9Plenty of info on the huge fraud:
http://rottendenmark.blogspot.com/
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Something Is Rotten In Denmark
By Sara S. DeHart, Ph.D.
Online Journal Contributing Writer
11-20-4
Dr. Stephen Freeman is a University of Pennsylvania professor whose
expertise includes research methodology. In a recent paper titled The
Unexplained Exit Poll Data he reports that the International Foundations
sponsored an exit poll in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia during
their November 2003 parliamentary election and projected a victory for the
main opposition party. [1] Exit poll data is considered so robust that when
the sitting government counted the votes and announced that its own slate
of candidates had won, supporters of the opposition stormed the Parliament,
and the president, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, resigned his office under
pressure from the United States and Russia. [2]
Contrast that event with what happened in the United States in the recent
national election when in three battle ground states, Ohio, Pennsylvania
and Florida, with data based on exit polls predicted an outcome in variance
with the tallied vote outcomes. Major news organizations, including CNN
changed their exit poll data to conform with the tallied outcomes, most of
which came from paperless, electronic voting equipment. In each case the
tallied outcomes favored the incumbent, George W. Bush. The odds for such
an occurrence is one in 250 million for this to have occurred by chance.
[1]
Does the phrase, "Something is rotten in Denmark" have any meaning for the
media? In plain language the term refers to a line from the play Hamlet,
when an officer of the palace guard, who after the ghost of the
assassinated king appears, utters the immortal line, "Something is rotten
in the state of Denmark." The term has universal meaning to describe
corruption or a situation in which something is wrong. [3]
Freeman Analyses
Professor Freeman's analyses of the data are compelling for a number of
reasons. First, he was able to sample 2004 exit poll data that was not
meant to be released directly to the public and was available through a
computer glitch that allowed him to view "uncalibrated data that had not
yet been corrected to conform to the announced counted vote tallies. These
data remained on the CNN website until approximately 1:30 a.m. election
night. At that time CNN substituted data 'corrected' to conform to reported
tallies." (1, p. 3). Second, uncorrected exit poll data have been secreted
in a black box and AP, Edison Media Research, Mitofsky International and
the New York Times have ignored all requests for the raw data. In an open
democratic system or any scientific inquiry the data would be open to
inspection. The fact that it is not adds to the suspicion that widespread
fraud occurred in vote tallies in the battleground states.
The integrity of the system is being questioned by citizens across the
nation and internationally. The response of mainline media is a harsh
attack on citizens and writers who dare raise questions about the data.
Robert Parry [4] points out that The New York Times (NYT) has joined the
Washington Post and other major news outlets in scouring the Internet to
find and discredit Americans who have expressed suspicions that Bush's
victory might not be entirely legitimate.
What the Freeman Data and Analysis Reveal
In the three battleground states, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, exit
polls differed significantly from the recorded vote tallies with Bush
winning and thereby ascending to an electoral victory. Let us examine the
exit poll predictions versus tallied votes in each of these battleground
states combining the male and female vote, weighted for their percentage in
the electorate by state. For example, the Ohio electorate data comprised 47
percent males and 53 percent females. This procedure was also followed in
Florida and Pennsylvania (1, p. 4 & 5).
* In Florida Bush was predicted to win by the narrowest of margins, 49.8 to
49.7 percent. In fact, Bush tallied 52.1 percent and Kerry 47.1 percent of
the vote.
* It was predicted that Kerry would win Ohio by a sizeable margin 52.1
percent versus 47.9 percent for Bush. The tallied outcome was 51 percent
for Bush and 48.5 percent for Kerry.
* In Pennsylvania Kerry was predicted to win by a sizeable margin 54.1
percent versus 45.5 percent for Bush. The tallied outcome was 50.8 percent
for Kerry and 48.6 percent for Bush.
According to Professor Freeman, "the likelihood of any two of these
statistical anomalies occurring together is on the order of
one-in-a-million. The odds against all three occurring together are 250
million to one. As much as we can say in social sciences that something is
impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and
actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004
election could have been due to chance or random error." [1]
Given these discrepancies in the data and the probability that these events
did not occur by chance, in order to document integrity of the process, it
is crucial that the NYT, CNN and other media sources open their books for
public inspection rather than provide questionable explanations about the
discrepancies between exit poll and tallied vote data. While the NYT cites
a report issued by pollsters that debunked the possibility that their exit
polls are correct and the vote count wrong, they provide no data to support
an error in exit polling data.
Multiple explanations provided about error in exit polling procedure
crumble under careful scrutiny. For example, the predictions in the Utah
presidential election were remarkably accurate. Exit polls predicted Bush
would take 70.8 percent and Kerry 26.5 percent of the vote. The actual
tallies recorded that Bush received 71.1 percent and Kerry 26.4 percent of
the vote.
This was not the case in 11 key states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan,
Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin). In each of these states Bush's tallies were greater than
expected, and in all but Wisconsin, Kerry's tallies were less than expected
from exit polling. (See Professor Freeman's paper for tabulated data
comparisons.)
Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman warned that there are many
perils in electronic voting. He posits a scenario in which on election
night the early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then,
mysteriously, the vote count stops and when it resumes, the incumbent pulls
ahead. [5] What Krugman reported is not a paranoid fantasy. It is a true
account of a recent election in Riverside County, California, reported by
Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper, The Independent. [6]
Analyses of available data by independent pollsters show some alarming
trends from both Florida and Ohio. In Florida certain counties tallied
votes for Bush that were far in excess of what one would expect based on
Republican registrations. These were primarily counties that used optical
scanning equipment to feed votes into precinct computers that were then
sent to countywide databases. At any point after physical ballots became
databases, the system is vulnerable to external hacking. Colin Shea reran
preliminary CNN data and points out a number of disturbing trends that
include counties where 88 percent of the voters are registered Democrats
with Bush receiving nearly two-thirds of the vote. Other disturbing data
reveal that "according to official statistics for Cuyahoga County [Ohio]
they had a turnout well above the national average. In fact, their turnout
was well over 100 percent of registered voters." [7]
Was November 2, 2004, the final act for what began in Florida in 2000,
tested in various locales with electronic voting equipment in 2002 and
finally played out in a disastrous final act that left the media simpering
that this election was about moral issues? That may be true, but they
depict the wrong moral issue. The untouchable topic is that election fraud
rather than gay marriage turned this election on its ear. The media and
politicians would be wise to listen to the voices of dissent and concern.
Freeman's Conclusions
Professor Freeman concludes his paper with the following statement:
"Given that neither the pollsters nor their media clients have provided a
solid explanation to the public, suspicion of fraud or among the less
accusatory, "mistabulation" is running rampant and unchecked. That so many
people suspect misplay undermines not only the legitimacy of the President,
but faith in the foundations of democracy." [1]
Neither the people nor corporate media should accept the fact that networks
altered exit poll results to fit the tallied vote numbers. This calls into
question the integrity of other information these networks report. Or as
Andrew Gumbel so aptly states, "As the world's most powerful democracy
talks of exporting freedom to Iraq, it is at risk of becoming an object of
international ridicule." [8]
For historical perspective, let us review what happened in the former
Soviet Republic of Georgia when their November 2003 election results
contrasted sharply with exit polls. Both the United States and Russia
pressured the president, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, to resign. Compare that
behavior to what has just happened in the United States. CNN changed its
exit poll data to conform to counted vote numbers under the very eyes of
Professor Freeman and other observers. Meanwhile the media do everything in
their power to undermine the credibility of independent observers. Those
who sound the alarm of voter fraud are summarily dismissed as conspiracy
theorists and traitors of democracy.
References
1. Freeman, Steven. "The unexplained exit poll discrepancy" Nov. 10, 2004.
2. Plissner, Martin. "Exit polls to protect the vote". New York Times,
October 17, 2004.
3. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 3rd Edition, 2002.
4. Parry, Robert "Big Media, Some Nerve!" Consortium News, November 13,
2004.
5. Krugman, Paul. "Too many perils in electronic voting." Arizona Daily
Star, July 28, 2004.
6. Gumbel, Andrew. "Mock the vote." Los Angeles City Beat, October 29,
2003.
7. Shea, Colin. "I smell a rat." www.Zogby.com.
8. Gumbel, Andrew. "Portrait of a country on the verge of a nervous
breakdown." Common Dreams, November 13, 2004.
Sara S. DeHart, MSN, PhD, Associate Professor Emeritus, University of
Minnesota. Dr. DeHart is a freelance writer and democracy activist, living
in the Seattle, Washington area. She may be contacted at
dehart.ss@verizon.net.
Copyright © 1998-2004 Online Journal. All rights reserved.
http://onlinejournal.com/evoting/111704DeHart/111704dehart.html
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'Stinking Evidence' of Possible Election Fraud Found in Florida
by Thom Hartmann
There was something odd about the poll tapes.
A "poll tape" is the phrase used to describe a printout from an optical
scan voting machine made the evening of an election, after the machine has
read all the ballots and crunched the numbers on its internal computer. It
shows the total results of the election in that location. The printout is
signed by the polling officials present in that precinct/location, and then
submitted to the county elections office as the official record of how the
people in that particular precinct had voted. (Usually each location has
only one single optical scanner/reader, and thus produces only one poll
tape.)
Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org, the erstwhile investigator of
electronic voting machines, along with people from Florida Fair Elections,
showed up at Florida's Volusia County Elections Office on the afternoon of
Tuesday, November 16, 2004, and asked to see, under a public records
request, each of the poll tapes for the 100+ optical scanners in the
precincts in that county. The elections workers - having been notified in
advance of her request - handed her a set of printouts, oddly dated
November 15 and lacking signatures.
Bev pointed out that the printouts given her were not the original poll
tapes and had no signatures, and thus were not what she'd requested.
Obligingly, they told her that the originals were held in another location,
the Elections Office's Warehouse, and that since it was the end of the day
they should meet Bev the following morning to show them to her.
Bev showed up bright and early the morning of Wednesday the 17th - well
before the scheduled meeting - and discovered three of the elections
officials in the Elections Warehouse standing over a table covered with
what looked like poll tapes. When they saw Bev and her friends, Bev told me
in a telephone interview less than an hour later, "They immediately shoved
us out and slammed the door."
In a way, that was a blessing, because it led to the stinking evidence.
"On the porch was a garbage bag," Bev said, "and so I looked in it and, and
lo and behold, there were public record tapes."
Thrown away. Discarded. Waiting to be hauled off.
"It was technically stinking, in fact," Bev added, "because what they had
done was to have thrown some of their polling tapes, which are the official
records of the election, into the garbage. These were the ones signed by
the poll workers. These are something we had done an official public
records request for."
When the elections officials inside realized that the people outside were
going through the trash, they called the police and one came out to
challenge Bev.
Kathleen Wynne, a www.blackboxvoting.org investigator, was there.
"We caught the whole thing on videotape," she said. "I don't think you'll
ever see anything like this - Bev Harris having a tug of war with an
election worker over a bag of garbage, and he held onto it and she pulled
on it, and it split right open, spilling out those poll tapes. They were
throwing away our democracy, and Bev wasn't going to let them do it."
As I was interviewing Bev just moments after the tussle, she had to get off
the phone, because, "Two police cars just showed up."
She told me later in the day, in an on-air interview, that when the police
arrived, "We all had a vigorous debate on the merits of my public records
request."
The outcome of that debate was that they all went from the Elections
Warehouse back to the Elections Office, to compare the original, November 2
dated and signed poll tapes with the November 15 printouts the Elections
Office had submitted to the Secretary of State. A camera crew from
www.votergate.tv met them there, as well.
And then things got even odder.
"We were sitting there comparing the real [signed, original] tapes with the
[later printout] ones that were given us," Bev said, "and finding things
missing and finding things not matching, when one of the elections
employees took a bin full of things that looked like garbage - that looked
like polling tapes, actually - and passed by and disappeared out the back
of the building."
This provoked investigator Ellen Brodsky to walk outside and check the
garbage of the Elections Office itself. Sure enough - more original, signed
poll tapes, freshly trashed.
"And I must tell you," Bev said, "that whatever they had taken out [the
back door] just came right back in the front door and we said, 'What are
these polling place tapes doing in your dumpster?'"
A November 18 call to the Volusia County Elections Office found that
Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe was unavailable and nobody was willing to
speak on the record with an out-of-state reporter. However, The Daytona
Beach News (in Volusia County), in a November 17th article by staff writer
Christine Girardin, noted, "Harris went to the Department of Elections'
warehouse on State Road 44 in DeLand on Tuesday to inspect original Nov. 2
polling place tapes, after being given a set of reprints dated Nov. 15.
While there, Harris saw Nov. 2 polling place tapes in a garbage bag,
heightening her concern about the integrity of voting records."
The Daytona Beach News further noted that, "[Elections Supervisor] Lowe
confirmed Wednesday some backup copies of tapes from the Nov. 2 election
were destined for the shredder," but pointed out that, according to Lowe,
that was simply because there were two sets of tapes produced on election
night, each signed. "One tape is delivered in one car along with the
ballots and a memory card," the News reported. "The backup tape is
delivered to the elections office in a second car."
Suggesting that duplicates don't need to be kept, Lowe claims that Harris
didn't want to hear an explanation of why some signed poll tapes would be
in the garbage. "She's not wanting to listen to an explanation," Lowe told
the News of Harris. "She has her own ideas."
But the Ollie North action in two locations on two days was only half of
the surprise that awaited Bev and her associates. When they compared the
discarded, signed, original tapes with the recent printouts submitted to
the state and used to tabulate the Florida election winners, Harris says a
disturbing pattern emerged.
"The difference was hundreds of votes in each of the different places we
examined," said Bev, "and most of those were in minority areas."
When I asked Bev if the errors they were finding in precinct after precinct
were random, as one would expect from technical, clerical, or computer
errors, she became uncomfortable.
"You have to understand that we are non-partisan," she said. "We're not
trying to change the outcome of an election, just to find out if there was
any voting fraud."
That said, Bev added: "The pattern was very clear. The anomalies favored
George W. Bush. Every single time."
Of course finding possible voting "anomalies" in one Florida county doesn't
mean they'll show up in all counties. It's even conceivable there are
innocent explanations for both the mismatched counts and trashed original
records; this story undoubtedly will continue to play out. And, unless
further investigation demonstrates a pervasive and statewide trend toward
"anomalous" election results in many of Florida's counties, odds are none
of this will change the outcome of the election (which exit polls showed
John Kerry winning in Florida).
Nonetheless, Bev and her merry band are off to hit another county.
As she told me on her cell phone while driving toward their next
destination, "We just put Volusia County and their lawyers on notice that
they need to continue to keep a number of documents under seal, including
all of the memory cards to the ballot boxes, and all of the signed poll
tapes."
Why?
"Simple," she said. "Because we found anomalies indicative of fraud."