Votergate echoes

It's true. I have taken something of a breather from discussing the stolen 2004 election. The whole subject was and is quite frustrating -- since my ultimate response comes down to William Shatner's immortal line: "The course of action I'd recommend is a course of action I can't recommend."

Even so, if you care about democracy at all, you must follow Brad Freidman's dogged pursuit of Clinton Curtis and Feeneygate. Proving compterized vote fraud in one case will ease the public into accepting the possibility in other cases.

Brad's latest involves the alleged suicide in Georgia of Raymond Lemme, of Florida Inspector General's office. Lemme was investigating espionage and overbilling charges made by Curtis against YEI, the same firm Curtis says asked him to cobble together "proof of concept" vote fraud software to benefit Republican Tom Feeney.

In his 2004 affidavit, Curtis describes a mid-June 2003 meeting with Lemme in which he claims that Lemme told him he "had tracked the corruption 'all the way to the top' and that the story would break in the next few weeks and I would be satisfied with the results."

On July 1, 2003 -- just two weeks later -- Raymond Camillo Lemme was found dead in a bathtub, with his arm slashed twice with a razor blade near the left elbow in Room #132 of the Knights Inn motel in Valdosta, Georgia; a border-town some 80 miles from Tallahassee, Florida where Lemme lived and worked.

A handwritten note, unsigned, was found by police on the desk in the room in a black leather day planner.

The Georgia police claimed that their crime scene photos were lost due to the failure of "flash memory cards." (More than one failed? On a single occasion?) But such photos have now been found to exist -- Brad shows 'em.

Brad uncovers a number of other inconsistencies in the case, which the Georgia police have officially re-opened.

Long-time parapolitical observers will see this case as a mirror image of the infamous Casolaro murder (make no mistake: it was a murder), and several other mysterious "suicides."

Tom Feeney, interestingly enough, is now in hot water in a separate matter: He has gone on golf junkets paid for by a lobbyist under investigation for influence peddling.

Fritakis weighs in: Bob Fritakis has written a powerful piece on voter fraud in Ohio which sums up many key aspects of the case. Here's a factoid you may not know:

Even in the last election in the Ukraine, the Associated Press reports “the Bush administration has spent more than $65 million the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine….” And the Bush family’s candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who won on a re-vote because the Mitofsky exit polls detected fraud, is married to Kateryna Chumachanko, a former Reagan White House official and daughter of right-wing Ukrainian exiles. Chumachanko was accused of being a CIA operative by her husband’s political opponents, according to the Washington Post.

Elsewhere... I'd like to see more writers address the shennanigans in non-purple states.

Some of you may recall my previous comments about the study of Snohomish County, Washington -- where the historically close election showed a marked difference between the exits and the actuals, but only when it came to the electronic votes. Absentee votes tracked perfectly with the exit polls. This cannot have been due to a late surge for Bush, since polls showed that those few who made up their minds late in the game veered strongly toward Kerry.

A key factor: Computerized voting equipment that went in for mysterious "repairs" seems to have affected the vote of other machines. The manufacturer sent out strict instructions to daisy chain the power cords, for no discernable reasons. Many do not comprehend that power cords can be used for the transmission of data, just like phone lines.

John Conyers, the congressman who stood up to the vote fraudsters, has offered Raw Story a powerful interview on the parlous state of our democracy.