by reports of voter suppression and problems with electronic voting machines. In Nevada, the lack of paper trails or receipts for electronic voting machines is the primary concern. In an unrelated legal challenge, an election contest case will be heard today in Reno, Nevada, demanding a recount. The suit also seeks to address allegations that people employed by Sproul & Associates, an Arizona-based firm hired by the Republican National Committee, tore up and discarded voter registration forms completed by Democratic voters.

I never much cared for the Green party before, but David Cobb is now acting in a very honorable fashion. If he ever switches to the Democrats, I hope he will find a welcome.

Madsen/Palast: A Palast associate has reconfirmed to me that Wayne Madsen and Greg Palast are not working together on the issue of vote fraud. A creature calling himself "Jack Seymour" has been trying to raise money -- allegedly on the behalf of a joint effort conducted by these two investigative reporters. "Seymour" has posted his continuing appeals for $$$ in various places. I'm sure it's a scam.

North Carolina: A judge will allow a revote in on county for state agricultural commissioner, due to evidence of "machine malfunction." Since we had malfunctions all over the country, why not a full revote -- as is now proposed for the Ukraine?

Richard Roeper, of the Chicago Sun-Times, calls us "boneheads" for continuing to question the election results. Odd thing: Our merry crew of boneheads counts among its members a growing number of academics, scholars and specialists, including Professor Hout of Berkeley and Professor Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania.

Richard Roeper, by comparison, is a movie critic. A bad one. One who has never written a single memorable line.

His invective-filled, fact-free overview of the controversy spits in the eyes of those who have studied the evidence, and in the eyes of the many first-hand eyewitnesses who testified at the Cleveland hearings. He also directs spit at a couple of real journalists, Juan Gonzalez and Larry Cohler-Esses of The New York Daily News, who (as noted above) have provided hard evidence of the rampant fraud in Ohio. Incidentally, Roeper also spews ignorant insults at the Warren Commission critics, another group of "boneheads" which once included, and may still include, his partner Roger Ebert.

I wasn't a big fan of Gene Siskel. But now I miss him.

The Ukrainian election: Another view

A reader named Liz C sent me some links on the Ukrainian election. It's easier to republishe her words than to re-write in my own idiom, so you will find her (lightly-edited) take on the controversy below the asterisks:

* * *

This article is pretty interesting: It states that Yushchenko was not poisoned, that his supporters are a bunch of anti-semitic thugs, and that the support of the US is primarily based on further weakening and isolating Russia...

The kids in the square may look like Kerry supporters, but the whole thing could be a lot like the Karl Rove FL vote-count stopping "riots." There's been a lot of legit press about western intervention and funding in this election, on the Yushchenko side.

I went to Google news to look for confirmation of alternative views of events in Ukraine and found that they are out there, albeit nearly drowned out.

Russian oil and gas pipelines run through Ukraine (isn't everything about oil, etc.?) western part of Ukraine (threatening autonomy) is Catholic, is eastern Orthodox.

Al Jazeera also reporting the geographical divide in the Ukraine results and calls for a new federal republic with more autonomous regions:

More here. Excerpts:

Votes in the heavily pro-Russian Donetsk and other eastern regions were deemed "probably falsified" but we were not informed of equally credible claims that vote-rigging was rampant in Yushchenko's western Ukrainian strongholds, including turnouts in excess of 100 percent of registered voters, total local media control, and multiple voting by persons in possession of numerous IDs belonging to Ukrainians residing in western Europe.

The attempted technique was well rehearsed. Yushchenko has rejected Yanukovich's victory and claims fraud, pointing to exit polls by his supporters as evidence. He even proclaimed himself president, and tens of thousands of his followers have taken to the streets of Kiev in support of his claim. Their campaign of civil disobedience relies on expectation of support from Washington and the EU. The White House declared that Ukrainian authorities should not certify results "until investigations of organized fraud are resolved.

Strong Western bias in Yushchenko's favor has been evident throughout the campaign. The monitoring of election abuses has focused exclusively in areas favorable to Yanukovych but it has ignored or even suppressed documented abuses in pro-Yuschchenko areas. A seasoned Western analyst who visited western Ukraine reported that the news media "is all under Yushenko's control, even state TV"...."In fact, Yushenko and the mob control Kiev and all points West."

USAID's grant for election monitors went only to activists known for their hostility to Yanukovych; they delivered predictable results. It is ironic that some of those activists are also funded by billionaire George Soros -- President Bush's arch-enemy -- whose investment in Yushchenko's victory is said to be $75 million. "Two generations ago we had the Comintern," says a Western analyst familiar with the situation. "Now we have the Demintern and its related NGOs which have an increasing global reach."

About a half of all Ukrainians who voted for Yanukovych did not do so solely on the grounds of his pro-Russian outlook, however. As the Financial Times noted on November 19, strong economic growth of 13 percent has helped his campaign of "peace and stability." This year's grain harvest will reach 45m tones, the highest since Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Increasing social spending, including payment of pensions and state salaries, are attributed to the Prime Minister's policies.

Washington would be well advised to accept the result with equanimity. As Doug Bandow of CATO Institute says, the United States and Europe aren't going to "lose" Ukraine: it will continue to expand its commercial and political ties with the West regardless of outcome. On the other hand, excessive insistence on the preordained outcome would unnecessarily alienate Russia at a time when her cooperation is sorely needed in the war against Jihad.

Well, hard to get to the bottom of this, but things are never as black and white as reported in western press. It appears likely that USAID funding of Ukraine elections since 1998 included funding for The Committee of Ukraine Voters (CVU).

Ukrainian Embassy in Israel reported during election:

The Committee of Ukrainian voters...conducted a parallel count of the ballots, cast in the October 31 presidential election, both Viktor Yanukovych and Viktor Yuschenko collected 39.6 percent of the votes. As the Committee's vice chairman Yevhen Peberezhny noted, the Committee's conclusions were obtained through randomized sampling of 14.500 polling stations, or 5 percent of their told number.

But which 5 percent and is that enough? What percent, I wonder, was sampled by the NEP during the 2004 election in the United States?

Helsinki Human Rights Group is challenging the media reports of government sponsored election fraud in Ukraine.

Although Western media widely claimed that in Ukraine the opposition was, in effect, excluded from the broadcast media, particularly in western Ukraine the opposite was the case. On the eve of the poll – in flagrant violation of the law banning propaganda for candidates – a series of so-called “social information” advertisements showing well-known pop stars like Eurovision winner Ruslana wearing the orange symbols of Mr Yushchenko’s candidacy and urging people to vote appeared on state television!

Although BHHRG did not encounter blatant violations in either the first or second rounds, the Group’s observers were alarmed by a palpable change in the atmosphere inside the polling stations in central Ukraine in particular. In Round 1, a relaxed and orderly mood prevailed throughout the day. In Round 2 the situation had become slightly tense and chaotic. In BHHRG’s observation the change in Round 2 was attributable primarily to an overabundance of local observers, who exercised undue influence over the process and in some instances were an intimidating factor. The vast majority of observers in the polling stations visited were representatives of Viktor Yushchenko.

Transparent ballot boxes meant that these observers could frequently see how people had voted. This OSCE-approved innovation made intimidation of voters for the more unpopular candidate in any district easier since few supporters of the minority would wish it to be seen how they had voted.

From what BHHRG observed, the opposition exercised disproportionate control over the electoral process in many places, giving rise to concerns that the opposition – not only the authorities – may have committed violations and may have even falsified the vote in opposition-controlled areas. So-called “administrative resources” in places visited by BHHRG appeared to be in the hands of the opposition, not the government, and this may have frightened voters. After all since Sunday, police and security personnel in some western towns have declared their loyalty to “president” Yushchenko.

In spite of concerns, BHHRG finds no reason to believe that the final result of the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine was not generally representative of genuine popular will. The election featured a genuine choice of candidates, active pre-election campaigns, and high voter participation. It is clear that Ukrainian opinion was highly polarized. That meant many people backing a losing candidate would find it difficult to accept a defeat. Foreigners should not encourage civil conflict because the candidate on whom they have lavished expensive support turned out to be a loser.

Oklahoma

A reader has informed me that the previous stories on the Oklahoma vote were erroneous. The fault, apparently, belongs with Tulsa World, which has somehow mixed up a number from a cockfighting iniative with the reported vote for Kerry.

Eat it

Here. Have some pie.

Now before you bite in, perhaps we should talk about those troubling rumors you've heard. It seems someone tested a very thin slice of this pie and...er...um...found a small amount of cyanide in it.

Well, let me put your mind at rest. The amount of cyanide was not enough to kill anyone. And just because cyanide was found in that one tiny piece does not mean that it exists in the rest of the pie.

Why, anyone who thinks that way must be crazy!

So go ahead. Eat your pie. If you show any hesitation, if you ask for me to cook up a whole new pie using untainted ingredients -- well, you simply must be one of those loony conspiracy theorists.

And that, in essence, is the argument offered by the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream forums when they discuss our troubling vote. They've stopped saying that all is well. Instead, they admit that, yes, there was a certain amount of fraud in the election -- but not enough to change the results. So don't worry.

True, Bev Harris found original poll tapes in Florida which proved that the copies handed to her by election officials were fraudulent. But look at it this way: She didn't collect original poll tapes for the entire state, now, did she? Just a few precincts. So you can hardly argue that the whole Florida vote was tainted.

What's that, you say? The other poll tapes were no doubt destroyed before Bev could get to them?

See? Just as I said: No hard proof of vote tampering.

Now shut up and eat your pie. Every bite. You don't want anyone calling you a loopy conspiracy theorist, do you?

The other side of the story...

Wayne Madsen has been answering questions on a Democratic Underground forum. His sign-in name is "Casolaro" -- cute!

I'll have much more to say when, if, time permits.

Brief notes

I can't post much now, but perhaps offering a few links on the continuing vote fraud scandal won't damage my schedule too much...

Mainstream: The New York Times and Newsweek finally acknowledge (in a weak, but not timely fashion) that our elections have problems. Newsweek tells us we have "four more years" to get it right. That's what they said in 2000; the problem with that attitude became clear as early as 2002.

Oklahoma not OK: The opening of this story says it all:

Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count backwards.

That looks like what the secretly programmed machines did for Sen. Kerry in President Bush's easily won Presidential Election victory in Oklahoma.

All 77 counties use the Optech Eagle voting machines and Tabulator's made by ES&S, Sen Hagel's republican company.

Prove vote fraud in one place, and you indicate it elsewhere. And before a debunker spouts: "But polls prove Oklahoma was a red state to begin with!:" Padding the Bush vote in a red state increased his popular vote "mandate."

A reader named Markus expanded on this information. He draws our attention to the tallies mentioned the Tulsa World, then to the "more final" figures published by CNN:

Just look at the very first county in the Tulsa World link to see an example of the problem; Kerry had 3704 votes in Adair with 70% of the vote counted (according to the local paper), but only 2560 votes after they were all counted (according to CNN link).

I'll let you double-check the figures for yourselves.

Kerry: Olbermann quotes Jesse Jackson to the effect that Kerry is supporting the Ohio recount. Olbermann goes on to make a few jokes at Kerry's expense, hoping to prod the Senator into making a public statement. Of course, if Kerry did that, he would be the target of an unparalleled campaign of derision and hate.

Olbermann versus Madsen: You can read Olbermann's blistering riposte to Wayne Madsen's work here. Olbermann makes some good points, but I think Madsen's previous story about Iran should be placed in context.

Remember the primaries? Remember when nearly every right-wing commentator (especially Safire) offered a series of abstruse scenarios, some of which came form alleged "inside" sources, whereby Hillary Clinton would commandeer the Democratic nomination? Of course, the writers of those stories knew full well that they were peddling horsecrap: Yelling "The Clintons are coming!" is always a good way to loosen wallets on the far right.

The reputation of Safire and company did not diminish when they proved terrible prophets. On the left, of course, writers are held to a higher standard.

I presume someone fed Madsen bad information on Iran. But lets face it -- a lot of us suspected that there would be a strike on Iran in the run-up to the election, and more than one writer wrote about the possibility. (There was also much talk of an Israeli strike, which would have led to our involvement.)

I am persuaded that military planners did fairly serious preparatory work on an Iran strike. Granted, there are war plans galore in the DOD -- against damn near every country -- but at certain times, analysts are asked to update these plans and treat them as a hot issue. That's when other folks get nervous. I strongly suspect that there were fairly serious rumblings about Iran in certain areas of the State department or Defense, and that one of the rumblers caught Madsen's ear.

Incidentally, the rumbling has only become worse, as you may have noticed.

Madsen has many good articles to his credit, and I still do not discount the present investigation. I note that Olbermann made no attempt to do any double-checking on the shady outfits mentioned in the story; neither, apparently, did he ask to see a copy of the check. Faking up a check is crime, and I simply do not believe that anyone would go to such lengths in a spirit of puckish prankishness.

I have much more to say -- on many a topic -- but no time to say it...!

Vote notes

Ohio. According to the Columbus Free Press, a floodtide of evidence indicates fraud in this state. Brad Friedman's comment says it all: "I dare you to read this entire Columbus Free Press article and then explain to me why Ohio's election shouldn't be entirely invalidated and re-held!"

Let's look at a couple of the many personal reports:

Janine Smith-White, Youngstown: I went to my polling place approximately about 9:45 to vote. I waited, I would say, 30 minutes in a line. When I did get to my machine, I pushed John Kerry and my vote immediately jumped up to George Bush. After I started screaming about them cheating again, the aide hurried up and came over and said, oh, that's been happening a lot. Just go ahead and push John Kerry again and I'm saying, you say that's been happening a lot and it hasn't been corrected? Yes, but we can't do anything about it. So I did push John Kerry again and the vote did stay on John Kerry. Even though I completed my voting and after I went over my ballot and I pushed the vote button, I'm still not sure that I voted for John Kerry because, I mean, did my first vote that went to George Bush count or did John Kerry count.

Tom Kessel, Bexley: ...One time I went outside, I came back in, she [a Republican campaign worker] was actively going over some sort of computerized list she had with the precinct judge in precinct 4A in Bexley. One of the three machines went down and they were not able to get the tape out of it and the cartridge at the end of the day. Later on, when I got the poll -- data from Franklin County poll workers, that machine which had the lowest numbers of votes had the highest percentage of Bush votes. The other two machines were coming back 30 percent for Bush. This one came back 40 percent for Bush. I don't know. Also, they sealed up their provisional ballots before I had a chance to count them and let them know how much provisional ballots were there. Also, she signed off as an official witness at the end of the day, even though she was a Republican worker.

And Richard Lugar has the audacity to complain about the Ukraine!

Wayne Madsen: A few of you seem mildly annoyed with the attention I have paid to his stories. However, I like many of the pieces this man has written in the past; in my eyes, a good resume justifies much. And he may be on to something.

Has he been misled? Anything is possible. Even if (as some readers believe) Rovian forces have made Madsen the target of a crafty deception operation, we should not ignore the story. Cover-up obviates conspiracy. Last I heard, creating a fake check is a crime. No-one would go to such lengths to mislead an investigator if the overall "vote fraud" allegation had no foundation.

Speaking of deception operations: Do you remember the mysterious e-mailer who tried to raise money on behalf of Madsen and Greg Palast? (The idea was to put a PayPal link on this blog.) This "fundraiser" turns out to be unknown to Madsen. He confirmed that neither he nor Palast operates in this fashion -- therefore, "this guy is up to something."

Hacking sites? Reports keep surfacing of interference with sites looking into the e-vote controversy -- for example, one reader claims that the Green party's donation page stopped working. Paranoia? Maybe. Probably. But these days, who knows?

Suing Mr. Blackwell: People for the American Way has sued Ken Blackwell over the 8000 provisional ballots consigned to the round file in Cuyahoga county. "The suit is a mandamus action, which asks a court to compel a public official to perform a duty."

The suit also says that any vote cast in the wrong precinct should be counted, if the voter did not receive instruction as to the correct precinct. The suit also says that votes should not be discarded if they were cast in the right building but at the wrong table. Sounds sensible to me. I'll be amused to hear Republicans spin this effort as an attempt to "steal" the election.

Ukraine: Previously, we've noted that an institute conducting the exit polls in the Ukraine had received funding from organizations linked to American and British intelligence. Keep that factor in mind as you read the Guardian's take on the elections in the former Soviet republic:

There are professional outside election monitors from bodies such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but the Ukrainian poll, like its predecessors, also featured thousands of local election monitors trained and paid by western groups.

Freedom House and the Democratic party's NDI helped fund and organise the "largest civil regional election monitoring effort" in Ukraine, involving more than 1,000 trained observers. They also organised exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Mr Yushchenko an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed.

The exit polls are seen as critical because they seize the initiative in the propaganda battle with the regime, invariably appearing first, receiving wide media coverage and putting the onus on the authorities to respond.

Once again, we must note the outlandish hypocrisy: Exit polls are the only bulwark against vote rigging in other lands -- but in America, such polls are inaccurate and deserving of being banned.

Speaking of exits: The other conspiracy theory (still bandied about by right-wing bloggers) holds that our polls were deliberately skewed to favor Kerry, in order to depress the Bush turn-out. This, despite the fact that we have yet to see one anecdotal report of a potential Bush voter who stayed home because of the exits. If the "liberal" mainstream media, which paid for those polls, were engaged in such a conspiracy, they would have reported the exit numbers -- after all, they had paid for the data. And they would not have "conformed" the data to the official tallies as the night progressed.

Most telling of all -- if Mitofsky were a pro-Democratic conspirator, wouldn't his be the first, loudest voice speaking of a rigged vote tally?

Church and state. A reader tells me that many voting places in Polk County, Florida were in churches. Maybe that practice is legal -- but it shouldn't be.

North Carolina had some of the worst election-day "problems," according to this story, which notes some juicy details:

Lost: 4,500 votes in Carteret County -- paper ballots verified by voters and retained by the election officials would have saved these votes.

Omitted: an entire precinct of 1,209 votes in Gaston County.

Missing: 12,000 more votes in Gaston County not reported. The election director hired a voting machine technician to upload the county vote totals and did not oversee the process.

Bamboozled: Guilford County bought vote-tabulating software that used outdated technology and with insufficient vote storage. As a result, Guilford County's public vote totals for president were off by 22,000 votes.

More votes than cast: Craven County reported 11,283 more votes for president than cast, voting with the same software as in Guilford County.

More to come...

Round two: Wayne Madsen on the funding for vote fraud (UPDATED -- scroll down!)

A minute after I posted the piece below (which expresses a certain "morning after" skepticism toward Wayne Madsen's piece on vote fraud funding), I received word that Madsen's follow-up article had just made the Online Journal. You can read it here.

Bottom line: Madsen's sources still do not have names, and he probably won't get mainstream attention until someone goes on the record. But the story he tells is nevertheless intriguing:

The epicenter for the vote rigging operation is Dallas, Texas, and the operation may involve retired FBI agents who used a well-established "good ole boy" network to arrange for access to polling precincts by electronic voting machine technicians who took advantage of various November 2 security "lockdowns" to illegally alter the tabulation of votes in favor of Bush.

(This is not the first time I've heard references to an ad hoc organization of right-wing former FBI agents. But I swear -- if the dreaded name of "Ted G." shows up in the midst of all this, I am going to roll my eyes and switch to writing about chili recipes and movie reviews.)

Madsen says that the electoral "counting houses" in key states were "locked down" (that is, removed from exterior scrutiny), a claim that has fathered a fairly complex argument in the Democratic Underground forums. We do have certain knowledge of one such lock down in Ohio. Vote fraud, Madsen says, occurred when the curtain was pulled. The whole operation cost over $29 million dollars.

This reporter has obtained a copy of a bank check for $29,600,000 that was allegedly sent to cover the cost of the Texas-based vote rigging operation. The check is dated October 22, 2004, and was made payable to "Five Star Investment Ltd.," a trust said to have long connections to Saudi-funded operations in Texas and around the world.

So at least we know this much: Madsen's source -- whoever the hell he is -- established his credentials by waving around a copy of this rather startling check.

Question: Would someone with access to that check (or a copy) really be willing to divulge the scheme to a guy like Wayne Madsen? Sure, Madsen has written some terrific articles, but much of his work remains (unfairly) consigned to the progressive "ghetto." Why wouldn't an insider-turned-talker turn to 60 Minutes, Tom Brokaw, CNN, the New York Times, or any number of other mainstream sources?

Checks can be faked. Not long ago, Steven Spielberg made a film illustrating that very premise.

I am reminded of two of Karl Rove's previous tricks: 1. The "W did coke" story, which was handed to the easily-discredited James Hatfield; and 2. The national guard documents palmed off on Bill Burkett. (Let's not kid ourselves: We all know who engineered that last one.)

Is this $29 million check of a similar nature? Uncle Karl is sneakiness personified. And he may well have a personal grudge against Wayne Madsen, who once referred to Bush's chief consigliere as "America's Joseph Goebbels."

Read Madsen's article -- hell, read all his stuff -- and come to your own conclusions. He may have hold of something important. But right now, we cannot be sure.

UPDATE: This bit from Madsen's piece struck me as Google-worthy:

On October 6, 2004, some two weeks before Equity Financial Trust transferred the money to Five Star Investment Ltd., the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions for Canada listed Equity Financial Trust, along with Bankers Financial and Security Trust, Falcon Financial and Trust, and Unity Virtual Trust Group as "unauthorized financial institutions." In fact, the check for $29.6 million, which is marked "Not to exceed fifty million dollars," is drawn on the Laurentian Bank of Canada's Toronto branch.

I typed in the words "Equity Financial Trust" and sure 'nuff -- this page came up.

OSFI continues to receive information regarding entities posing as financial institutions. It is believed that these names are being used as part of various advance fee or “Nigerian letter” scams.

A small list of these entities follows, and on that list we find Equity Financial Trust, which does indeed have an address in Toronto.

Which leaves us with this nagging question: Would the Rovian hordes use fraudsters associated with that notorious "Nigerian letter" scam?

Maybe. Maybe con artists of that low sort travel on a far more rarified level than we ever dreamed. Or maybe someone is trying to mislead Wayne Madsen -- and, by extension, you and me.

Madsen's report on funding for vote fraud: Follow up

You would hate shopping with me. I always get a case of morning-after buyer's remorse.

Last night, I felt certain that Wayne Madsen was on to something important. Now, although I still urge everyone to follow his work, I feel less confident.

Madsen, you will recall, is the fellow who has encountered sources -- as yet unnamed -- who say that vote fraud can be connected to a mysterious company, allegedly Saudi-linked, called Five Star Trust. If you haven't read my previous post, you'll need to do that now before we proceed.

(Go on. I'll wait.)

(Back? Excellent. Let us continue.)

Madsen has written some excellent material in the past, which is the main reason why I placed great stock in his article. Here's his bio:

Mr. Madsen has some twenty-five years of experience in computer security and data privacy. As a U.S. Naval Officer he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency's National COMSEC Assessment Center, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

He has testified before the House International Relations Subcommittee on International Operations.

He is also a freelance investigative journalist and a syndicated columnist. His columns have appeared in the Miami Herald, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Atlanta Journal Constitution. He has appeared frequently as a guest commentator on television and radio.

Mr. Madsen is the author of The Handbook of Personal Data Protection (London: Macmillan, 1992)

A serious fellow, no doubt about it.

And Five Star Trust, as noted earlier, is a seriously suspicious company. Take the wheeler-dealer most closely associated with the company, J.R. Horn. This guy was convicted of wire fraud in 2001; while out on parole, he commited the same crime (the figure of a billion dollars has been mentioned), only to be sentenced to a mere 18 months. I can't help but compare Mr. Horn's cushy fate to those well-known cases of minor pot dealers sentenced to years in prison.

So why now does a touch of "buyer's remorse" color my initial enthusiasm for Madsen's piece?

Because everything about this "FIve Star" company reeks of con artistry. Yes, consters do frequently butt up against the worlds of covert operations, money laundering, espionage and so forth. Here's the problem: When you stumble into the world of the professional con artist, how do you know when -- or if -- these David Mamet characters are lying to you?

Those who followed parapolitical controversies in the 1990s may recall the "three Rs": Reed, Russbacher, and Riconosciuto. If you recognise those names, you'll know the difficulties of dealing with any source saddled with legal troubles and an elastic attitude toward the truth.

All of which makes me wonder about just who has been feeding Madsen his information. I'm sure that the writer himself is honest -- but what about his sources? Even the smartest researcher can be played for a sucker.

Madsen has promised a follow-up report very soon, so perhaps he will provide more details. Until then, we (or at least I) must face another poser:

I received a letter from someone unknown to me, telling me to place certain information on my blog. I won't reprint this text here, but a cautious summary should do no harm.

The badly-written letter stated that Greg Palast is working with Madsen on the "Five Star Trust" angle, and that they both need funding. I was directed to a web page offering a PayPal donation button.

The writer connected Five Star to CyberNet, which figures in Jeff Fisher's charges. You can read a good discussion of this business here.

This same letter also connected Five Star to Accenture, the Enron-linked (actually, Arthur Anderson-linked) offshore company which has received government contracts for a system identifying visitors to this country (photographs, fingerprints, perhaps even iris scans) and which also received a contract to provide the military with an online voting system, which bears the unnerving name "Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment" (or SERVE). The letter closed with an unclear reference to the Green party.

This missive struck me as very suspicious. If Palast and/or Madsen need donations, surely they would make their own plea directly; why would they have Mr. Anonymous Stranger act on their behalf?

In short: I smell a scam. I've phoned Madsen and written Palast, and will soon know the facts. In the meantime, let me know if you have received a similar mailing.

For god's sake -- double-check (and triple-check)before making any donations!

Exposed: Funding vote fraud -- a "five star" investigation

Hope you all had a fine Thanksgiving. If the following account is true, we may not that damned turkey hanging around for another four years.

Saudi money? For vote fraud-watchers, the article of the day must be Wayne Madsen's piece in the Online Journal. It is a must-read:

November 25, 2004 -- According to informed sources in Washington and Houston, the Bush campaign spent some $29 million to pay polling place operatives around the country to rig the election for Bush. The operatives were posing as Homeland Security and FBI agents but were actually technicians familiar with Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Triad, Unilect, and Danaher Controls voting machines. These technicians reportedly hacked the systems to skew the results in favor of Bush.

The leak about the money and the rigged election apparently came from technicians who were promised to be paid a certain amount for their work but the Bush campaign interlocutors reneged and some of the technicians are revealing the nature of the vote rigging program.

Madsen goes on to say that money for the operations was funnelled through a Saudi-linked financial entity based in Houston called Five Star Trust, which was also apparently used to fund both Bush and Bin Laden.

Other monies came from carefully-hidden Enron loot stashed away in the Cook Islands:

Cook Islands banks also handled some of the weapons smuggling financing of the Iran-Contra scandal. A former Justice Department attorney who helped prosecute the BCCI case said the use of the Cook Islands by the Bush reelection team indicates they wanted the bank arrangements to be a "quick folding tent" operation that would cease to exist when the election was over.

Madsen goes on to detail the complex history of these Cook Island accounts, which apparently continue in the same inglorious money-laudering tradition of the Nugan/Hand bank.

The article does not name names -- that is, Madsen's sources have not gone on the record. Not yet. But Madsen is a serious writer, his account is detailed, and his knowledge of parapolitical financing is solid. This is the sort of article that either changes history or proves to be a scarlet red herring.

My guess? I'll bet you three donuts that his sourcing amounts to more than mere scuttlebutt.

So pass Madsen's piece around. Let's all do what we can to solidify this research. For example...

I've tried some preliminary Googling on Five Star Trust (which is also spelled "5 Star Trust"). One citation goes to a court case listed here, involving one Marion Horn, Jr., a.k.a. "J.R. Horn," a one-time Republican candidate in Kentucky later convicted of wire fraud. (Also see here and here.) From what I can tell, the guy received a ridiculously attentuated sentence -- 18 months -- for a serious crime (one commentator mentioned the figure of "$1B") committed while on parole for a similar offense.

Eighteen months...! Isn't it nice to have friends?

Much of the above information came by way of the Diligizer Board, which seems to be a clearinghouse for information about shady operators in the financial world. On one page they take a brief look at an accused security fraudster named Howard E. Liner -- and just look at what pops up:

He claims to be directly involved with VP Chaney and running actually the FED program. Mr. Liner pretends to be a former JAG and Military attorney. They are connected to Noir Intertrade, who shall be the commitment holder! They also mentioned the 5-Star Trust, the worlds richest trust with TRILLIONS (sorry forgot to ask the currency!!) on the account in Credit Suisse and UBS.

Hmm. Did he just say trillions? It that's true, the allegation of Saudi involvement may well have substance.

Mind you, truth becomes a particularly elusive commodity when we look into financial wheeler-dealers operating on this level. Please understand that, at this time, I have no idea if or how any of the above data connects to the allegations of election tampering. But right now, every little bit of research may prove useful.

In a previous article, I mentioned John Allen Paulos, the latest expert to note the foul odor surrounding this election. (I neglected to mention that Paulos wrote Innumeracy, one of my ladyfriend's favorite books.) Paulos felt uncomfortable with the conspiracy idea, because he did not see how so widespread a scheme could take place without one or two players getting talky. (Of course, people once made similar disparaging comments about Enron's plot against California.)

If Madsen's article proves true, Paulos' main objection has been met: Lips have indeed loosened.

If we really do have a conspiracy, what should we expect next? Well, these things tend to follow a predictable course. The corpses should pop up soon: "Mysterious "suicides" in underground parking structures, healthy men suffering heart attacks, that sort of thing. After that will come the Gerry Posner-esque debunkers who will smirk their most arrogant smirks at all of us "tin-foil-hat" guys.

Until then, we should have ourselves a nice little shit-storm. While it lasts, we must grab hold of any and all stray evidence that blows our way.

Be seeing you... 

Full court press on vote fraud

Kerry: I've just heard from one of the most noteworthy soldiers in his campaign "army" (not a general, but not just a grunt) that the senator does not consider this fight over.

Recounts in Ohio: A federal judge has ruled that the recount effort must wait until Blackwell finishes his very, very leisurely tabulation of the provisionals. If, as promised, that occurs on December 6, the recounters have little time to finish their work: The electoral college votes on December 13. Don't listen to those who say we can wait until January -- a full vote of the House and Senate is needed to overturn any state's slate of electors.

Warren Mitofsky continues to mislead about the exit polls conducted by his own organization. His actions are understandable: The Republican party, which usually gets what it wants, hopes to shut down exit polling completely; if he wants to stay in business, Mitowsky must kowtow to Power. Once again, he tells Keith Olbermann that the exits should be compared to "the score at half time at a football game."

No, Mr. Mitowsky. They should be compared to the score at half time at fifty football games. Better analogy: Fifty tosses of a coin. Error should skew in both directions; if the coin keeps coming up heads, something is wrong with that coin.

Lawsuit: Black Box Voting has finally delivered its promised announcement. A Volusia county resident named Susan Pynchon, with the help of some local legal muscle, will sue the county with the aim of setting aside the election results. A major plank in the complaint concerns the pattern of non-compliance with Black Box Voting's record requests:

6. Some or all of the information requested on Nov. 2, 2004 by Black Box Voting is still missing from 59 of the 179 voting precincts, including portions of or all of the voting machine tapes for those 59 precincts, which are a vital part of official paper record of the election results from those precincts.

7. Complete information on problems with the voting machines prior to and during the election has not been provided.

8. Complete information relating to memory card failures during the election has not yet been provided.

9. Only a partial list of the transmission logs from the Accu-Vote optical scan server has been provided. Despite repeated requests, the Elections office has refused to provide to the Volusia County Democratic party the official election results, now stating that those results will not be available until December 1, 2004.

10. The Elections office has provided incomplete data regarding Early Voting and Absentee ballots. The Supervisor of Elections, for example, reported that the total number of absentee ballots and Early voting ballots, combined equaled 89,999 votes, yet the published figures for those totals is 84,100 votes, leaving over 5,800 votes unaccounted for.

11. In addition to the pattern of delay in providing the requested information, the true election results are in doubt because of numerous violations of election law procedure and unanswered questions concerning the results.

12. The polls were opened early and closed late during Early Voting.

13. Many public records, including one signed results tape from a voting machine were found in the trash. Many of the requested records not furnished by the Elections office have been found in the trash. Results from the tapes found in the trash do not match the results of the copies of tapes furnished.

14. An email from Mark Earley, of Diebold Elections Systems, Inc., to the Elections office was provided which asked the recipient for an explanation of why Volusia County had more memory card failures than all of their other Florida customers combined, and then asked why the 17 memory card failures which the Elections office reported on November 3, increased to 25 before November 12, 2004.

15. The reported memory card failures were significant and troubling and included reporting zero votes after one week of voting, requesting permission to upload votes before the voting began, and messaging whether the card should be reformatted.

16. According to a statement by the Supervisor of Elections on November 17, 2004, the GEMS computer is not networked, and is "stand alone." The furnished computer logs show evidence of at least two attempts to remotely access the GEMS central tabulator, which is claimed to be secure. A computer screen shot printout on November 17, 2004 (found in the trash) shows that the GEMS computer at that time had two networked hard drives.

That last item is the real beauty.

Still more expert opinion! John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University in Pennsylvania, and he agrees with Dr. Freeman that exit polls are usually reliable and the current discrepancies are outlandish:

Since exit polls historically have been quite accurate, and the differences as likely to have been in one candidate's favor as the other's, we're confronted with the question of what caused them. Given the indefensible withholding of the full exit-poll data by Edison Media Research, Mitofsky International, the Associated Press and various networks, we can only hazard guesses based on what was available election night.

Note that: "indefensible withholding."

With two words, Professor Paulos demolishes the conspiracy theory -- offered by Dick Morris and other G.O.P. disinformationists -- that the exit polls, not the final tallies, were intentionally skewed to depress Bush voters. Ignore, for the moment, the fact that we have not heard a single anecdotal report of a potential Bushie who skipped the election because of the exits. Simply concentrate on the phrase "indefensible withholding." Why would alleged pro-Kerry conspirators withhold this information?

Paulos goes on to make mincemeat of the "chatty Democrat" theory:

Earlier voters across the country might have differed significantly from later voters. More women might have voted then or angrier partisans did or unemployed people walking their dogs wanted to cast their ballots sooner rather than later. This is hard to credit, however, without any supporting evidence for such an effect in other elections.

Another possible explanation is that a fraction of the Bush voters were ashamed of their vote for him and lied to or avoided the exit pollsters. This happens regularly in polls on personal matters, but rarely in political polls.

He goes on to note that while some might fib about voting for (say) a David Duke...

...Bush is certainly no Duke, and very few of his supporters seemed in the least shy, but an attenuated version of this phenomenon may be behind the difference. Who knows?

Absent any proof or compelling reasons for the differences between the final tallies and the exit polls in the swing states, I don't understand why these gross discrepancies are being so widely shrugged off. After all, the procuring of random samples is far more of a problem for ordinary telephone polls, where the minority of people who cooperate with pollsters presumably differs in some way from the majority who don't. Still, these polls are not dismissed with the same impatient nonchalance as this year's exit polls.

Should we trust the Ukrainian exit polls? Colin "the compromised" Powell has announced that the United States does not accept as legitimate the recent vote in the Ukraine, citing "credible reports of fraud and abuse." Of course, the only real evidence of fraud comes from the exit poll disparities.

Bush apologists who have touted the party line -- "exit polls are not accurate" -- suddenly turn mum when the subject switches to foreign elections.

Let's view the events in the Ukraine in Morris-vision. What if the exits, not the final tallies, are at fault?

The exits favored pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko. So did the Bush administration. So who paid for this exit poll information? According to the Los Angeles Times, the poll showing the widest Yushchenko lead was "financed in part by the U.S. Embassy and other Western diplomatic missions."

Freeze frame; reverse the image. What would most Americans say about the legitimacy of an exit poll financed by the Ukrainian embassy and other former Soviet republics? The answer is easy to guess.

So why should anyone in the Ukraine believe in an exit poll financed by foreign interests favoring one candidate?

Reuters tells us that the organizations conducting the most important exit polls were the Kiev International Institute for Sociology and the Razumkov Center. (Another poll, financed by the government, still gave Yushchenko a victory, albeit a much narrower one.)

Who supports the Razumkov Center? According to their website, they receive financing from various Ukrainian government institutions -- but also from the "Democracy Encouragement Foundation of the U.S. Embassy," as well as the Rand corporation (basically an adjunct to American intelligence and the DOD), Britain's International Institute for Strategic Studies (which some have linked to MI6, and which appears to have helped provide questionable information on Iraq before the war), a mysterious entity known as the Brinkford company, and a number of other western sources of much-needed hard currency. (The list also includes non-western foreign associates, such as Iran.)

I have yet to look into funding for the Kiev International Institute for Sociology, but I would not be surprised if they had similar links.

"Follow the money," goes the famous dictum. The money behind the Ukrainian exit polls traces back to this administration and its allies, which were never disinterested observers.

So why are the Ukrainian exits considered valid, while many scoff at the exits conducted in the United States?

Much the same point is made in Pravda. This article is by no means unbaised -- but it does offer a few interesting quotes:

In this case, Viktor Yushchenko, the defeated centre-right candidate, is well known to Ukrainian society because he was already Prime Minister for two years between 1999 and 2001.

Where was this condemnation during the appalling electoral fraud committed in the USA on November 2nd?

And:

Mention of "electoral fraud and abuse" from an American observer was risible, after the two fiascos in the USA which saw the most flagrant examples of vote-rigging and electoral fixing in modern history.

And:

When the Republican Party deploys electronic voting machines bought from Republican Party fundraisers who promised before the election to help the President to win, the OSCE observers describe it as localised and insignificant incidents. However, when the incompent stooge Yushchenko fails to win in the Ukraine, it is fraud.

Finally: Previously, I've counseled readers not to yell at Salon, Josh Marshall, Kos and Atrios for their "hands off" attitude toward the vote fraud story. But the dogpile of new evidence -- particularly Bev Harris' discovery of fake poll tapes in Florida, as well as the studies by academics -- changes the landscape. If Harris' work holds up under scrutiny (and I am betting it will) then we no longer must ask if fraud occurred; the question is now how much.

Don't let anyone fob you off with false reassurances along the lines of: "Well, yeah, tampering may have happened, but not to a degree that would have changed the overall results." Harris was able to retrieve only a small number of the genuine poll tapes; the rest no doubt went into the burn bags or the shredders. Thus, any proof of intentional official tampering in any part of Florida renders the entire 2004 election invalid.

So now is the time to shout at our "liberal" media. But I advise you to shout politely. Be nice when you hit 'em upside their heads.

In case I don't get online again before tomorrow, happy Thanksgiving. My lady and I will probably visit our favorite haunted restaurant, the Big Yellow House in Summerland. Much recommended. Plenty of leftovers for the pooch.

Vote fraud isn't the only important issue...

For the latest on election tampering, scroll down. But first...

Fallujah. A haunting first-hand account by reporter Kevin Sites of the infamous shooting in the Mosque.

The economy is headed for disaster. That's the word from Stephen Pizzo, respected author of Inside Job. (Any number of authors are saying the same thing.) When W was asked by a Columbian reporter how the U.S. would pay for the war on drugs despite its massive deficit, the President answered: "By working very hard." (No, I am not making this up!)

More proof that fundamentalists are sick freaks: In Anchorage, Alaska's Matanuska Christian School, principal Steve Unfreid had himself whipped in front of two teens, who had committed the "sin" of kissing girls.

Go to Google, type in the words "miserable failure," then hit "I'm feeling lucky." Heh heh heh...

Ring the bell, bang the pot, blow a fuse -- vote fraud is real!

Bev Harris still has not made the promised announcement. However, after her recent find in Florida -- I refer to the "duplicate" poll tapes which contain mysterious additions to the Bush vote -- the landscape has changed. (True, the New York Times hasn't deigned to cover her work yet -- but you can read about it here!)

Even many skeptics are coming around to the view that "something funny" occurred on November 2. If you look closely at various news accounts, you'll see that the focus is now on the question of whether that "something funny" was funny enough to swing the election.

I'm reminded of that old punch line (occasionally attributed to dear old G.B.S.): "We've already established what kind of lady you are. Now we are discussing price."

We've already established that this election was crooked. Now we are discussing how crooked.

Here's a poser: What if we discover that Bush would have won (barely) even if his forces had not engaged in systemic e-vote manipulation? (I doubt that such is the case -- but for the moment, consider the idea as a hypothetical.) Would his reign maintain any legitimacy? In some countries, I am told, the law stipulates that any politician who attempts to rig the vote will automatically lose his post, regardless of the degree of tampering.

While you ponder that one, here are some links....

The Provisionals. You'll recall from our previous discussion that, even without a recount in Ohio, provisional ballots stand a good chance of shrinking the margin between Bush and Kerry considerably. Maryland lawyer Jonathan S. Shurberg argued that if 70% of the provisionals were deemed legit, and if 85% of those went to Kerry, the margin shrinks from 136,000 votes to 56,000 votes.

Some had hoped the "allowable" provisionals could go as high as 90 percent, the figure in 2000. But Ken Blackwell ain't gonna let that happen. According to the Plain Dealer, he's tossing out one out of every three provisionals.

Not what we hoped for -- but still fairly close to Shurberg's figure. Since most of the provisionals will swing Democratic (many were handed out in minority areas, where manipulators kept the machines sparse and the lines long), expect the margin to shrink by at least half. Then cometh the recount, which may turn up enough undervote ballots and "pumped up" precincts to swing this election.

On election night, Blackwell promised the provisionals would be counted within ten days. Why is he dawdling? Because the electoral college meets on December 13.

Oh...and remember what I said earlier about the poll books? Computers create those books, which means that manipulators can erase random names in Democratic districts. And that is just what seems to have happened:

Seventy percent of the rejected ballots, or 5,595, won't count because there was no record of their registration.

"I find it inconceivable that over 5,000 voters in the county would wait an hour in the pouring rain to vote if they haven't registered," said Dr. Norm Robbins, a neurosciences professor at Case Western Reserve University who volunteered for the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition.

Robert Bennett, the elections board chairman who also chairs the Ohio Republican Party, said provisional ballots were cross-checked by name and address before they were disqualified. But he acknowledged that errors may have seeped into the system.

"Seeped." Gotta love that wording. Yeah, those errors just "seeped" in -- much as a mugger might "seep" money from your wallet.

The counties, it seems, have differing standards when it comes to determining the legitimacy of a voter's registration information. Citing Bush v. Gore -- of all things! -- Ohio Democrats have taken the matter to court, in order to impose a state-wide standard.

Also in Ohio: You'll want to read Bob Fritakis on "How the Ohio election was rigged for Bush."

This analysis details an odd phenomenon in east Cleveland. In precincts where voters historically favor Democrats to an overwhelming degree, far-right third party candidates received large numbers of votes -- sometimes ridiculously large numbers.(Remember the "Jews for Buchanan" phenomenon of 2000?) Since the Bush percentage of the vote is consistent with that seen in past elections, any vote switch must have come at Kerry's expense. Yeah, the numbers are small -- but shennanigans of this sort do add up.

Greg Palast may be the first reporter outside the blogosphere to note the divergent attitudes toward exit polling, depending upon whether the subject is the Ukraine or the United States.

Florida. If you were a Florida resident traveling outside the country (perhaps due to military service), your vote would have counted even if your absentee ballot arrived ten days after the election. All you needed was a November 2 postmark. But what about the many absentee ballots that "accidentally" reached Broward county voters late? Shouldn't they receive the same courtesy? U.S. District Court Judge Alan Gold denied a preliminary injunction to include these ballots in the count; the matter may yet go to trial.

The name Bush popped up repeatedly, even when voters tried to select Kerry. This scenario occurred across the country in precincts using electronic voting machines, and it occurred so often only a fool or a disinformation peddler would endorse the notion of voter error. I have yet to encounter a single anecdotal report of the opposite tableau -- a Bush voter faced with the name Kerry.

Now Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco is looking into the matter. Rice University computer science professor Dan Wallach and security expert Bruce Schneier have agreed to help test the machines -- if they get access. I'll report on their findings...

Swing state analysis. Computer scientist Bob Burnett, co-founder of Cisco Systems, has completed a study of the swing states and the exit polls, and his report takes us past the simplistic "exit polls can be inaccurate" crap we've been hearing from the mainstream media.

The 2004 presidential exit polls were wildly off the mark in swing states; the difference between the expected and actual results was not randomly distributed, it was all in Bush's favor.

Because of these discrepancies, I studied the election results in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. What I found were not answers, but more questions.

Interestingly, he says the most worrisome anomalies occurred in New Mexico, which has yet to finalize its results. We've already noted other reports from NM, where (if you believe the numbers) the Native American population showed an unusual fondness for the G.O.P. this year.

The mainstreamers are coming around. Another "respectable" journal, Oregon's Register-Guard, has published a terrific story by Dianne Lobes on vote fraud allegations.

Keith Olbermann discusses the finessed wording of the Democratic party's releases announcing their involvement in the Ohio recount. Do not count me among those screaming at Kerry for not leading the charge on this issue. If he were to claim "I wuz robbed," he'd make himself the butt of nightly jokes from every comic on the boob tube. As I've said earlier: At this point, low key is the best key.

Of course, certain lefties are never happy unless the Democratic candidate acts in a politically suicidal fashion.

Remember those "terror warnings"? "Terrorism" was the excuse given by officials in Warren County, Ohio, when they kept outsiders from peeking at the counting process. Neither the FBI nor Homeland Security had any knowledge of this alleged threat. Now reporter Erica Solvig of the Cincinnati Enquirer has uncovered the fact that the lock-out was planned well in advance, on October 25. Fishier and fishier...

Electronic countermeasures? Are web sites devoted to this issue under attack? Brad Freidman says he has experienced "denial of service" difficulties. So has Jeff Fisher. The Yahoo group Election Fraud 2004 mysteriously went down for about a week (and seems to be down again at this writing). Bev Harris' site is often unreachable, but the volume of hits she receives may explain that phenomenon. I've heard rumors (just rumors) of other affected sites. No problems on my end so far. Are we starting to jump at shadows, or should we demonstrate concern?

"Economic Armageddon" (link fixed)

The only story more important than vote fraud is the hellish condition of the American economy, due to the ghastly overspending of George W. Bush. Those who still don't get it must read this piece in the Boston Herald. Morgan Stanley's chief financial expert Stephen Roach, is privately telling associates that our nation has only a 1-in-10 chance of avoiding "armageddeon":

In a nutshell, Roach's argument is that America's record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling. To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates further and faster than he wants.

The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their eyeballs, will get pounded.

Wonder how the propagandists are gong to blame that situation on Bill Clinton?

The cult of Bush

More proof that Bush-worship has become a cult can be found here. Warning: Click on that link only if you want to see a truly frightening image.

Vote fraud: The investigation (link fixed)

I'm numb. Speechless. Not because of anything in the news: I finally had that damn molar taken out, and my mouth is full of gauze and lovely novacaine.

But the news is pretty damn startling. The Government Accounting Office has finally decided to investigation the many reports of "irregularities" with the electronic vote. See also Judy Woodruff's report.

Maureen Farrell has written a fine piece on the media reaction to the growing academic consensus that the official count does not reflect the will of the electorate. She directs our attention to yet another academic assessment by David Dill of Stanford.

Bev Harris, at this writing, has not yet made the promised "significant" announcement. When she does, I hope to offer a few comments.

Remember Dr. Steven Freeman? The one who said that the exit poll discrepancy in a mere three states was a 250,000-to-one shot? He has a new, updated version of his paper out.

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?

The hard truth

The atrocity of Fallujah will haunt this generation forever.

Rent the DVD of "The Pianist" and you'll see horrible documentary footage of the Warsaw ghetto. Compare that visual record with the photos coming out of Fallujah, particularly the images of maimed and dead children. Historians may not agree that our actions are worse than those of the Nazis -- but in terms of visceral visual impact, the more recent outrages certainly look worse.

A new generation of red state youth is learning a lesson carefully hidden from it by the conservative brainwashers who control their media, pulpits and schools. American soldiers in Vietnam were called "baby killers" because they killed babies.

We had zero right to enter that country. We have zero right to remain in Iraq.

Many American military men are fundamentalist Christians -- in other words, they subscribe to a competing variant of the same evil that wreaked havoc on the innocent blue state of New York. Theocratic fundamentalism -- in all of its forms -- is THE THIRD MENACE.

We defeated Nazism and Communism, the first two menaces. We must now understand that you cannot use one form of fundamentalism to combat another, any more than you can extinguish a kitchen fire with a cigarette lighter.

I do not recognize these Bush-voting, red-state warriors-for-Christ as my fellow Americans. I do not weep when they die. While I will not spit in their faces when they return from their overseas butchery, I will not feel angry if someone else takes such a symbolic action.

These professional mercenaries are not citizen soldiers in the tradition of Joshua Chamberlain, Sergeant York, Harry Truman or Audie Murphy. They do not fight for this country or for any of its values. They have invaded a foreign land for one reason only: To steal oil.

Many of them understand this fact, although only a few will admit it aloud. Because most of them support the crime boss who initiated this theft, they cannot shirk responsibility for the atrocities they have committed. These ill-educated red-state killers-for-Christ are not victims when they fall in the name of King George -- their king. They are victimizers, invaders, conquerors, thieves. They deserve their fates because they support the conservatives cultists who have emptied our treasury and ruined our good name.

Was Saddam Hussein evil? Of course. But consider this haunting historical analogy:

Most would agree that Saddam Hussein's rule was far less despotic than that of, say, Tsar Alexander I, who ruled Russia during the war of 1812. Napoleon -- a more enlightened ruler than the Tsar ever was -- cited treaty violations as his pretext for invading Russia, much as Bush did when he invaded Iraq. (Napoleon's case was stronger.) Even so, when we read War and Peace, or see one of the film versions of that story, we root for the Russians.

Why? Because no foreign soldier has ever had any right to set foot on Russian soil. Any French soldier who marched outside his nation's borders deserved to die in agony. The relative merits of the Emperor and the Tsar simply do not enter into the calculation.

Taking the analogy further, I would argue that the psychic wounds of Napoleon's invasion set back the cause of political reform in Russia. The Decembrist rebellion of 1825 might have succeeded if French imperialism had not blackened the cause of modernization.

Lesson: Political reform comes from within. Attempts to impose reform from without will only strengthen nationalist reaction (which we are now pleased to categorize as "terrorism").

"Emperor" Bush insults the French when he should have studied their history. Those who follow him will end up like those who followed Bonaparte across the Nieman river.

Correction, and a vote fraud update

Many thanks for the kind words readers have sent. One reader has informed me that yesterday's post included an incorrect link to Ktherine Yurica's important piece on vote fraud. Go to http://www.yuricareport.com/index.html.

In the comments section of the previous post, "STOP George" offered a truly juicy quote which we canot resist including here:

Here's a response to the "chatty democrat" theory:

"...On the PBS News Hour Mitofsky stated, “we suspect that the reason [Kerry was ahead in the exit polls] was that Kerry voters were more anxious to participate in our exit polls than the Bush voters.” Of course, this excuse doesn’t explain why the exit polls were inaccurate only in swing states.

And it ignores the fact that the exit polls are carefully constructed samples weighted by factors such as party affiliation and gender. In other words, it is not the case that pollsters grab the 20th voter coming out of the polls and mark down their vote preferences regardless of what party they belong to; polling protocol dictates that if they have too many Democrats, or women, they don’t take anymore in that particular category until the sample is balanced..."

- Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and computer scientist best known as one of the executive founders of Cisco Systems