Home > GAO report upholds Ohio vote fraud claims

GAO report upholds Ohio vote fraud claims

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 8 November 2005
8 comments

Edito Justice Elections-Elected USA

By Joe Baker

As if the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby wasn’t enough to give the White House some heavy concerns, a report from the Government Accounting Office takes a big bite out of the Bush clique’s pretense of legitimacy.

This powerful and probing report takes a hard look at the election of 2004 and supports the contention that the election was stolen. The report has received almost no coverage in the national media.

The GAO is the government’s lead investigative agency, and is known for rock-solid integrity and its penetrating and thorough analysis. The agency’s agreement with what have been brushed aside as “conspiracy theories” adds even more weight to the conclusion that the Bush regime has no business in the White House whatever.

Almost a year ago, Rep. John Conyers, senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, asked the GAO to investigate the use of electronic voting machines in the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election. That request was made as a flood of protests from Ohio and elsewhere deluged Washington with claims that shocking irregularities were common in that vote and were linked to the machines.

CNN said the Judiciary Committee got more than 57,000 complaints after Bush’s claimed re-election. Many were made under oath in a series of statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations carried out in Ohio by the Free Press and other groups seeking to maintain transparent elections.

Online Journal.com reported that the GAO report stated 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.”

This is the only democratic nation that permits private partisan companies to count and tabulate the vote in secret, using privately-held software. The public is excluded from the process. Rev. Jesse Jackson and others have declared that “public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines.” The makers of nearly all electronic voting machines are owned by conservative Republicans.

The chief executive of Diebold, one of the major suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren “Wally” O’Dell, went on record in the 2004 campaign vowing to deliver Ohio and the presidency to George W. Bush.

In Ohio, Bush won by only 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Honest election advocates contend that O’Dell’s statement to hand Ohio’s vote to Bush still stands as a clear indictment of an apparently successful effort to steal the White House.

Some of the GAO’s findings are: 1. Some electronic voting machines “did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.” In short, the machines; provided a way to manipulate the outcome of the election. In Ohio, more than 800,000 votes were cast on electronic voting machines, some registered seven times Bush’s official margin of victory.

2: the report further stated that: “it was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works, so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate.” Very many sworn statements and affidavits claim that did happen in Ohio in 2004.

Next, the report says, “Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.” The GAO found that falsifying election results without leaving evidence of doing so by using altered memory cards could easily be done.

The GAO additionally found that access to the voting network was very easy to compromise because not all electronic voting systems had supervisory functions protected by password. That meant access to one machine gave access to the whole network. That critical finding showed that rigging the election did not take a “widespread conspiracy” but simply the cooperation of a small number of operators with the power to tap into the networked machines. They could thus alter the vote totals at will. It therefore was no big task for a single programmer to flip vote numbers to give Bush the 118,775 votes.

Another factor in the Ohio election was that access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user ID, coupled with easy-to-guess passwords. Even amateur hackers could have gotten into the network and changed the vote.

System locks were easily picked, and keys were easy to copy, so gaining access to the system was a snap.

One digital machine model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary manner that if one machine experienced a power failure, the entire network would go down. That is too fragile a system to decide the presidency of the United States.

Problems obviously exist with security protocols and screening methods for vendor personnel.

The GAO study clearly shows that no responsible business would operate with a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one used in the 2004 election.

These findings are even more damning when we understand the election in Ohio was run by a secretary of state who also was co-chairman of Bush’s Ohio campaign. Far from the conclusion of anti-fraud skeptics, the GAO’s findings confirm that the network, which handled 800,000 Ohio votes, was vulnerable enough to permit a handful of purposeful operatives to turn the entire election by means of personal computers using comparatively simple software.

One Ohio campaign operative, Tom Noe, a coin dealer, was indicted Oct. 27 for illegally funneling $45,400 to Bush by writing checks to others, who then wrote checks to Bush’s re-election campaign, allegedly dodging the $2,000 limit on contributions by an individual.

“It’s one of the most blatant and excessive finance schemes we have encountered,” said Noel Hillman, section chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s public integrity section, as quoted in the Kansas City Star.

In the 2000 election, Florida was the key; in the 2004 election, Ohio was the key.

http://www.rockrivertimes.com/index...

Forum posts

  • Too many electronic voting programs do not provide a print-out or other avenue for a recount. In such a situation there can never be an assurance that an election was/wasn’t rigged.

    All you wind up with is a GAO report which says "Hey, guys! The Ohio program was as full of holes as a window screen. Any Junior High School student could have broken in and altered the outcome and leave no trace of the activity."

    VOTERS BEWARE!!

    Len, Florida

    • What the GAO report highlights is that the electronic voting machines have a long way to go before they can be considered secure. That these security exposures exist is unacceptable, however, it’s a huge leap to make to then suggest Bush stole the election because of these exposures. The GAO made no mention of evidence of tampering, just that the possibility existed. One could just as easily claim the Democrats exploited the exposures to make the election as close as it was, which really wasn’t all that close. Unless there is credible evidence to prove Republicans manipulated the voter results, to claim as much is irresponsible journalism.

    • I think you need to find a proctologist and see if he can find your head.

    • Before anyone spends money on a proctologist, shine a light on this from Amy Goodman’s interview with Mark Crispin Miller on Friday, November 4th, 2005:
      (www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/04/1532222&mode=thread&tid=25)

      MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Speaking of John Kerry, I have some news for you. On Friday, this last Friday night, I arranged to meet Senator Kerry at a fundraiser to give him a copy of my book. He told me he now thinks the election was stolen. He said he doesn’t believe that he is the person who can go out front on the issue, because of the sour grapes, you know, question. But he said he believes it was stolen. He says he argues about this with his Democratic colleagues on the Hill. He had just had a big fight with Christopher Dodd about it, because he said, you know, ‘There’s this stuff about the voting machines; they’re really questionable.’ And Dodd was angry. ‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ you know, ‘I looked into it. There’s nothing there.’

      Well, there’s plenty there, and let me add one thing: This is not a criminal case, okay? We don’t have to prove guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. This is our election system, right? This is a system based on consent of the governed. If many, many millions of Americans are convinced that they got screwed on Election Day and couldn’t vote, or if 3.4 million more Americans claim that they voted than the actual total of voters — this is what the Census Bureau told us last May – this is grounds alone for serious investigation, and I think Mark would agree with me here. We have to have serious investigation.

      Kerry, of course, has issued a denial prompting Miller to say, "I call that contemptible...that’s completely false." The story’s at http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Senator_Kerry_rebuffs_claim_he_said_1104.html

      Kerry’s number is (202) 224-2742
      Dodd’s number is (202) 224-2823

  • Lets see, when Jenna Bush succeeds her Uncle Jeb in the Presidency in 2016, will people still have no suspicions about Diebold Voting?

    Will we even have a country left by then?

    I hope I’m dead before the Revolution hits. Looks like France is already ahead of the curve.

    • Ahead of the curve at what? Surrendering to jihadists rabble that claim parts of France need Sharia law?

      The only revolution that will happen in America will be when American voters reject the extreme right wing nuts and the even goofier left wing nuts, like the ones who use this site as a masturbatory aid.

    • Yes Right wing NUTs that lack the ability to masterbate often need another outlet like grandeous stories of world domination, swastikas, and "religious leaders to make all their stupid mindless" ignorance have a "godly reason".

      Really you do not need this site to particpate in masterbation. Unless it is to small for you to find, then I guess you would be upset that others could use this site as a masterbatory aid. And a good one at that. You know how dirty you feel touching your own body without the "blessing" of Jesus and his right wing Jerk OFFs. Masterbation is NORMAL, dick.

      Look if masterbating to this site doesn’t help, try this get a 100 dollar bill and put it on the floor in front of you, and kneel down and jack off all over it, and that way you can feel better about the money you are spending on bombing Iraqi, Afgahni children, you sick and twisted fruit rollup.

      An remember Al-Qaida operatives can not masterbate. It is against the rules of "Gee-Had". Instead they only get to cum once when they push the button. Isn’t that nice. And more Jihadist rabble like "Democracy and FReedom" "America is Great and GOOD" and my favorite is we invaded "IRAQ because we need to stop our MAN in IRAQ since he stopped being our stool pigeon and performing his mind control masterbastion for the public on our behalf."

      As far as masturbatory aids is concerned why don’t you try the latest issue of BOMB-boy it has a triple pull out scratch and sniff centerfold that smells like white phosphouous mixed with Napaalm and has GW, DC, and Rummy posing in the buff with their weapons of MASS IMPOTENCE.

      — the silence has spooken —

  • Ilive in ne ohio. there is no place in this world these machines should be used! the security of the vote cannot be gaurunteed. when i started voting we had a paper ballot. you filled out the ballot and took it to the poll worker. that person would tear off the bottom of the ballot and put that into a seperate box. the ballot went into another box. both boxs were pad locked. if i had any question about the integrety of my vote, through court precedings i could examine my ballot and the ballot reciept. make sure that both registration numbers matched. these ballot #’s would also match the voter registration book that i signed. a signed book, a ballot, and a ballot reciept....
    now that is traceable. the electronic machines in 04 had none of that. my father is an honest man. he votes in the morning. when he went to approach the booth the man that was comming out grabs him by the arm and says "make sure you check your vote before you press vote, i had to change my vote 3 times from bush to kerry and 3 times on the sales tax issue". my father, perplexed, goes into the booth and votes. when he reviews the vote the sales tax was switched to "for the tax" from "against the tax"(he votd for bush). on the fourth time he had to make the change to "against the" tax it finnaly stayed. there is not a single person that used the diebold machines in my precinct that can go and find their vote! physicaly or electronically. and if you think thats bad you should here my friends story from 2000 when they were residents of orange county florida.