this was forwarded to me and i feel compelled to pass it on.
-moby
it has been five days since the election.
in that time, accounts of voter fraud and malfunctioning voting machines have flooded into local newspapers in ohio, to public-interest groups, universities and weblogs.
this message is an overview of those reports.
the stories are summarized here, with links to the original publications.
after seeing this evidence — and there is more still to be rounded up — i am no longer convinced that bush won the election.
i hope you will read through these summaries, click on the links to the original stories, and come to your own conclusions.
i’ve included all the accounts of election tampering that i’m aware of, but have not done a broad search. this is only what i’ve learned in the past five days.
my education was provided by a group of concerned journalists who posted reports to a chat list.
this is a compilation of their research. ãŠãŠ
i believe there is enough evidence to suggest that the electorate may have actually chosen kerry on tuesday. we don’t know for sure — we can’t know till there is a recount. or, if that’s not possible because of electronic voting machines, until the election is held over in ohio and florida.
bush has not yet been chosen by the electoral college. the electors meet and vote on dec. 13. we need to raise questions about the results — and raise them loudly — to get an investigation launched before that date.
so far, the mainstream media in not picking up the story. they moved very slowly after the 2000 election.
here are the accounts of election tampering from four states, plus reports on multi-state problems.
(please note: some of the newspaper links may expire soon. you may want to print out the stories so that later on, you don’t have to buy them from the newspapers’ archives.)
florida:
the most troubling news comes out of florida. throughout most of the state, new electronic voting machines were in use. these machines — many manufactured by a company called diebold — are controversial because they don’t leave a paper trail.
there is no way to double-check the results. the final florida tallies on diebold machines from tuesday are literally unbelievable.
in 29 counties where diebold machines (an optical scanner) were used to count the ballots, large majorities of voters were registered democrats.
but the final results gave all the counties to bush, sometimes by huge margins.
the individual county data shows how unlikely the machine results were.
for instance:
in calhoun county, 82% of registered voters are democrats. but diebold machines said 63% of the county voted for bush. ãŠãŠ
in lafayette county, 83% of voters are democrats, but diebold said 74% of the county voted for bush.
in liberty county, 88% of voters are democrats, but diebold said 64% voted for bush.
in washington county, 67% of voters are democrats, but diebold said 71% voted for bush.
this same pattern appears in the results for 29 counties in florida. in every one of those counties, the diebold optical scanner produced the results.
the optical scanner has been called the voting machine that is most susceptible to tampering.
many of you have been watching elections closely for years. do you believe that in 29 florida counties in which democrats were in the majority — in some cases with 4 out of 5 registered voters being democrats — they all voted strongly for bush?
here are the links.
you can find the voter registration/final result data here:
http://ustogether.org/florida_election.htm
you can find a story analyzing these results here:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm
you can read about electronic voting machines — an untested phenomenon in american elections, here:
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i21thoreau.htm
the other problem in florida:
in 6 counties — again, they were all using