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From: Marcus (206.190.148.55)
Subject: Powerful Government Accounting Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings
Date: October 27, 2005 at 5:59 pm PST
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1529No Powerful Government Accounting Office report confirms key 2004
stolen election findings
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 26, 2005 As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the
Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report
shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election
to the White House is crumbling. The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the
election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful,
penetrating report from the General Accounting Office that has
gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage. The government's lead investigative agency is known for its
general incorruptibility and its through, in-depth analyses.
Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as "conspiracy
theories" adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush
has no legitimate business being in the White House. Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John
Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting
machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004
presidential election. The request came amidst widespread
complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking
irregularities defined their performance. According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee received
"more than 57,000 complaints" following Bush's alleged
re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized under oath in
a series of sworn statements and affidavits in public hearings
and investigations conducted in Ohio by the Free Press and
other election protection organizations. The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, "some of [the]
concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized
and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in
the loss and miscount of votes." The United States is the only major democracy that allows
private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate
the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse
Jackson, among others, has asserted that "public elections must
not be conducted on privately-owned machines." The CEO of one
of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines,
Warren O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to
deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush. Bush's official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775
votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection
advocates argue that O'Dell's statement still stands as a clear
sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the White House. Among other things, the GAO confirms that: 1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast
ballots or system audit logs, thus making it possible to alter
them without detection." In other words, the GAO now confirms
that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip
an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio
on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official
margin of victory. 2. "It is easy to alter a file defining how a ballot appears,
making it possible for someone to vote for one candidate and
actually be recorded as voting for an entirely different
candidate." Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert
that this did happen in Ohio 2004. 3. "Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of
such an action by using altered memory cards" can easily be
done, according to the GAO. 4. The GAO also confirms that "access to the voting network was
easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic
voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions
password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to
the whole network." This critical finding confirms that rigging
the 2004 vote did not require a "widespread conspiracy" but
rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives
with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus
change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast
on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to
give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer. 5. Access "to the voting network was also compromised by
repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed
passwords," says the GAO. So even relatively amateur hackers
could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies. 6. "The locks protecting access to the system were easily
picked and keys were simple to copy," says the GAO, meaning,
again, getting into the system was an easy matter. 7. "One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a
rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would
cause the entire network to fail," says the GAO, re-emphasizing
the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the
United States was decided. 8. "GAO identified further problems with the security protocols
and background screening practices for vendor personnel,"
confirming still more easy access to the system. In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank, grocery
store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its business on
a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as
the one on which the 2004 election turned. The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the
context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State
simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Far from what election theft skeptics have long asserted, the
GAO findings confirm that the electronic network on which
800,000 Ohio votes were cast was vulnerable enough to allow a a
tiny handful of operatives -- or less -- to turn the whole vote
count using personal computers operating on relatively simple
software. The GAO documentation flows alongside other crucial realities
surrounding the 2004 vote count. For example: # The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an
unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush.
Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and New
Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility. # A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former
ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the
ballot-making machine in Auglaize County # Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at
least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to Bush.
Voters who pushed Kerry's name saw Bush's name light up, again
and again, all day long. Officials claim the problems were
quickly solved, but sworn statements and affidavits say
otherwise. They confirm similar problems in Franklin County
(Columbus). Kerry's margins in both counties were suspiciously low. # A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25
million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed. # In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a so-called
"electronic transfer glitch" gave Bush nearly 4000 extra votes
when only 638 people voted at that polling place. The tally was
allegedly corrected, but remains infamous as the "loaves and
fishes" vote count. # In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that
their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper trail. # In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the
county's central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote - 19,000
more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for Bush at the
same percentage as prior to the additional votes, a virtual
statistical impossibility. # In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals turned
up for obscure third party candidates in traditional Democratic
African-American wards. Vote counts in neighboring wards showed
virtually no votes for those candidates, with 90% going instead
for Kerry. # Prior to one of Blackwell's illegitimate "show recounts,"
technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up
unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and
removed the computer hard drive. # In response to official information requests, Shelby and
other counties admit to having discarded key records and
equipment before any recount could take place. # In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff
Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry
confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that had a
touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no correlation with
ethnicity, social class or traditional party affiliation---only
with the fact that touchscreen machines were used. # In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that "by and
large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter is
getting a lemon - the Ford Pinto of voting technology. We must
demand better."
But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting machines
as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly engineered to allow
a very small number of partisans with minimal computer skills
and equipment to shift enough votes to put George W. Bush back
in the White House.
Given the growing body of evidence, it appears increasingly
clear that's exactly what happened. --
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP
STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available via
http://freepress.org and http://harveywasserman.com. Their WHAT
HAPPENED IN OHIO, with Steve Rosenfeld, will be published in
Spring, 2006, by New Press.
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