Labels: Black Box Voting, New Hampshire, vote tampering, voting machines
Submit To Propeller
posted by profmarcus at
1/27/2008
Labels: 2008 Election, caucuses, Iowa, New Hampshire, primaries, Salon, Tom Tomorrow
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/14/2008
Democrat Dennis Kucinich, who won less than 2 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, said Thursday he wants a recount to ensure that all ballots in his party's contest were counted. The Ohio congressman cited "serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors" about the integrity of Tuesday results.
Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said Kucinich is entitled to a statewide recount. But, under New Hampshire law, Kucinich will have to pay for it. Scanlan said he had "every confidence" the results are accurate.
In a letter dated Thursday, Kucinich said he does not expect significant changes in his vote total, but wants assurance that "100 percent of the voters had 100 percent of their votes counted."
NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTION INTEGRITY ADVOCATE NANCY TOBI IS CORRECT:
"We have no control over the ballot chain of custody and we have learned the pain from the 2004 Nader recount, in which only 11 districts were counted, chosen by a highly questionable person, and then nothing showed up. Now all we hear is how the Nader recount validated the machines."
As Tobi says, "A candidate asking for a recount may well be a tool used to 'prove' everything was okay and then that candidate will be further discredited."
I'll go further than that. The only way a recount makes any sense at all in New Hampshire is AFTER an assessment is made of the chain of custody issues. If the chain of custody isn't intact the recount won't be worth a cup of warm spit.
Labels: 2008 candidates, 2008 Election, Black Box Voting, Brad Blog, Dennis Kucinich, New Hampshire, primaries, vote tampering
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/11/2008
ONE DAY AFTER IOWA:
(D) version: Obama is invincible. His campaign is legendary. He sweeps all those before him aside with his aura of manly inevitability. Hillary is doomed.
(R) version: The Godbillies of Iowa have shamefully nominated some know-nothing. This is a great victory for McCain, whose teenish-percent finish is evidence of his tremendous strength among the rest of the country, which is not nearly as populated with dumb-as-rocks Bible chewers as Iowa is known to be.
ONE DAY AFTER NEW HAMPSHIRE:
(D) version: Hillary is invincible. Her campaign is legendary. She sweeps all those before her aside with her aura of competent inevitability. Obama is doomed.
(R) version: I'm sorry, every pundit within a thousand miles of Washington has just reached orgasm. Please check back for wisdom later.
Labels: 2008 candidates, 2008 Election, Barack Obama, caucuses, Daily Kos, Hillary Clinton, Hunter, Iowa, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, New Hampshire, primaries
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/09/2008
[T]he way the ballots are counted in New Hampshire, largely on Diebold optical-scan voting systems, wholly controlled and programmed by a very very bad company named LHS Associates.
Those Diebold op-scan machines are the exact same ones that were hacked in the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy.
[W]hat's going on here?
While I have no evidence at this time --- let me repeat, no evidence at this time --- of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private company --- and a less-than-respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post --- runs the entire process.
I should also note that some 40% of New Hampshire's precincts are hand-counted, which equals about 25% of the votes. All the rest are counted on hackable Diebold op-scan systems, with completely hackable memory cards, all programmed and managed by LHS Associates.
Over at Daily Kos, diarist "AHiddenSaint" has written a post quoting, and linking over to this one, by way of sharing his/her concerns about the NH results.
The result: an embarrassing thread of comments, smashing up AHiddenSaint for posting something that the dKos commenters feel is little more than "conspiracy theory". Foolishly (for them), they have taken a sentence from the original post, in which I noted that I "have no evidence at this time --- of chicanery," to wonder why I would therefore write such a post at all. Their claim: that I am some how charging that Clinton stole the election.
I have made no such claim. In fact, if there was skullduggery here, there are plenty of reasons to believe it could have been committed by any number of interested parties, who have nothing to do with the Clinton campaign.
Daily Kos, of course, is a Clinton-centric website, which, more disturbingly, purged diaries and diarists after the 2004 Ohio election, if they were judged to be questioning what went on there. I spoke to Markos (the site's founder) about that, when we were at a conference together in Vegas last Summer. He stills stands by his decision to purge those folks. That, despite so much that has come out since '04 to show that what happened was a travesty of democracy. As I told him then, he owes his readers an apology. He did add, however, that he has someone ("Georgia10") who now cover issues of Election Integrity on their front page.
The result of his purge, is the mindset of the commenters now seen over there. It seems to me they are are begging for a world of hurt, someday, when their candidate doesn't win, under questionable circumstances. They will, of course, have cornered themselves such that they won't be able to ask questions themselvses. In the bargain, they are now fostering a culture of fear. Fear of asking questions. Fear of insisting that our democracy be transparent, of the people, by the people and for the people. If it were only themselves they were hurting by fostering that culture, I wouldn't give a damn. But rest assured, their comments, actions and attitudes will be leveraged, as we move forward, to hurt all of us.
For the record, I am neither a Clinton supporter nor an Obama supporter (nor a supporter of anyone else in the race at this time, in any party.) I am a supporter of the VOTERS. Period. It's they --- us --- who could really use some support right about now. I intend to do exactly that. All damned year. No matter how many "tin foil hats" the shortsighted, self-destructive Kossack types, who are behaving like the worst of the Republicans, try to throw at me.
Labels: 2008 candidates, 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Brad Blog, Brad Friedman, Daily Kos, Diebold, Hillary Clinton, Markos Moulitsas, New Hampshire, primaries, vote tampering, voting machines
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/09/2008
Can Hillary Cry Her Way
Back to the White House?
By MAUREEN DOWD
There was a poignancy about the moment, seeing Hillary Clinton crack with exhaustion from decades of yearning to be the principal rather than the plus-one.
10:42 PM: Bill Kristol: “It’s the tears. She pretended to cry. The women felt sorry for her. And she won.”
Labels: 2008 candidates, 2008 Election, Hillary Clinton, Maureen Dowd, New Hampshire, New York Times, primaries, tears, William Kristol
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/09/2008
Editorial
Romney should not be the next president
Monitor staff
December 22. 2007 3:00PM
If you were building a Republican presidential candidate from a kit, imagine what pieces you might use: an athletic build, ramrod posture, Reaganesque hair, a charismatic speaking style and a crisp dark suit. You'd add a beautiful wife and family, a wildly successful business career and just enough executive government experience. You'd pour in some old GOP bromides - spending cuts and lower taxes - plus some new positions for 2008: anti-immigrant rhetoric and a focus on faith.
Add it all up and you get Mitt Romney, a disquieting figure who sure looks like the next president and most surely must be stopped.
Labels: 2008 candidates, 2008 Election, Mitt Romney, New Hampshire, Republicans
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/22/2007
A day after federal and state officers swarmed near the hilltop home of tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown, the couple thanked a supporter from upstate New York, Danny Riley, for saving their lives.
Riley, who posted a video account of his experience on the internet, said he was walking the Browns' dog early Thursday when he discovered a large group of U.S marshals hiding in the woods near the Brown's Plainfield house. The marshals, he said, shot at him and shocked him with a Taser. If not for that encounter, Ed Brown said yesterday, he and his wife might be dead.
"If it wasn't for Danny Riley taking that walk yesterday morning with the dog the way he did," Brown said yesterday on his daily radio show, Ed Brown Under Siege. "The fact that he did probably saved our lives."
[...]
U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier said that the officers were near the fortified concrete home Thursday to watch the Browns and their supporters while marshals and IRS agents acted on a warrant to seize a commercial property owned by the couple in West Lebanon. He said his officers had never intended to arrest the Browns but wanted to monitor them in case they retaliated in response to the seizure.
[...]
Ed Brown told his radio audience that the marshals' actions suggested that they intended to kill him and his wife.
"If they were willing to shoot an unarmed guest of ours," Brown said, "then their intention was to come down and kill us."
[...]
Riley ... gives a detailed description of his experience. After walking down the Browns' long, wooded driveway, he came face to face with a man in camouflage. When Riley asked the man if he was a turkey hunter, he initially got no reaction.
"Then all of the sudden, the guy stood right up in front of me," Riley said. "And with a full camouflage suit on and yelled, 'Freeze.' At that point I turned around and ran, ran for my life."
On the video, Riley describes hearing bullets whiz by him as he yelled to the marshals that he was unarmed. Brown said on the radio yesterday that he also heard gunfire Thursday morning from his house. But Monier said that marshals never shot at the dog walker.
[...]
Riley said, and the law enforcement source confirmed, that marshals shocked him with a Taser before handcuffing him and placing him in a vehicle. Riley said that marshals, whose badges identified them as "special operations unit," asked him about who was at the house, what weapons were there and whether the Browns had a bomb.
Labels: Aaron Russo, America: Freedom to Fascism, civil disobedience, Ed and Elaine Brown, Federal Reserve System, Internal Revenue Service, New Hampshire, taxes
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
6/10/2007
[I]f a candidate from either party needs a fresh start, it is the embattled senator from Arizona.
Whit Ayres [said] that McCain's "national stature is so great and the campaign's fundraising potential is so great that it would be a serious mistake to write him off prematurely."
Labels: 2008 Election, John McCain, New Hampshire, Republicans
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
4/25/2007
Karl Rove fears the presidential candidacy of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to a report at the website The Politico. The news was based on a statement by the candidate herself in a New Hampshire campaign trail appearance.
Carrie Burdoff writes that Senator Clinton observed the fear of many in the Republican establishment of her candidacy for president.
"I know what Gingrich tells people privately, I know what DeLay tells people privately, I know what Karl Rove tells people privately," Burdoff quotes Clinton stating. The remark was paired with her assurance that she and her husband had defeated the Republican establishment twice for the nation's highest office, and that she would be able to do so again.
Labels: Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Karl Rove, New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich, Republicans, The Politico, Tom DeLay
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/12/2007
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