Great news on the vote fraud front!

Some of you may know that I was among those disappointed, or at least baffled, by the behavior of Bev Harris in the aftermath of the Nov. 2004 election. But I am always willing to hear the other side of the story.

(Okay, that's not always true. There are a few "other sides" to various stories -- "controlled demolition" theories of 9/11, "Mob did it" theories of the JFK assassination, outrageous claims involving Roswell or MKULTRA or Rennes-le-chateau -- that have, over the years, lost their charm. Of course you have a right to speak of these "other sides," but please understand that I have a right not to listen to you and not to give you a forum on what is, after all, my own damn blog.)

Where was I? Oh yes. Bev Harris. John Dean, definitely a friend to this blog, has mounted a spirited defense of this woman and all that she has done to prove that computers can hack into our vote. And in light of the latest news from Florida, I encourage everyone to hear Dean out.

Start here and then go here. He will have more to say soon, I am sure.

On other fronts...

Sign up! Yes, I know you hear about plenty of petitions for good causes, but this one's really important. Congressman Rush Holt is trying to drum up grass roots support for H.R. 550, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005. This legislation is a broom poised to clean house. Please get behind it.

A few months ago, I would have thought that this bill stood no chance. But now...

The New York Times published an Op-Ed questioning Diebold. This column is a victory of sorts, although I, for one, feel that skepticism should have been voiced much earlier. Still, let us be grateful for these three paragraphs:

Diebold's voting machines have a troubled history. The company was accused of installing improperly certified software, which is illegal, in a 2002 governor's race in Georgia. Across the country, it reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the California attorney general last year of a lawsuit alleging that it made false claims about the security of its machines. Last week, the top elections officer in Leon County, Fla., which includes Tallahassee, concluded after a test that Diebold machines can be hacked to change vote totals.

Diebold has always insisted that its electronic voting machines are so reliable that there is no need for paper records of votes that can be independently verified. Fortunately, the American people feel otherwise. Nearly half the states - including large ones like California, New York, Illinois and Ohio - now require so-called paper trails.

Paper trails are important, but they are no substitute for voting machine manufacturers of unquestioned integrity. As Diebold enters the post-O'Dell era, it should work to make itself worthy of the important role it now plays in American democracy.

All very well and good. But always keep in mind that a year ago -- back when the NYT had yet to call Judy Miller on her crap, back when the paper censored the news about spying on Americans without warrants -- they refused to offer any coverage of John Conyers' heroic work, and they dismissed as blog-driven rumor-mongering all allegations of vote fraud.

Both Matthew Purdy, the head of The Times’s investigative unit, and Rick Berke, the paper’s Washington editor, assure me that reporters will continue to look into the ssue. I’m confident that if they find something, they’ll publish it. A good investigative reporter (much less a whole staff of them) turning away from a story like this one ­ if true ­ would be like a flower turning away from the sun. Careers are made by stories that detail massive election fraud.

This, from a November 21 letter written by the interestingly-named Arthur Bovino, of the NYT's Office of the Public Editor.

Of course, Conyers uncovered massive indications of vote-rigging, and conclusive proof that Kenny the Kapo acted illegally. Yet the Times' response to the evidence was so complacent as to be...well, bovine.

This, from a paper that treated Achmed Chalabi as a really trustworthy source.

North Carolina: What's going on? Mike Wilburt, chairman of the Warren County Republican Party in that state, has grown disenchanted with Diebold:

Several newspaper articles, editorials and published commentaries have raised questions about the process in which Diebold's certification was obtained. Further questions have been raised relative to State Board of Elections Commission Chairman Larry Leake's relationship with a Diebold lobbyist. And, as you know, the State Board of Elections is being sued for alleged statutory violations in their certification of Diebold as a provider of electronic voting machines.

The Warren County Republican Party respectfully asks that no taxpayer money be appropriated for the purchase of electronic voting machines from Diebold, or any other provider, until such time as all questions regarding the certification process and the relationship between Chairman Leake and Diebold's representatives have been satisfactorily answered.

Again, this is all very well and good. But.

As we know, Republicans are the Borg. Nearly all party functionaries are incapable of independent ideas; their actions are controlled by Borg Central. So what we are seeing here cannot be a case of Mr. Wilburt defying his party on the Diebold question.

I'm starting to theorize that the RNC Borg-herders have made the decsion: Diebold is history. We never liked that company. We were never at war with Eastasia. We were always at war with Westasia. Please re-write your history books accordingly.

Which leaves us with...what? Clean elections?

Nope. It leaves us with ES&S, Sequoia, and Triad.

The Republicans have pulled off some tricky propaganda stunts in the past, but none trickier than the one they must now attempt. Originally, they tried to convince the public that computerized voting could not be hacked. We have seen through that lie. Now they must attempt to convince us that the problem begins and ends with Diebold, and that all the other compu-vote venders are as pure as the milk that dribbled from the BVM's left teat.

We can't let that hallucination take hold. We must force the public to understand that Diebold is not just one bad apple; the whole damn barrel is filled with poison.

Fact: The money power behind ES&S is the Ahmanson family, which is also the money power behind the Dominionst movement. Howard Ahmanson has a lot of control over the machines Americans use on election day. And he does not believe in democracy. He prefers theocracy.

Here's another fact: Many paid attention (and properly so!) to Brad Friedman's stories about the whistleblower he calls Dieb-Throat. But did you know -- or have you forgotten -- that ES&S has its very own whistleblower? And she's not anonymous, either. Her name is Wendy Orange, and I wrote about her a year ago. She quit the company for moral reasons:

In her letter of resignation, Orange said she found the corporate philosophy at ES&S to embody unethical and disreputable practices. She said she had "personally witnessed open discussions of potentially illegal procedures."

More:

Her husband, Doug Orange, used to work for ES&S as Johnson County's project manager. He was fired after refusing a superior's order to zero the counters on voting machines at the courthouse instead of the polls. “I felt those procedures were illegal,” said Orange.

And what about Sequoia?

Well, there's a nice amount of evidence that they've bribed election supervisors to install their machines. (See here.) If there is one thing the Wilkes/Cunningham scandal has taught us, it's that the bribER is just as filthy as the bribEE. So how can any state tolerate a company like Sequoia in light of its obscene history?

Phil Foster and Pasquale Ricci of Sequoia were indicted for paying a large bribe to the Louisiana Commissioner of Elections.

The owner of this same company once tried to bribe a sitting Supreme Court justice.

Sequoia has even been linked to one member of the Gambino crime family.

You can find lots more here. This company has a history of bribery going back decades.

Let's repeat what the NYT stated: "Paper trails are important, but they are no substitute for voting machine manufacturers of unquestioned integrity." Why direct those words only at Wally O'Dell and minions?

Such selective targeting is suspicious.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tells it like it is: He gave some precious airtime to Harvey Wasserman, who offered damning evidence of vote fraud in 2004.

Of course, RFK Jr. knows that there was once a time when elections were fixed in a far less elegant fashion....