Home > Pollsters, Media Implicated in Vote Fraud

Pollsters, Media Implicated in Vote Fraud

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 1 January 2005
20 comments

Elections-Elected USA

While Congress has yet to decide if there will be a formal inquiry into the U.S. election of 2004, its preliminary investigation is exposing the most serious flaws in the system. But don’t expect to hear about it in the mainstream media-it’s part of the problem.

Rep. John Conyers of Detroit, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is investigating the possibility of computer vote fraud being perpetrated through remote access to the vote tabulators. He is also looking into how the media and pollsters use exit polling data on Election Day.

While the body of evidence that vote fraud occurred during the election is growing by the day and is easily found on the Internet, the mainstream media has largely avoided the story.

Asked by Tim Grieve of Salon.com if there were Democrats in Congress who support his investigation, but who won’t come forward and say so publicly, Conyers said: “Well, there are Republicans who support what I’m doing who haven’t been willing to come forward. Look, calling for fair elections is not the most radical thing in the world. We’re not positing some revolutionary theory here. We’re asking that the people who complained be given a fair hearing.”

American Free Press journalists have investigated vote fraud for decades, but why has the subject of computerized vote fraud been ignored by the mainstream media? Why has it been left to the smaller independent media outlets, Internet journalists and bloggers to investigate?

“As the story develops,” Gary Beckwith, an Internet journalist with The Solar Bus, wrote, “no one has been able to explain why the media is avoiding it like the plague.”

Conyers investigation, however, has revealed why Americans are not hearing about vote fraud and the problems with exit polling data on the nightly news: the big news networks are deeply involved.

Immediately after the election, American Free Press reported that the Associated Press had direct access to the mainframe computer that tallied the votes in Chicago and Cook County-as it tallied the votes on Election Day. This provides evidence that the mainstream media consortium that replaced the disgraced Voter News Service (VNS) has remote access to the machines that count the votes.

This direct connection between AP and the vote counting computer system explains why the Associated Press repeatedly refused to answer AFP’s questions during the summer about how they got their election results on election night.

As AFP reported from Chicago, this was something that the county clerk was well aware of and actively tried to prevent from being revealed. However, if it is done in Chicago, it is probably done in a similar manner across the nation.

Remote access to the computers counting the votes-who has it and how it is being used-is a subject that is finally being addressed by members of Congress. How far Conyers’s investigation goes remains to be seen.

Conyers is interested in seeing the raw data of the exit polls. The disparity between exit polling data and election results indicate that something was seriously wrong with either the polling or the counting of votes in Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere.

Conyers has written to Warren Mitofsky, who owns the companies that provide exit poll data to the mainstream media, asking for the complete raw polling data.

“Mitofsky balked, saying that the TV Networks actually own it and he was not able to release it without their permission. Conyers then took his inquiry to the leaders of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox,” Beckwith wrote, “And they promptly laid an egg. Through a spokesperson who spoke on behalf of all the media companies together, they said they are still analyzing the data and don’t want to release it until they’re done.

“Any objective investigator, or any concerned citizen for that matter, simply cannot accept their answer to Conyers,” he wrote. “There is absolutely no precedent or moral ground for withholding this information from the American public. The bottom line is that raw data does not need to be analyzed. Conyers and the American people are not asking for the analysis. We’re asking for the data.”

Conyers has also written to Triad Governmental Systems, Inc., a small family-owned company in Xenia, Ohio, asking about their ability to access the computers that counted the votes in Ohio-remotely. Triad, founded by Tod Rapp, produces the software that is used to tabulate the votes in nearly half the counties in the Buckeye State.

Conyers’ letter of Dec. 23 says: “It appears that officials in Fulton and Henry counties have confirmed that Triad had remote access to tabulating computers controlled by the Boards of Elections.”

Triad had until Dec. 29 to respond to Conyers’ letter. Conyers wants to know which Ohio counties’ vote tabulating computers Triad could access remotely, which counties it did access, and what changes it made to the software or ballots.

“Did you use your remote access to inquire how machine votes would be counted in order to instruct the board how to manipulate the three percent hand count to avoid a county wide hand count?” Conyers asked Triad president Rapp in writing.

AFP interviewed Rapp at Triad’s office shortly after the election. At that time Rapp told AFP that Triad personnel were not present or involved in any way with the vote tabulation done in the different counties.

Rapp, who is a generous donor to the Republican Party and George W. Bush, also told AFP that he was no longer part of the company that is now run by his sons.

When I called Triad GSI, however, and asked for Rapp, I was put right through to him. When I actually visited Triad, he was the only one available to discuss the company.

According to sworn testimony by the Hocking County Board of Elections deputy director, a technician from Triad illegally tampered with computers and instructed her on how to create a “cheat sheet” to make sure the recount matches the official results.

If Conyers intends to get to the bottom of computer vote fraud in the United States, similar letters and inquiries, like those sent to Triad GSI, will need to be sent to the larger voting machine companies, such as Election Systems & Software, Sequoia, and the Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/ht...

Forum posts

  • So what now? We’ve entered a zone straight out of the Matrix. If the media are not involved, why wouldn’t they report the resistance to the vote outcome, even buried in the back pages. What would they have to lose? Isn’t their job to report the news? And wouldn’t a story like this sell a hell of a lot of newspapers, even if it was played down or ridiculed? So taking a pass on profit would indicate that it’s more profitable NOT to report it. Without an honest fifth estate, we willl now be in a moral and intellectual civil war, and the internet will be the only frontier of honest expression. Therefore, expect the same ferocity of mind control to descend on the ’net that is currently working on turning earth into the stepford planet.

  • Excellent article, bellaciao!! Thank you for posting it.

  • Media silence on the Conyers investigation is nothing less than an admission of complicity. This is a ’hot’ story that no real journalist in the mainstream could ignore without severe top-down pressure - after all they were able to give us the thread-count of Monica’s blue suit. Instead, incuriosity rules and a fraudulent status quo is enforced upon the public.

    Perhaps it is time for the big media players to be informed that they can be vaporized quickly and effectively by an outraged public. Perhaps it is time to flood corpmedia’s mailboxes, to cancel subscriptions, to boycott advertisers, to strongarm Neilsen families, and to cancel cable tv in favor of high-speed internet where the last vestiges of the 1st ammendment thrive. To do less is to be equally complicit in the demise of the Republic.

  • Scientology has been controlling all important computers since the phony Y2K. They rigged their home state Florida, perpetrated 9/11, and kill with impunity. Why do we let them breathe?

    • Huh? Where on earth is your evidence of this? I don’t particularly like Scientology, but it sounds like you might be deliberately spreading disinformation to confuse the situation.

      Kindly, put up or shut up, please.

      Please enlighten us all about this Scientology conspiracy, as it sure is news to me.

  • It is obvious to anyone that thinks: government deregulation has concentrated ownership of media outlets in the same way that an almost perfect capitalist system has concentrated the wealh in the U.S.. When groups such as The (Not Too) Swift Boat Veterans for The Truth get thousands of hours of air time but serious defects in our voting process are ignored, it becomes clear that the "news" media have been co-opted as an organ of propaganda. The government has been transformed into the public policy wing of corporate America, and corporate America owns the media. But take heart; our system is going to implode due to the inherent flaw of extreme stratification, and concentration of wealth. When the Cheap Labor Republicans have turned the U.S. into a third world country, there WILL be revolution. Those who do not learn from history are destined to get their asses kicked by it, and the people with all the money are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
    The primary function of our constitutional system was to insure that wealth and power would not be concentrated in the hands of a few greedy, myopic people. It has failed.
    It was a grand experiment, but the time has come to start planning a new system of govenment. The corporate owned media has created the ultimate lie for it’s masters: distract the public by formenting discussion on how the current system can be "fixed" while those that benefit from this system consolidate their power.
    So let’s give them as much rope as the need. In the end, they will hang themselves with it.
    As for the the fifty percent, the apatheic and the brainwashed, there will be an awakening.
    From Pax Romana to Pax Americana, one rule holds true: "Without chaos, there is no discovery, and without order there is no progress.". We are being led to chaos, so that we may discover. Praxis

  • I am sad and embarrassed to admit that reading PRAVDA, http://english.pravda.ru/ the Russian News site, yields more accurate and more complete information that is available from major US sources.

  • It’s a crime against humanity and nature, and as more and more people wake up and realize what is happening civil war will break out. It matters not which political group you vote for as they are all very similar perpetrating the same hoax. Mysticism is a disease of the mind like cancer is a disease of the body, and the politicians and ALL their cronies are value destroyers and are the TRUE disease of society. Rid mysticism out of your mind and you are on the path of a new awakening, healing, and realization of true nature and our place in it. The value destroyers days are numbered.

    Keep up the great reporting people.

    AL F
    B.C. Canada

    • I keep hoping for a revolution, I think we need it. The majority of the people in this country are too busy keeping up with their obligations to open their eyes & see what is happening around them. This stupid work ethic has everyone exhausted, so they come home & watch the TV which continues to numb their minds. We are headed toward a brave new world. Many here view themselves above the average guy, and believe the right wing rhetoric, what they don’t realize is they are being manipulated. Those tax breaks for the ultra elite don’t apply to them, not being on welfare doesn’t get you in the club, it only helps to pay their dues for them.

  • “Without accountability there is no election.
    It is a selection by Corporate Special Interest.”
    Black Box Voting!
    By William Eon
    “It matters little who votes, it’s those that count the votes that matter.”
    Joseph Stalin
    Those who control the Ballot Box, decide the election.
    There is a voting machine available that prints two receipts!
    One for you and one for the vote counter!
    Why would we buy anything less?
    Who wants to disenfranchise you?
    The same people who buy these evil machines, that’s who!
    Today in this the modern 21st century!
    Defective voting machines are being sold!
    These machines are sold by Corporations that have a vested interest in the outcome of the elections. If their Corporate Crony wins?
    He will buy more of their Expensive, Broken, Black Boxes!
    Only a politician that wants to control the vote would buy a defective machine.
    The proof is in the pudding.
    Using defective voting machines means: you have defective election.
    These machines were built defective intentionally.
    Anyone with the secret source code can hack into these machines from a remote location and change the elections outcome!
    They can change, modify or switch the vote tallies!
    Every time I go to an ATM I get a receipt!
    It shows how much money I took out!
    If the Bank stole $10 from you, you would go thru the roof and say
    “Here’s my receipt!”
    How much is your vote worth?
    If we can send a man to the moon!
    We can surely make a voting machine that prints a receipt!
    In fact they have it already.
    Let’s buy it!
    Let’s use it.
    Trash these Voodoo Black Boxes.
    Where is the accountability?
    Where is my receipt? Where is the paper trail? Every American’s right to vote must be upheld and every vote must be counted!
    Only then we will live in a free society. Let’s have free elections here, first!
    It’s treasonous that in Americo 2004, only some people get to vote!
    And it‘s a crime that special interest counts them.
    Great system if you’re a NAZI!

  • The only thing that needs to be added to this excellent summation is that the Associated Press, albeit a not for profit organization, is touting itself as a player in the Information Technology sector under its new leadership by the Publisher Emeritus of the Dallas Morning News. The other thing that might be significant is that while all kinds of internet companies are generating good profits, the AP registered a measly 0.9% increase in revenue in 2003. Covering the election single-handedly was obviously a risky proposition which they can’t be seen as having failed at. In designating themselves as part of the information technology industry, providing computer services, in competition with Reuters and Dow Jones, the managers of the Associated Press seem to have overlooked one simple fact: the value of information is virtually limitless IF IT IS ACCURATE. Nobody’s going to pay twice for information that is wrong.
    Why is it that Texas seems to produce such poor businessmen.
    Oh, if you want to take a look at the record yourself, in addition to the Associated Press, have a look at Burl Osborne.

    • Welcome mein freunds to Nazi America! The fascist takeover of this once great nation is almost complete, and yet all the masses seem to care about is who won what bowlgame, what’s on tv, and what Paris (nope, not the country) is up to.

    • The big problem here is that there is no real ultimate law enforcement capacity. A condition existing in this "republic" for the last 41 plus years.

  • Folks Senator John Kerry, the person most to gain if there had been any fraud, has conceded that he lost the election. "see this weeks Newsweek."

    Every major leader in the Democratic Party including Former President Clinton, Senator Clinton, Senator Kennedy, Governor Richardson of New Mexico House Minority Leader Congresswoman Pelosi, just to name a few all agree that President Bush was reelected.

    For God’s Sake he won by over 3.5 million votes nationally. Even Michael Moore has relucantly conceded that President Bush won.
    For the sake of the future of the Democratic Party move on. If not the Repulicans control in the Senate will grow in 2006.

    Moderate tired of the whining.

    • Almost all of the above is highly accurate. Your voting system has been overthrown by the Cabal, a black budget operation tied in with the DuPonts, Rockefellers and et la. Historical paradigm shifts like the one we are currently experiencing take time to run their course. Within time this entire narco, nazi Bush regime will hang themselves like Hitler. Within the course of several years we will either all be suffering from radiation burns from Bush´s (Federation) nuclear hell or he´ll be burning in hell himself. LEO

    • Millions of Americans would like to join you in "PLAYING OSTRICH" reagrding the election fraud, but doing the right thing is often the hardst thing we can do. Some of the worst scandals in history came to light because a few or more people with integrity and conviction chose not to stick their heads in the sand and pretend terrible injustices weren’t going on in this country or the world. This whole vote fraud issue reaches farther than Kerry, the Clintons or other elected officials in that it is the worst kind of cancer for this country. We must be able to have faith in our election process and the current system stinks of tampering and criminal activity. The "proof is in the pudding" is so accurate and real...there is no legitimate reason why there should be vote macihines that do not produce paper receipts and paper trails. It just stinks of fraud, so do not treat voters who care about a better, more truthful, more reliable system for elections like they’re conspiracy theororists or crazy, illiterate "cry babies" who can’t accept that Bush won. The mainstream media needs to be honest and fair in covering the vote problems and the exit poll data should be public information.

    • Unfortunately, my fear is that they will do away with the exit polls, after all even though we all knew (I worked for Kerry and Moveon and sensed the urgency people had to defeat W.), that Kerry should have won in a landslide, especially with W.’s low approval ratings, high # of voters and newly registered voters,yet if there wasn’t 1 person who happened to get the exit poll numbers off the net and print them out(before they were altered), we wouldn’t have had a clue of this FRAUD!!
      Their solution, easy, do away with the exit polls, then they have NO EVIDENCE!
      The Media owns it all! And their bottom line is the Almighty...$$$ that is!
      We must boycott the media and let them know we will not have them supress the real newsand cover frivolous stories.
      Our media does not report the news... it MAKES the news!!
      For example when Gore had more popular votes and uncounted votes in FLA., their story... Why doesn’t Gore concede for the good of the Country?
      When we have a Historical challenge to electors to the presidency C.N.N. covers about 1 min. of this story with a lead in "Why are a small group of Democrats slowing down the certification process?" Demonize the enemy, make the good guy the bad guy.
      It’s the Media stupid!!!1

    • This is about democracy, and justice...not the outcome of the election. duh. chicago resident

    • It is you like many conservatives that are the problem in America. If the Election process was fair and squaree, many people would not be as upset as they are now. the Republican neoconservatives have taken over this country and we as rational and decent people are sick and tired of it. It is you who should wake and and see what is happening unless you yourself is part of this big conspiracy to take absolute power. Shame on you.

  • The US is a sham democracy: no way to reliably count the vote, the e-vote run by crony Republican companies---it all stinks. The Ukraine can do a better job than we can. In my opinion, the chickens have come home to roost. The years of destroying other nations’ democracies taught US organized crime (i.e. the Bush family) how to do it here. In the end, those who fear that the world cannot recover are wrong. The US is but a tiny fraction of the world population and is a wholly inadequate format for global change. Instead of bemoaning the inevitable failure of a bizarrely corrupt country (the US), simply change your citizenship from one of a nation, to a globe. The US is too far gone to lead the world. Now it is time for other nations and the people to pull together to implement guarantees against the crime of a rogue regime (the Bush junta). All you need to do is think of yourself as a citizen of the world first, of the US second. Bush will have to be impeached, a major court case is necessary to prohibit e-vote election steals. Instead of wasting your time trying to create a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (the US oligarchy), you should commit to global needs, the common good takes priority over the petty, self-indulgent cravings of those spoiled chilren of the United Estates of America. gl2, citizen of same