Fraud in Ohio’s 2004 Recount

Two election workers have been convicted of rigging the recount in Cuyahoga County to avoid a more thorough review. Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer were both found guilty of felony negligent misconduct of an elections employee and misdemeanor failure of elections employees to perform their duty. A documentary that was released in 2006 captured the very scene that has now been proven to be criminal, and having seen it myself, it was obvious from the start that the sample ballots provided for the recount were not chosen randomly. Hacking Democracy was aired on HBO and featured the story of someone I consider to be a patriot, a woman named Bev Harris, who will undoubtedly go down in history as one of those Americans we grew up learning about in school. When the teacher informed us of how incredible our democracy is, and how this is so based on the possibility of any one of us making a difference that could change our country for the better in enormous ways, most likely they were speaking of someone like Paul Revere.

Bev Harris is that type of a character in the history books of our great grandchildren, but unlike Revere’s heroics, she will not need the fictional puff-up of a Longfellow to earn her relevance. Anyone who is not familiar with this woman should check out Black Box Voting (permanent link posted under ‘Activism’), which is the organization she founded after having discovered Diebold’s source code in a public domain on the internet one night. The mission began as a fact finding search for any and all information pertaining to electronic voting machines, as she had read in the news that a machine in Florida had tallied negative votes for Al Gore in 2000 and was as flabergasted as the rest of us were. The difference between all of us and her though, is that she was determined to dig around and see what she could find. The executives of Diebold have often accused Bev of ‘stealing’ their source code, though once questioned on the specifics, they certainly admit that they failed to secure it and that anybody could have done the same exact thing. Indeed, throughout this story Diebold has presented arguments that require only modest questioning in order to crack.
Not only with their repeated assertion that she stole the text files containing the source code, but in subsequent situations when engineering questions are put forth such as, “does the memory card used in your voting machines contain an executable file?” The engineer will answer, “no”. Perhaps without prior knowledge that Bev’s organization has an election official willing to allow independant computer scientists to inspect the Diebold machines and memory cards already purchased, though it shouldn’t really matter since the question is so straight-forward. So the cards are inspected and there is found to be an executable file that can change vote totals in such a way that the paper printout will match the incorrect totals contained on the card, and will also reflect a correct total in regards to the number of people who voted on that machine.

So if 100 votes were cast for Gore and 50 for Bush, the program contained on the memory card can be told to do something like, ‘every third vote for Gore counted, subtract one vote for Gore and add one vote for Bush’, making the printout and the card both indicate correctly that 150 votes were cast, but instead of 100-50 in favor of Gore it comes out 67-83 in favor of Bush. In the case of that voting machine in Florida that counted votes for Bush but negative votes for Gore, the person who rigged that file on the memory card simply made an error that caused it to be obvious. Over an entire day of high volume voting though, if the individual is not so careless, the outcome will not match exit polling data, but will not be enough of a disparity for it to be obvious.

Or is that a ridiculous statement? Judging by what has been written about the 2004 election in Ohio ever since, the evidence of irregularities was easy to point out, yet for some reason nobody did. Kerry’s own actions during this time are what has caused me to lose faith in him. With the backdrop of an election in 2000 that forced the Supreme Court to decide a winner, he consistently said that he would not concede until every vote was counted and the chance for error or fraud dismissed. Yet there he was conceding the election, having knowledge of voting fraud already in New Mexico, and with the shenanigans of Kenneth Blackwell at play in Ohio, he simply gave up on his pledge and with that decision also failed to ensure that the millions who voted for him were able to have their votes matter as they should have.

A pathetic showing in that regard, and for this reason only, the fire in my belly has been tame most of this time. Of course, Kerry also had around $15 million left in his campaign fund for no reason at all, yet didn’t spend a dime of it on a recount in Ohio. Instead the Green and Libertarian parties had to foot the bill and oversee the process, which was described as a setup from start to finish by those who participated in the recount. The sequencing of ballots was ridiculous as they were obviously presorted and lumped together to match up with the reported result. The documentary footage captures this perfectly, and here we are now with two convictions. Whatever more proof is needed to make all of this a relevant story in the mainstream media, I can’t possibly think of what that might be.

What is the mainstream media doing with this story? Absolutely nothing. The federal government is getting involved in the complaince testing of these machines, another point made by Bev and the documentary, having found the company Ciber to be passing the software of clients like Diebold, approving them to be in complaince based on the federal statutes whether they were or not. What have you heard about that on your nightly news program? The truth is, my post here tonight is almost entirely old news except for the recent convictions. Though how many readers knew all that I have described here prior to now?

I like to think I’ve got a bit of what Bev Harris has inside of her working for me once in a while, but we’re going to need so many more instances of this to reclaim this country for the people. As we sit back in awe over how mulish and ridiculous this President of ours is on everything from stem cells (saving lives) to the war (ending lives), wouldn’t it be worth a media blitz sometime soon? Now knowing for sure that the recount was fraudulent, can we manage to squeeze in some time for this? My hopes aren’t up, but perhaps we can all do our part. Post on our blogs, write letters to our Senators and Representatives in Congress, and for the love of God, get out back behind your local election office, open up that dumpster and hop inside with a flashlight one night.

As Hacking Democracy will prove, you never know what you might find!