Vote notes (Important developments on several fronts)

Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts, working behind the scenes, may have helped Bush win in 2000. For more info, go to the Dallas Morning News story here, and scroll down until you see the words "Role in 2000 recount."

Although his name did not appear on the briefs, three sources who were personally aware of Judge Roberts' role said he gave Republican Gov. Jeb Bush critical advice on how the Florida Legislature could constitutionally name George W. Bush the winner at a time when Republicans feared that if the recount were to continue the courts might force a different choice.

Hmmm...

Georgia on our minds. A new law in Georgia will forbid the vote to anyone who does not possess government-issued photo identification. This legislation will severely impact 150,000 seniors in that state who do not possess driver's licenses -- not to mention the impact on blacks and poor people.

This sorry turn of events derives, of course, from the Republican propaganda campaign designed to convince the citizenry that America suffers from an epidemic of voters using fake identification. (Remember the widely-circulated urban legend of the voter registered as "Jive F. Turkey"?)

The new law's supporters claim that it is an attempt to reduce voter fraud, but Secretary of State Cathy Cox has said she cannot recall a single case during her tenure when anyone impersonated a voter.

In the same period, she says, there have been numerous allegations of fraud involving absentee ballots. But the Georgia Legislature has passed a law that focuses on voter identification while actually making absentee ballots more prone to misuse.

Oh, but it gets worse...

More Georgia horrors: Cynthia McKinney has just released documents which, she claims, take "hack the vote" stories completely out of the realm of conspiracy theory.

The first flickers of a problem appeared in the public mind with the election of Gov. Sonny Perdue with an unaccounted for 11 point swing overnight in the voting publics voting preference. Perdue was the first Republican Governor elected in Georgia since the reconstruction.

Georgia's elections have been fraught with massive problems from day one and election officials have hidden the problems from the voters.

Georgia's election officials sought to protect Diebold instead of the voters.

The first document is a list of bugs and failures experienced in Georgia's 2002 election, none of which have been resolved to date, much less in time for the 2004 election.

Mr. Sam Barber of American Computer Technologies, Inc. has filed a federal lawsuit against Diebold. ACT was originally a Minority Owned Business contacted by Diebold to subcontract the Acceptance Testing of the Diebold system. When they discovered Mr. Barber really intended to test the equipment as prescribed by computer science, they threw him off the contract.

What they WANTED Mr. Barber's company to do was assemble the 2 pieces of equipment and CALL it acceptance testing. When he refused, he was dismissed by Diebold in McKinney, TX.

Want to judge the documents for yourself? Be my guest. (And here's the video of McKinney in action.)

And when you're done, take a look at this 2004 portrait of Cathy Cox, the Georgia Secretary of State who has been called the Poster Girl for Diebold. (Also see here.) Somehow, I don't think she'll consider McKinney's documentation worthy of investigation.

But if democracy somehow manages to endure (or to revive) in this nation, Cynthia McKinney will one day be remembered with gratitude and affection -- and Cathy Cox will, if she is lucky, be forgotten entirely.

Mississippi is also going Diebold. Secretary of State Eric Clark sez:

"You hear about (computer) hacking, but it just can't happen here," he said. "It's as secure as anything can be. Based on everything I've seen, these are the best machines available and they're coming at zero cost to the counties."

On a completely unrelated note, did you know that the average I.Q. in Mississippi is 85 -- lowest in the United States?

Caught taking a Diebold bribe...? Matthew Damschroder, the Director of the Franklin County Board of Elections was suspended after questions were raised about his "handling" of a $10,000 check written by a Diebold representative.

Damschroder has said he accepted a $10,000 check from Diebold political consultant Pasquale "Pat" Gallina on county property and later delivered it to the Franklin County Republican Party.

More:

Damschroder also told reporters and county prosecutors that Gallina reported cutting a private deal on Diebold voting machines with Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's campaign adviser and then donating $50,000 to "Blackwell interests."

You just knew Kenny boy would enter this tale, didn't you? Gallina denies the claims, incidentally.

Undeniably, the major voting machine companies have a sorry history of bribes and offering cozy post-public-life sinecures to election board officials throughout the country.

On a similar note...

Seattle arrest! In the past, we've focused on the important research by Paul Lehto (that's L-E-H-T-O...I think) on electoral shennanigans in the state Laura Palmer called home. Specifically, Lehto noted a telling pattern: Paper votes matched the exit polls, while touchscreen votes favored Republicans. He also drew attention to two under-recognized (and perhaps related) oddities: The mysterious pattern of touchscreen machine repairs, and the manufacturer's insistence that power cords be "daisy chained" on Sequoia voting machines. Data -- such as a virus or a vote-theft program -- can be transferred via power cords.

Lehto focused on Snohomish County. Now we learn some interesting news about King County:

Former King County Elections Superintendent Julie Anne Kempf was booked into jail Tuesday, July 19, on investigation of forgery, theft, criminal impersonation, and assault on a police officer, Seattle Weekly has learned.

The probe that led to her arrest is related to events that occurred after she left her county job in December 2002, but it involves recent incidents connected to the elections office.

More to come, I am sure...

AccuFake: A poster to Democratic Underground claims to have discovered an email from one Diebold employee to another -- an email containing a Christmas poem which parodies "A Night Before Christmas." Amusingly enough, this bit of "insider" humor refers to the Diebold system as AccuFake. Cynical jesting or revelation?

Sherole Eaton, the courageous Ohio Board of Elections worker who was "axed" to leave after she testified to outrageous attempts to fix the recount, still needs help to keep up her $600-a-month medical insurance premium. Her health is in danger, and a brain aneurism requires surgery. For information on her story and how you can help, go here.

Incidentally, there's a rumor that a mainstream magazine will soon devote some major ink to her story. I hope that article includes the following details:

After Sherole stood up and the recount was stopped before it was completed, she was forced by the BOE to take "comp time" off. While she was off, they discovered an aneurysm. When she returned, they held a BOE meeting and DINO Hughes seconded the motion to fire her and all 4 members voted for her firing.

She was commended by these same Democrat board members at the next meeting after the recount for what a wonderful job she did throughout the election and the recount.

Now, remember, she was off work after the recount for the biggest share of the time preceding her firing. The Board would not give an official reason for her termination.

In the meantime, the Republican Director of Elections in Hocking County, Lisa Swartz spent several weeks after the recount shredding documents and voter records without authorization. She also planned Republican fundraisers, inviting bands, etc., using county equipment and time to do so. She did this in front of the DINO Chairman of the Board without any reprimands.

Also, the ex-Saudi Arabian oil employee, Sue Wallace, was the election worker in charge of the absentee ballots. They could not give an answer to the Green Party volunteers when asked how many absentee ballots were counted. She kept some of them in an unlocked desk drawer. Blackwells office was aware of the absentees being unaccounted for in Hocking County. Sue was not reprimanded for this.

In sum: The bad guys are flexing their muscles. Yet a growing number of people are finding themselves in Neo's position -- they've awoken from a dream-like pseudo-reality to find themselves mired in goo. Will enough people acheive samsara in time to save democracy?