Rolled up papers at fifty places (Keith Olbermann)

Forum posts

• 13 November 2004, 21:54

  Keith Olbermann blog - you have GOT to read this, all kinds of stuff in here!

• 14 November 2004, 04:10

  Keith Olbermann is the only major media source to date, for an in-depth discussion of the huge elephant in the room post election 2004; that is, fraud—or we should politely refer to it as voting irregularities. Friday, it was announced on his show Countdown, that he would be taking a vacation; this has started all sorts of rumors and speculations about whether or not his voice is intentionally being stifled, whether or not it was a joke, etc. But it has those of us who yearn for the irregularities to be adequately covered and not dismissed as conspiracy theory, quite worried.

  VTP (Voting Technology Project) is one of the studies that you mentioned (November 11, 2004 Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project) whose report is titled "Voting Machines and the Underestimate of the Bush Vote." This same group, ironically enough, wrote another report in 2001, which addressed all of the potential problems that seems to have affected this current election.

  http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/VTP_report_all.pd...

  Electronic Voting and Security (Pp 45-47)
  "We are concerned that we are moving away from these general principles that help guarantee the security and integrity of voting.

  The computerization of election systems introduces significant security risks but also significant opportunities for fraud prevention and detection. For example, electronic transmission of vote tallies, so long as that transmission is secure, means that we do not have to have police ferrying ballots around on election night.

  We see the following security risks associated with electronic voting.

  First, we are losing openness. Electronic voting machines are completely closed. We can no longer observe the count.

  Second, we are losing the ability for many people to be involved. Election equipment tries to do it all. A single computer system generates votes, records votes, counts votes, and produces the final tallies. Without openness, we lose the advantage of having many eyes on the count.

  Third, separation of privilege is lost. We are headed toward monolithic systems—one machine that does it all. This risks vesting too much control over the system in the vendor’s hands or in the hands of any hacker who can get inside of that monolithic system.

  Fourth, many electronic devices lack redundancy and true audit ability. To audit a voting machine, one needs a redundant recording of what the voter intended. There is the initial recording that the electronic machine made, but there must also be a separate recording against which the machine recording is tested— an audit trail. The problem for many electronic devices is that their audit trails are simply another recording of what the machine recorded. Roy Saltman, a leading expert on voting technology, has long advocated that the true standard of audit ability is that the audit trail is produced by the voter and not by some intermediary machine. This is an important insight. It is the only way to guard against a fraud scheme in which the code occasionally drops votes; it also protects against machines that accidentally lose votes, say because of a power surge.

  Fifth, we are losing public control over voting equipment. One worry with electronics is that they are sufficiently complex machines that administrators cannot inspect the inside of the devices. Even the independent testing authorities have difficulty completing speedy certification reviews of the hardware and software on new electronic devices owing to the increased complexity of the hardware and software. Administrators must trust manufacturers, as must the voters. We prefer transparent voting systems where the operations are observable and verifiable by anyone."

  We hope that you will continue to articulate the problems that the U.S. is now facing. Our ’free press’ seems momentarily curtailed.

• 28 November 2004, 04:45

  Brad Menfil is not my real name. I work for the RNC. I fear reprisals
  if I’m found out.

  The truth about this election is this: Florida and Ohio had to go for
  Bush in order for him to "win" the election. In reality he lost both
  states. In fact, he did not even win the popular vote. He lost the
  national popular vote by at least 1,750,000. This shows you the scale
  of the fraud.

  The exit polls were not wrong. Kerry was the clear winner, but victory
  was snatched from him.

  Florida first. The 200,000+ margin of victory for Bush made this state
  uncontestable. Everybody assumes that even with some fraud, Kerry could
  never have made up the difference in a recount. But Kerry actually won
  by about 750,000 votes. The numbers were changed by a computer program
  (in both electronic and scan-tron voting systems) called "KerryLite."
  "KerryLite" of course is not actual name of the program. The actual
  name is 11-5-18-18 etc. For additional encryption, the numbers were
  jumbled but I’m not sure in which order. The numbers replace the
  letters of the alphabet. For example, K is the eleventh letter of the
  alphabet.

  So the if-then statement goes something like this: "if total true
  Kerry>total true Bush, Bush x 1.04x (.04 is a random number)(total true
  Kerry), total true Bush". The second part of the equation takes the
  total number of votes cast and subtracts the new Bush total, subtracts
  the third party totals and leaves the rest for Kerry.

  Sometimes the program would also reduce third party votes and award
  them to Bush. And even where Bush legitimately won, he was still
  awarded additional votes. The big Democratic counties (Broward for
  example) went to Kerry because it had to appear that everything was on
  the up and up. It’s interesting to see this unfold. Does anybody wonder
  why the Republican counties were mostly counted after the Democratic
  counties? You should wonder, and also know that this was no accident.
  The Bush team had to make up the votes as the night went on.

  In Ohio, computer voting fraud, vote tossing and voter suppression were
  the main methods. Vote tossing was simply the removal of Kerry votes
  and some third party votes. In some areas, the Bush vs. Kerry votes
  were absurd. Nine to one, eight to two.

  Voter suppression took the form of making voters stand in four hour
  long lines. This of course took place in Democratic areas. The simplest
  thing to do was to have too few voting machines. Sometimes that’s all
  it takes. People eventually lose patience and leave without casting a
  vote.

  In other states such as New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire,
  Kerry’s leads evaporated very quickly once the polls were shut down.
  Kerry only won New Hampshire, but barely. As it turned out, the lead
  was 6% for Kerry in that state and not enough fraudulent activity took
  place to flip the state to Bush.

  So this will all come out and be known to everyone. Nothing this
  massive can be kept a secret. You’re already beginning to see these
  "irregularities" and the whisper will become a roar.

  Hang in there!