Milkhouse Mouse

In their book Over the Edge (2004) authors Michael Fry and T. Lewis wrote "The more things change, the more they remain... insane." But when it comes to electronic voting in New Hampshire's recent Democrat primary, Blackbox Voting activists Bev Harris and Susan Pynchon have the video tape proving it.

Though he failed to cite Ohio's 2004 presidential ballot debacle as supporting evidence for his book's thesis, the electoral hypocrisy in the state certainly qualifies for what Pulitzer-Prize winning Boston Globe journalist Charlie Savage recently characterized as the Bush-Cheney imperial "takeover" of U.S. democracy.

In Savage's well-received book, the Harvard-Yale grad prefers to assume the Bush-Cheney presidency (with Cheney as the alpha male) haven't engaged in electronic ballot theft, that their politicization of Justice Department appointments to instead skew prosecutions toward nonexistent "voter fraud," i.e., Democrats sporting fake IDs to wreak havoc on America's voting process, has no place in their subversion of democracy.

No, in Charlie's privileged worldview prepackaged for him at the nation's elite universities, the paradigm directing his writing assumes that honorable Yalies like Bush and Cheney are above that sort of plebeian decorum--facts to the contrary be damned.

Consider: While exit polls in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania in November 2004 indicated voters significantly favored Democrat challenger Senator John Kerry over George W. Bush in November 2004, ballots counted by GOP-owned electronic voting machines (with Diebold the principal offender) giving Bush a second presidency were allowed to stand, though MIT and Cal Tech mathematicians demonstrated the historically unprecedented disparity between exist polls and final vote counts resulted from ballot manipulation.

Then three weeks later when exit polls similarly favored a Ukraine presidential candidate defeated at the ballot box, the Bush-Cheney White House finally insisted Ukrainian officials perform the recount denied in America.

Oh, well; those pivotal 2004 ballot results in Ohio appear well-founded on post-9/11 Bushista logic making Amerikan democracy the envy of al-Qaeda terrorists the world over.

"They're here!": Electronic Ballot Fraud Redux (2008 version)

In May 2007, intrepid journalist and bestselling author Greg Palast--an American whose reportage on Bush-Cheney electoral fraud since 2000* (and here) has US mainstream news editors cowering before the office water cooler--warned us the GOP "may already have stolen the 2008 election."

Nowhere was Palast's electoral caveat more apparent than during New Hampshire's January 8 Democrat presidential popularity contest. Having been too busy at work--and distrusting of the US electoral process generally-- I overlooked blog coverage of the snafu there regarding vote tallies for Clinton and Obama.

Since mainstream U.S. media long ago opted out on covering democracy's theft at the electronic ballot box, let's watch this 3-minute Russia Today news video report.



Two days after the primaries gave Hillary Clinton a dubious win over Obama, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich, a 2008 Democrat presidential hopeful (who UK wire service Reuters reported 24 January was withdrawing from the campaign) asked state election officials for a "recount" because voting irregularities demanded it:

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."

Kucinich alluded to online reports alleging disparities around the state between hand-counted ballots, which tended to favor Sen. Barack Obama, and machine-counted ones that tended to favor Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. He also noted the difference between pre-election polls, which indicated Obama would win, and Clinton's triumph by a 39 percent to 37 percent margin.

Candidates who lose by 3 percentage or less are entitled to a recount for a $2,000 fee. Candidates who lose by more must pay for the full cost. Kucinich's campaign said it was sending the $2,000 fee to start the recount.

Kuncinich's campaign sent the required payment for the recount indeed happened. But according to election fairness activists Bev Harris and Susan Pynchon at Blackbox Voting, who video taped state election officials' security protocols for handling the ballots, the process is nothing more than a "sham."

If you watch the two ballot sleuths' six-minute clip below spotlighting the laughable responses of ballot thieves "Hoppy" and "Butch,"I believe you must conclude that an excellent opportunity existed for some overnight ballot tampering.



So, my freedom-loving Americans, here's the best voting advice you'll get in 2008: Vote early and vote often. With U.S. democracy once again up for grabs, you can't trust the myriad teams of Hoppy and Butch wannabes around the U.S. to protect your vote.

*Related: Today (Saturday, 26 January), Greg Palast speaks at UCLA to continue ongoing efforts to help Americans comprehend how compromised their national elections are. With the California primaries in ten days, Palast is a guest of the African-American Studies Department, speaking at 10:30 AM "on the latest attacks on voting rights," particularly minorities; he also is scheduled to convene a distinguished panel at 3:30 PM.

Palast's 2000 award-winning BBC and London Guardian new scoops on then-Florida governor Jeb Bush's efforts after 1998 to illegally scrub 90,000 African-Americans--90% who nationally voted for Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore--from the registry in a state where Bush's 537 vote-lead occasioned the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a mandatory recount to give the White House to Republicans was critical evidence in settling a 2002 class- action suit in favor of African-American plaintiffs who claimed voter disenfranchisement by Florida election officials.

According to the 4 September 2002 Washington Post ("Settlement Reached in Fla. Election Suit," archived here), ChoicePoint, a Georgia-based data vendor contracted by then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris for $4 million to undertake the voter registry scrub, and Florida officials conceded and quietly settled out of court with ACLU and NAACP attorneys who represented the disenfranchised Florida voters.

Translation: Media silence on the settlement abetted Bush and Cheney to get away with an electoral takeover.

Labels: 2008 presidential primaries, Bush-Cheney takeover, New Hampshire, voting fraud