In 2000, in Florida, despite illogical “overvotes”, confusing “butterfly ballots”, roadblocks in Democratic areas, illegal purges of mostly black voters, a highly partisan Secretary of State and a Bush spawn in the governor’s mansion, the Supreme Court of the United States decided to stop the Florida recount and award the U.S. Presidency to George W. Bush.
In 2004, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell barred international election observers from the polls even though Warren O’Dell, the CEO of Diebold Election Systems, publicly stated that he was committed “to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.”
Touchscreen systems such as the Diebold system used in Ohio produce no individual record of each vote. 30% of all votes cast in the 2004 election were cast on paperless systems. In counties that did use such systems, vote tallies did not match exit polls and also diverged from trends in counties that used paper voting systems.
Despite these discrepancies and despite popular movements to challenge the vote, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry conceded the day after the vote.
(Friend of the blog M.T. Karthik was News Director at KPFK at the time, and has posted a text-AV “Flashback” on the voting problems here.)
Here are some of the problems emerging in 2008:
According to the New York Times, Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.
Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters.
Last month, Florida’s Secretary of State decided to enforce a “no-match, no vote” law, a voter registration law that previously blocked more than 16,000 eligible Florida citizens from registering to vote, through no fault of their own, and could disenfranchise tens of thousands more voters in November.”
According to the Michigan Messenger, the chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day. Lose your house, lose your vote. The Obama campaign is suing to block this plan.
In Montana, there are reports of Republican operatives challenging the registrations of likely Democratic voters in university towns and on Native American reservations.
In Philadelphia, according to the Philadelphia Tribune, county probation and parole officers have been “telling some of their clients that as convicted felons they had lost their right to vote,” which is untrue according to Pennsylvania law.
In Alabama, the Republican Party has blocked a registration drive among convicts who are eligible to vote under Alabama law.
HAVA (the “Help America Vote Act”) has forced county clerks in communities all over the country to rapidly accept UNAPPROVED Diebold, Sequoia and Premier electronic voting machines. Here are some videos by UC scientists demonstrating how easy it is to hack the Sequoia voting machine.
Electronic voting machines are made by highly partisan private corporations and in past elections fraud has occurred. Here is an excellent summary of the problems.
Some movies that cover the facts:
And some other on-line resources:
Karthik predicts that the election will either be an Obama landslide or that it will be fixed:
So, on election night, what are we going to do? be transfixed by the media? by Karl Rove’s fat face telling us a state has “flipped” from blue to red? or a “Too Close To Call” tuesday night and then a fixed election Wednesday morning? how are we as a people to prevent election night and indeed our whole election process from being an utter joke?
…
Don’t let surprise turn into silent acceptance of a coup on election night.
