More vote fraud news...

Suing Sequoia: I hope you will recall Paul Lehto, who helped put together that terrific (and under-appreciated) study of the reliability of e-voting vs. paper ballots in Snohomish County, Washington. (Differing sites give his name as Lehto and Leto; I'll go with the former spelling for now.)

Since few people have read his explosive report, Lehto has gone on the offensive: He is suing Sequoia, the voting machine manufacturer, to gain access to the company's "proprietary" information on vote tabulation.

I've always found this emphasis on proprietary secrecy rather amusing, since the various firms entrusted with our elections tend to have rather incestuous relationships with each other. Seems to me that the companies hope to keep their secrets hidden from us, not from each other.

Still, we are told not to worry:

Snohomish County auditor Bob Terwilliger said that there were no issues with the Sequoia touch-screen systems that the county used last year. "We have had no reason to be concerned," Terwilliger said, adding that the county had been using the machines since 2002.

Hm...speaking as a Simpsons fan, I'm not sure how much trust I can place in a guy named Bob Terwilliger.

Neither can I feel very secure after reading the blandisments of Alfie Charles, the Sequoia spokesman referenced in the afore-cited story. Turns out lil' Alfie has an interesting history: A couple of years ago, he was California's Assistant Secretary of State for Communications and eGovernment -- in which capacity, he did his damnedest to make sure California purchased Sequoia's rotten product. He now earns a good living as a Sequoia flack.

Can you say "revolving door"?

If anyone asks how paper-free electronic voting became an election-day inevitability despite so many howls of protest, the answer is simple: Greased palms and promises of cushy future employment. The major companies simply bought their way into the voting booths.

Means, Motive and Opportunity: Ernest Partridge offers a must-read polemic on the reality of vote fraud and its implications for the 2006 Congressional races. He offers this foretaste:

In the run-up to the 2006 election, the mainstream media has once again fallen in line behind the Republicans, blaming the depression on the Clinton Administration, al Qaeda, and/or betrayal by “the Old Europe.” The crimes and outrages of the Bush/GOP syndicate have been unreported by the media, as Democratic war veterans running for office against GOP draft dodgers have once again been castigated as “unpatriotic.”

For their part, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the religious right have proclaimed that these economic and diplomatic catastrophes manifest God’s judgment on the American people for their toleration of gays, abortion, the ACLU, the teaching of evolution, and independent judges.

This time, the public is unconvinced by the GOP propaganda, as massive protest demonstrations erupt throughout the country. Finally fed up with the lies and greed of the GOP, and finally aware of just how much their livelihood and their future has been plundered by Bushenomics, more than two-thirds of the voters are about to go to the polls determined to throw out the Republican Congress.

While a few honest polls forecast a landslide victory for the Democrats, most of these polls have not been published.

The Republican-owned and Republican-coded “black-box” voting machines once again perform as intended, and the Republicans retain control of Congress.

The astonished and disappointed public is once again told to “get over it.”

Beyond that, my crystal ball becomes cloudy.

Aww. Crystal ball's gone funky? Let's take it in for servicing. The expert repair team of Dee & Kelly can usually get these things up-and-running again.

Hmm...rather different images are starting to come in...

Looks like a major terrorist incident will occur between now and the 2006 elections. You thought people went a little nutso after 9/11? The next attack will drive the citizenry clear 'round the bend. Vote fraud may not be necessary to keep the Republicans in power -- in fact, the Democratic party probably won't even survive. One small nuke thus turns the world's most venerable democracy into a one-party state...

Yow! Someone fetch me a new crystal ball -- I sure don't want that prediction to come true...!

Clint Curtis: As noted in an earlier post, a confession by an insider is the only evidence of a conspiracy which today's mainstream mediafolk recognize as evidence. Thank god for Clint Curtis, the first such insider to come forward.

Robert Steinback of the Miami Herald gives Curtis respectful mention in the course of a good piece on the perils of electronic voting. (I direct you to Brad Friedman's recounting of this piece, since the Herald website requires registration.) Apparently, Chicago columnist Robert Koehler will soon do a similar piece.

The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin offers the following:

In Florida, a computer programmer named Clint Curtis has made the allegation he was directed to add code to a vote counting program to cause votes to switch from one candidate to another. Here's a link to the story. I'm not making any statement here as to whether his allegations are true or false because the investigation is ongoing. The question is whether this could be true, or if we have controls in place to prevent this. I don't see anything that would prevent this from happening, particularly since voting companies refuse to provide their source code under the guise of "trade secrets".

Nice! Now if we can only persuade another few dozen colunists to make the same point...

By the way, Xymphora has a terrific precis of the Clint Curtis story, as it so far stands. He pays particular attention to the "sucide" of Raymond Lemme:

A diligent investigator discovers that vote fraud goes all the way to the top of government in Florida. The thugs who run Florida have three enforcers kidnap the investigator, drive him up to the nearest place where they can be safe from an autopsy, knock him out, and stage his suicide by slitting his wrists. Pressure is put on local investigators, no doubt used to doing dirty work for the thugs who run Florida from the wild city of Tallahassee, to lose the crime scene photos and deliver a report completely consistent with suicide. An honest cop releases the photos, so the preparer of the report has to disappear, and local police have to clam up. One phone call from Tallahassee shuts down the reopening of the investigation. Honest men like Raymond Lemme deserve better than this sordid cover-up. His staged 'suicide' is proof that the allegations of Clint Curtis are true. The conspirators always give themselves away in the cover-up. You will know them by the trail of dead.

And on a lighter note...

Dave Barry has a funny column on the problems with e-voting. It has been republished here.

The Nashville conference. I've given this meeting insufficient attention. Video and audio of the speakers -- which include Cynthia McKinney, Brad Friedman, Kathy DOpp and others -- can be found here. Pass that URL around -- it makes for great listening.