9 million voters were suppressed in the last election

Op-Ed: Proposition 37 — possible that election fraud made it fail

Digital Journal
Anne Sewell

It seems there were significant “irregularities” in the vote totals for Proposition 37, the ballot initiative to label genetically engineered foods, that could not be explained by random coincidence.

On election day, November 6, Proposition 37 - the ballot initiative for mandatory labeling of food with GMO content - failed by a narrow margin. With 4,277,985 people voting "yes" (47.9%) and 4,835,045 people voting "no" (53.1%), it was very close. Since then, some rumors have been going around about possible election fraud. Food Democracy Now!, one of the groups involved in Prop 37 has been closely monitoring the results as they came in, and they hadn't seen any credible reports of voting irregularities, that is up until now.

On Thursday, Food Democracy Now! received some very disturbing news from a voter integrity monitor. This monitor claims that possible "statistical anomalies" had been detected in 9 counties in California.

Francois Choquette, a statistician closely involved in monitoring incoming election results in California, said there were significant “irregularities” in the vote totals for Prop 37 that could not be explained by random coincidence.

Since then, a team of independent statisticians has started analyzing raw voter data or “preliminary data from 17 of California's 58 counties”.

So far, potential anomalies have been detected in a number of the largest precincts in Orange, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Alameda and San Diego counties, among others. While it is not definite that election fraud has actually taken place, it is important for Prop 37 supporters to be aware that the results of the election as they stand are not final. Food Democracy Now! is asking supporters to stand with them as they call for further inquiry into the questionable patterns being revealed.

By visiting this web page, you can join in standing for open and transparent elections and ask the California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, to ensure that the election results from Prop 37 are properly counted.

Today, Friday December 7th is the day that county election officials in the state of California are required to report their final results to the Secretary of State’s office . According to state law, Secretary of State Debra Bowen has until December 14th to certify the results of the election.

Here is where the worry arises. On election night, the California Secretary of State’s office called the election for the No side, declaring that Yes on 37 to label genetically engineered foods had failed to pass by a margin of 46.9% to 53.1%, with some 4.3 million Californians having been reported voting Yes on 37 by the next morning.

However, since that date the ballot proposition has slowly and steadily advanced both its vote total, and also the percentage of the total vote.

As of Monday, December 3rd at 4:58 pm, the California Secretary of State’s office reported that Prop 37 had garnered 48.5% votes to the No side’s 51.5%, with 5,986,652 voting to Label GMOs and 6,365,236 Californians voting against.

The very next morning, according to the California Secretary of State’s website, the Yes on 37 campaign had received 6,004,628 votes and edged down to 48.4% of the vote total. The timestamp on the website showed December 4, 2012, 6:04 a.m.

This was an important milestone, as the Yes on Prop 37 side had gained six million votes, a significant achievement. Food Democracy Now! immediately shared the good news via Twitter @food_democracy at 8:40 am PST.

Arizona Election Fraud: Is Arizona's Secretary of State Feigning Ignorance Over Terry Goddard's RTA Investigation?

J.T. Waldron

Arizona's Secretary of State's office has issued a surprising answer to Supervisor Ramon Valadez's request for ballot scanning.  Contrary to what has been publicly revealed and analyzed in Arizona Attorney General's public recount of the 2006 RTA election, Arizona's Secretary of State's office issued a memo citing the "accuracy" of Goddard's recount as a reason to forego graphic scanning of ballots.

The key quote in the document is as follows:

"The Secretary of State's office has viewed the idea of ballot scanning as a way to further audit our elections process. However, recent events (the Prop. 112 recount, Attorney General Goddard's evaluation of the RTA election, and the 2012 hand count results) have once again demonstrated that our election machines are incredibly accurate and reliable. Therefore, at this time, I don't believe that it is prudent to spend resources on creating an audit for a process that is already audited."

Perhaps they aren't aware of the chimpanzee hacking the very same GEM's elections system, but we do know that it's incredibly naive to suggest that the need for election audits could only be defined by the potential accuracy and reliability of the machines - not the people running the machines.

So why would the Secretary of State choose to mislead the public with a letter alluding to "accuracy" in Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard's RTA investigation?

It was Goddard's ill-faited recount of the 2006 RTA election that became part of the legal argument for prospective relief in rigged elections which won an appellate court decision in 2010.   

There were so many problems with Terry Goddard's investigation that election integrity groups AUDITAZ and Voters Unite! issued a twelve page report outlining significant discrepancies between the County's canvass and Goddard's hand count. By what measure does the Secretary of State cite Goddard's hand count as sufficiently accurate to forego meaningful audits? We know that federal guidelines require accuracy within a tolerance of 1 in 500,000. Goddard's recount had:

159 precincts missing 1,541 ballots
126 precincts that had 389 ballots too many
1,152 total ballots missing.

Goddard proclaimed in his press conference that they did such a good job, they found 63 additional ballots. Evidently, this was supposed to distract the public from the fact their count was missing four precinct's worth of ballots.

Goddard's investigation was so bad it garnered national attention on the Mike Malloy show once it was discovered that over a third of the poll tapes (that Goddard refused to inspect) were missing.

The missing poll tapes strongly correspond with electronic records of the RTA election showing memory card re-uploads characteristic of an attempt to pre-program memory cards.

From the perspective of a statistical analysis, one only has to consider the odds of the same precincts experiencing the same re-upload errors correlating to the same missing poll tapes.

Goddard had also refused to perform a forensic exam of the ballots, despite a previous move by the county to compromise court evidence. On the day of his press conference, Goddard acknowledged to the public on the John C. Scott show that he was aware of Pima County violating a court order by compromising evidence in the county vault.

Adding to the need for a forensic exam, court testimony indicated that no adequate protection of the stored RTA ballots took place until a court order was issued in 2011.

Attorney General Terry Goddard clearly moved beyond what is considered 'executive discretion' and served in some capacity to ensure Pima County's right to commit election fraud.

When the Secretary of State's office cites Goddard's work as cause to forego graphic scans as a safeguard against election fraud, they are placing themselves in the same camp, especially when Pima County is now the main obstacle to a forensic exam of the RTA ballots.

John Moffatt's name is all over the I-Beta report.
Moffatt represents the suspect in this investigation.

Terry Goddard's investigation into the RTA election showed early signs of compromise as the suspects in the investigation (Pima County) were given the opportunity to shape the investigation. This took place through Pima County employee John Moffatt, who was afforded the opportunity to make himself an inextricable part of the report created by the independent data firm, I-Beta. Moffatt was also named in the I-Beta report providing many ineffectual tests that were certain to be meaningless in the first half of Goddard's investigation. Since Goddard stated in public that he was aware of Moffatt being caught with his hand in the 'evidence cookie jar',the decision to include Moffatt in this process demonstrates highly questionable judgment. By this time, it was clear that John Moffatt, working directly under Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, was responsible for the convoluted logic that ultimately cost Pima County over one million dollars in legal fees resisting disclosure of public records.

Goddard continued coddling the suspects as he refused to provide the results of the I-Beta report to those who filed the initial complaint, but let the suspect (Pima County) receive a copy and subsequently instructed the suspect not to provide a copy to those who filed the initial complaint.

These conflicts of interest were so widely publicized it would be difficult for the Secretary of State's office to make a credible claim of ignorance.

The Secretary of State's office should direct its attention to the money being wasted by Pima County as they use every legal measure permissible to stave off a forensic exam of the RTA ballots.

Pima County's Superior court judges have been ruling in defiance of the 2010 appellate court decision granting jurisdiction for prospective relief in rigged elections.

Before any court orders affecting election procedures are issued, the hearing for prospective relief needs to complete the fundamental tasks ignored by Attorney General Terry Goddard. The court must allow for the actual audit of the ballots (comparing, for the first time, one set of numbers to another set of numbers) and a forensic examination of the ballots. In fact, if the audit and forensic exam do not turn up evidence of foul play, the court does not have sufficient cause to issue orders for prospective relief. That outcome would end the case.

So why is Pima County the primary obstacle to this investigation?

All local media outlets fail to articulate this inescapably simple resolution that Pima County avoids. Everyone endowed with basic cognitive skills is left with the uncomfortable realization that Pima County has been caught cheating and they are staving off the inevitable with taxpayer's dollars.

If the Secretary of State's office is so confident in Terry Goddard's investigation of the 2006 RTA Ballots, they should encourage Pima County to stop wasting taxpayers dollars and to stop obstructing the appellate court ruling for prospective relief.  That way, the Secretary of State's office could demonstrate leadership in state elections instead of what appears to be an elections 'circle jerk'.

Organic Consumers Association Statement On California Prop 37 Uncounted Votes

Organic Consumers Association
Katherine Paul
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Organic Consumers Association Katherine Paul, 207.653.3090,

FINLAND, Minn. - Nov. 12, 2012 - The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is monitoring the ongoing vote count and election results for Prop 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. The OCA will contest the vote if results differ substantially from pre-election poll results or if there are reports of any voting irregularities, particularly in Orange and San Mateo Counties where paperless ballot systems make voting more vulnerable to fraud.

Prop 37 was defeated by 6 percentage points, 53% to 47%, according to the California Secretary of State on election night. However, as with every election, not every ballot had been counted as of midnight Nov. 6. On election night, there were still 3.3 million uncounted votes. As of November 11, the vote totals were 5,205,044 NO to 4,619,580 YES

"The OCA, along with the California Right to Know Campaign and its attorneys, are closely monitoring the ongoing vote count process," said Ronnie Cummins, Director of the OCA and OCF, which contributed more than $1 million to the Prop 37 campaign. "We will challenge the outcome if the final count indicates more YES than NO votes, or if the results are substantially different from our pre-election polls."

State law requires county elections officials to report their final results to the Secretary of State by December 7. The Secretary of State has until December 14 to certify the results of the election.

The OCA hired Lake Research Partners to conduct pre-election polling for Prop 37. The final results of the polling are not yet available.

"Win or lose, Prop 37 is just the beginning," said Cummins. "We've put GMO labeling on the national map, and we've put Big Ag and Big Food on notice: This movement is stronger than ever, and it's not going away."

Activists in Washington State have already collected more than half of the signatures they need to put a similar GMO labeling initiative on the ballot there in 2013. Plans are also in the works to reignite legislative attempts in Vermont and Connecticut, where laws don't provide for citizens ballot initiatives.

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and grassroots non-profit 501(c)3 public interest organization campaigning for health, justice, and sustainability.

The Organic Consumers Fund is a 501(c)4 allied organization of the Organic Consumers Association, focused on grassroots lobbying and legislative action.

Arizona Election Fraud: Supervisors Accept County Shenanigans, Reject a Proper Audit

J.T. Waldron

The Pima County Board of Supervisors refused to conduct a proper hand-count audit of the 2012 general election ballots. This decision was made despite seasoned statisticians and computer experts in its own Election Integrity Commission indicating that the county's elections are not verifiable in their current state.

The primary reason? Timing. Pima County's use of this rationale is ironic because it appears that the county was in complete control its timing. As EIC member Mickey Duniho states in reference to Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry:

"Mr. Huckelberry unilaterally postponed the recommendation without consulting or informing the Election Integrity Commission. This violated the Commission’s right to advise the Board of Supervisors without interference, and it also violated basic rules of courtesy."

This postponement plays a role in solidifying the board's argument that 'it's too late'.

Huckelberry's recent memo, which is rife with distortions and errors, states that it's impossible to do a hand count audit. Such hyperbole was thoroughly eviscerated by Mickey Duniho's point by point response to the erroneous memo. Duniho provided his rebuttal in writing to each member of the board of supervisors.

"Your elections are being run by a sociopath," said EIC member Jim March. Elections Director Brad Nelson was held under a burning magnifying glass in the most recent Board of Supervisors meeting as March leveled a series of new charges against Nelson. First, March states that Nelson had his county-issued credit card yanked for fraud, yet he still keeps his job.

Other charges had to do with Nelson's management style with his employers. According to March, employees are willing to recall how they were retained because it was easy for Nelson to "make them cry" and "that's something he needed to do on occasion". Finally, March accused Nelson of breaking the law as he states that Nelson would ask temporary staff and poll workers to switch their party allegiance so that he can continue to retain these employees for future tasks.

Jim March's history of careful, meticulous analysis  before calling any one person's reputation into question adds significant weight to these charges.  We can only hope that an independent investigation into Brad Nelson's activities will take place. 

The only Supervisor concerned about having verifiable elections for this elections cycle was Ray Carroll, a Republican who has consistently moved to transcend party affiliation and improve transparency.

Arizona solidifies its national reputation as the 'meth lab of democracy' because those who can intervene refuse to make direct, immediate, substantive changes to the elections process.

Arizona Election Fraud: Pima County Issues Memo with Numerous Factual Errors

Memo King
Chuck Huckelberry

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry's primary PR activity occurs through the construction of memo's addressed to various department heads within his own purview.  These memos, of course, wind up in the hands of specific local press outlets.  Local  outlets provide nice fluff pieces favoring Pima County in exchange for continued access and future reservations at Pima's own PR staff's trough after ad sales for these less than substantive reports hit the dumpster.

In his latest offering, Huckelberry seems to have outdone himself with the number of distortions, omissions, and factual errors.  This latest memo is part of an exchange with the public as it learns about Pima County's efforts to circumvent its own Election Integrity Commission to obtain a waiver from sorting early ballots by precinct.   The following is retired NSA analyst Mickey Duniho's correction of factual errors in Huckelberry's memo:

(1)  Mr. Huckelberry stated that “one member” of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission “has championed the concept of sorting early ballots by precinct,” implying that only one member of the Commission really cares about such matters. He omitted the fact that the October 26 EIC recommendation was approved by a 7-0 vote of the EIC members.

(2)  In describing 300-400 staff hours to sort early ballots as an impossible task, Mr. Huckelberry omitted the fact that 300-400 hours of work by a dozen people could be accomplished in three days, and that the cost of 300-400 hours of work would be on the order of $2,000-$3,000. Mr. Huckelberry’s estimate of time required to sort the ballots also omitted any reference to F. Ann Rodriguez’s offer to provide lists of precincts represented in the various batches, which would enable workers to extract ballots for a few precincts rather than sort all precincts. After extracting ballots for the chosen precincts from a batch, workers could move on to the next batch of ballots. This could shorten the time and reduce the effort required to select a small number of precincts for hand counting. With Ms. Rodriguez’s assistance, the time required might be only two days, since the three-day estimate is based on sorting all 288 precincts instead of just selecting a few precincts for the audit.

(3)  Mr. Huckelberry’s estimate of $256,137 for hiring Runbeck to sort the ballots is factually incorrect. First, he based his estimate on 261,364 ballots, the total number of early ballots received at the time he wrote his memo; the EIC recommendation only referred to less than 200,000 early ballots received and processed by Election Day. Second, Runbeck’s price of $.98 per ballot is 100 times what it should be; it would make no sense for Pima County to pay Runbeck $200,000 to do a job that can be done in-house for $2,000. For $200,000, Pima County could buy several sorting machines.

(4)  Mr. Huckelberry’s estimate of $300,000-$500,000 to buy a sorting machine is a multiple at least five times too high. I asked Pitney Bowes about an earlier estimate of $125,000 given out by John Moffatt and was told that Pima County could buy a top-of-the-line Pitney Bowes sorting machine for “significantly less” than $125,000. The person I talked with, at Pitney Bowes Sales Headquarters, said the cost would depend on which features were included but that the cost would be on the order of $65,000.

(5)  Mr. Huckelberry’s distinction of sorting ballots in the envelopes versus out of the envelopes is incorrect. The sorter can handle ballots either way with equal ease.

(6)  Mr. Huckelberry disputed my report last week that the EIC members were not informed of the postponement of our proposal on the BOS agenda. He stated that we were notified on Nov 9. In fact, the EIC was informed only after we demanded an explanation of why the agenda published on Nov 8 did not contain the EIC recommendation. Mr. Huckelberry unilaterally postponed the recommendation without consulting or informing the Election Integrity Commission. This violated the Commission’s right to advise the Board of Supervisors without interference, and it also violated basic rules of courtesy.

(7)  Mr. Huckelberry’s statement that sorting early ballots is “impossible” is incorrect. The task is not impossible, merely tedious to do by hand. Mr. Huckelberry gave six reasons (the second two were actually the same reason, restated in different words) for avoiding the sorting of early ballots. None of these reasons is actually a valid argument for rejecting the EIC recommendation.

a.     The first reason: The fact that Pima County had already counted 100,000 ballots when the EIC made its recommendation is true but logically irrelevant to the current discussion.

b.    Reasons two and three: The risk of handling ballots in the face of a possible recount is listed as a reason for not sorting ballots but is logically erroneous. At this point, we are reasonably certain there will be no recounts and no legal challenges. In any case, an accusation of mishandling ballots would not be allayed by the County claiming that it did not touch the ballots while in its custody. A charge could easily be made that County election personnel manipulated the ballots while they were “in storage.” Sorting the ballots and performing a hand count audit by precinct is the only way to positively demonstrate that the ballots were counted honestly and that no manipulation of votes took place while the ballots were in Election Department custody.

c.     Reason four: That the audit should take place between the Hand Count Audit and the Canvass is true but logically irrelevant to your decision unless your decision is delayed until the date of your approving the Canvass, which it appears has been Mr. Huckelberry’s strategy all along.

d.    Reason five: The difficulties encountered by counters in the Hand Count Audit are well-known but not logically relevant to this discussion; they are manageable problems.

e.     Reason six: The difficulties of extracting early ballots for a precinct-based audit are real but manageable, and were considered manageable by the Election Integrity Commission before its recommendation was submitted to you.

(8)  In describing the sequence of events leading up to Pima County’s obtaining a waiver from the state requirement to sort early ballots by precinct, Mr. Huckelberry omitted the fact that Brad Nelson neither consulted nor even informed the EIC of the requirement or the waiver. In addition, Mr. Nelson’s arguments in his letter to the state that sorting is impractical are factually erroneous. Mr. Nelson claimed he could do a better hand count audit by not sorting the ballots but, in fact, the early ballot audit as currently performed is worthless in terms of confirming a lack of fraud in vote counting. It is also noteworthy that the Secretary of State’s Elections Director granted the waiver BEFORE Mr. Nelson wrote his justification letter, suggesting an improper sequence of events.

(9)  Mr. Huckelberry cited a successful hand count audit as proof that no further audit is needed, another distortion of fact. He touted the fact that Pima County counts four percent of polling place ballots; he omitted the fact that polling place ballots in this election made up only 27% of all the ballots cast; 70% of voters cast early ballots, and therefore a proper hand count audit of early ballots is needed to confirm the integrity of the overall election. Mr. Huckelberry also omitted the irrelevance of the current early ballot hand count audit to confirming a lack of fraud. [I might point out that the law requires an audit of 1% of all the early ballots issued (1% of 261,545 ballots would be 2,615 ballots) but Pima County only hand counted 1,985 early ballots. Not that it makes any difference, since the current early ballot hand count audit is useless for confirming an election’s honesty.]

(10)             In his concluding recommendation:

a.     Mr. Huckelberry said the election tabulation “is expected to continue for another 4 to 7 days.” In fact, processing of the ballots which your EIC recommended sorting and hand counting was completed by Election Day.

b.    Mr. Huckelberry referred to the physical impossibility of accurately selecting, sorting into precincts and auditing nearly 200,000 early ballots. In fact, the EIC’s recommendation could be satisfied by selecting and auditing approximately 2,000 ballots.

c.     Mr. Huckelberry reiterated the “risk of handling ballots when faced with possible recounts.” In fact, it appears there will be no recounts, and Pima County would be in a better position to defend itself against charges of malfeasance if it adopted a more transparent policy, following the state requirement to sort early ballots and audit by precinct instead of secretly obtaining a waiver from the state requirement.

d.    Mr. Huckelberry claimed the positive outcome of the present hand counts as a reason to not adopt the EIC recommendation, but the EIC took that into account when it made the recommendation. The present early ballot audit is worthless in terms of certifying the election’s integrity.

How does a community allow an institution like Pima County's government to display such arrogance with so many lies to the representatives?

Just to give you an idea of how absurdly simple it is to build a system that is far more verifiable than what we currently have, here is the ballot scanning presentation produced by CBS Miami:

Arizona Election Fraud: Mickey Duniho and Jim March Report Election Shenanigans to Pima County's Board of Supervisors

 County Board of Supervisors Comment for 11-13-2012

I have not spoken in this forum since I was appointed to your Election Integrity Commission four years ago. A sequence of events has brought me here today.

* * * * * * * *

The first event: In November 2011 the state added new election requirements, including one that counties must sort early ballots by precincts for the hand count audit. John Moffatt was involved, and reported to your commission on changes proposed and made – but did not report this new requirement to your commission.

The second event: In June and July 2012, Brad Nelson applied for and received a waiver from this requirement. Mr. Nelson neither consulted nor informed your commission of this action.

The third event: On October 26, with statistical evidence suggesting potential fraud nationally in computerized vote counting, an emergency meeting of your Election Integrity Commission unanimously approved a recommendation for today’s meeting that you order the sorting of early ballots and a precinct-based hand count audit to confirm the honesty of Pima County elections.

The fourth event: In response to a lawsuit the County included copies of two letters which revealed the existence of the new early ballot sorting requirement and Mr. Nelson’s successful request for a waiver of that requirement.

The fifth event: Without informing or consulting your Election Integrity Commission, your staff postponed your consideration of our recommendation to November 20.

The sixth event: In response to a query about why your Commission’s recommendation was missing from the November 13th agenda, Mr. Moffatt attributed the delay to ballot counting and possible recounts and challenges. The reasons given are clearly not relevant to delaying your consideration of our recommendation, and serve only to tighten the time frame in which to organize people to implement a precinct-based hand count audit before the ballots are moved to the Treasurer’s vault.

This sequence of events raises the question whether there is genuine importance or credence given to election integrity in our county. Your staff has been disrespectful to your Election Integrity Commission and by implication insubordinate to you.

The question now is whether you will take any action to address these acts of disrespect to you and the Election Integrity Commission you created four years ago, after listening to two years of public concern about the conduct of elections in Pima County, and after Pima County lost, at great taxpayer expense, a lawsuit having to do with election transparency.

If there is no election fraud to mask, there is no reason for Pima County’s continued tolerance of the obvious anti-transparency efforts demonstrated by your staff.

Thank you for your attention.

Michael A. Duniho

Did Expert Witness, Activists Thwart a Rove Ohio Vote Plot?

The Justice Integrity Project

By Andrew Kreig

 

A software expert’s testimony last week may have thwarted a plot to flip enough votes to secure a victory for GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Building on years of efforts by activists, election software critic Michael Duniho testified in Ohio's state court that secret software installed on Ohio machines could enable officials to flip enough votes to select a different statewide winner that the one chosen by voters. 

Duniho, a retired National Security Agency analyst, is shown at right in similar testimony in Arizona, where he is a local elections official. 

Duniho provided his explosive testimony first via telephone to a federal judge in a temporary restraining order hearing in the morning, and then to Franklin County Judge Mark Serrott to amplify his written affidavit, published here. The testimony supported an injunction request by election machine critics who have argued for years -- with scant previous success in courts and in the media -- that election machine software tampering has enabled theft of major elections, and thus poses a grave danger to the democratic process.

On Election Day 2012, their litigation and testimony raised the issue to unprecedented prominence. The litigation against state officials would have put any plotters on notice of serious threat of investigation and retribution. 

The contrary view is that no plot ever existed -- and that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, shown at left, and fellow Republicans are being falsely suspected of bad intentions. Husted has denied misconduct in court filings. I reached out to him also for more specific questions, and shall update this post with any comment he or his staff provide. The Ohio Secretary of State's website contains background information.

This column reports Duniho’s testimony, and summarizes other evidence that election software poses a threat to fair elections. Reported also are: an Oct. 24 news conference announcing a chart alleging a Rove-linked “empire” of vote theft; a half dozen recent books on electronic election fraud; and a survey of a decade of major scandals, books, and articles.
The documentation draws on my previous columns, my research for a forthcoming book, Presidential Puppetry, and my ongoing interactions with research sources, several of whom asked my advice concerning their recent  news announcements in Washington. I suggested they announce litigation before Election Day because the public tunes out complaints from losers.

Update: I am scheduled to appear Nov. 12 on vote theft-critic Harvey Wasserman's 3 p.m. (EST) radio show on the Progressive Radio Network to discuss next steps with him and his fellow pioneer in the election integrity movement, Robert Fitrakis, a 2012 Green Party Congressional candidate. Fitrakis, based in Columbus, is a professor, attorney, website editor, and co-author of several books with Wasserman. Fitrakis filed the suit alleging electronic voting theft in Ohio’s 2004 presidential election and elsewhere.

Theirs and my multiple roles are increasingly typical in modern communications. Many news makers blog and broadcast these days, thereby blurring the lines between being a news source and part of the media. 

An even greater departure from past categories is that Karl Rove covered the Democratic National Convention September on a press pass. This was while he was also in the process of spending an estimated $300 million to help Republican candidates via his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS funds. Also, he was allegedly scheming to steal elections via software fraud and voter suppression. Rove, like Husted, denies wrongdoing, and failed to respond to my request for comment on specifics. Whatever the facts on election fraud, Rove clearly is part of the Washington punditry elite delivering news to the nation.

The Duniho Testimony
 
Michael “Mickey” Duniho is a volunteer election official in Pima County, Arizona. He became prominent this fall among electronic voting machine critics because of his videotape testimony in an Arizona case arguing that dishonest officials can easily steal votes electronically. The photo above portrays that testimony, not his remarks by telephone in the Ohio litigation Nov. 6.

Duniho worked nearly four decades as a National Security Agency computer expert before his retirement. NSA is far larger and more secretive than the better-known CIA. It has vast information gathering and storage capabilities reported, among other places, in a series of authoritative books by former NSA staffer James Bamford.

Duniho claimed that the United States faced the threat of vote theft in Ohio because Husted, Ohio's secretary of state, had secretly installed software on voting machines covering 80 percent of the state’s population for no apparent legitimate purpose. The witness said the software could enable vote theft by officials, and no actual “emergency” required its installation throughout Ohio in violation of a state law requiring testing before installation. Also, Duniho said the voting machine company, Electronic Systems and Solutions (ES&S), appeared to be cheating the state on the cost of the software.

Husted’s legal team rebutted Duniho’s affidavit and testimony. The presiding state court judge failed to issue the injunction requested by the plaintiff.

A whistleblower in Husted’s office prompted the litigation by telling the Fitrakis team Thursday that the state secretly installed the controversial software in September. The Fitrakis suit was one of several he filed in state and federal courts last week with the cooperation of Columbus attorney Clifford Arnebeck, at left.

The litigation failed to attract much news coverage from major news outlets. Historically, reporters ignore allegations of electronic vote fraud as, in general, too complex and controversial. NBC News Political Director and Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd sent a Tweet this fall claiming election machine fraud is a “conspiracy theory” unworthy of coverage. 

Similarly, the New York Times published on Nov. 8 what can only be described as a biased, mocking profile of Mark Crispin Miller, a New York University professor and author who has documented election fraud. The Times article was A Long Day for a Professor Suspicious of Voting Machines. In contrast to the snide approach by the Times reporter, a YouTube video garnered more than 80,000 views with its more straightforward interview, visible here: None Dare Call It Stolen: US Election Fraud in 2012?
Despite such handicaps, the litigation last week doubtless reminded elections decision-makers that civil and perhaps criminal investigation could await them if dubious election results occurred. A reporter such as NBC's Chuck Todd can ignore a story. A defendant must respond in court, sometimes by sworn testimony that could potentially escalate into a criminal investigation that trumps secrecy provisions in official contracts with private vote tabulation companies.

The Secretary of State's Role?
Several voting theft opponents allied with Fitrakis and Arnebeck helped publicize the Ohio-litigation with a news conference Nov. 5 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Speakers included Clint Curtis, a Florida IT consultant who helped pioneering whistle blowing in the field by alleging that a Florida congressman asked  him to help defraud voters in the 2000 election. Also speaking were Harvey Wasserman, a frequent co-author with Fitrakis of books and articles on the topic, and Lori Grace, who has helped provide funding for such research. The activist group Protect Our Elections created a video of the speakers.

Several days previously, Ben Swann, a television-consumer reporter based in Cincinnati for Fox News affiliate WXIX-TV, published an investigative report describing how electronic vote thievery can occur. Swann’s video was widely circulated until YouTube removed it for violating terms of service. Election theft critics hope that such news reports encourage the FBI to demand records and interview all those involved. 

Their view is that massive elections fraud can be accomplished by very few conspirators so long as the operators are sufficiently expert and corrupt.

On Oct. 24, I  co-moderated with Arnebeck a news conference at the National Press Club. Alabama attorney Dana Jill Simpson and IT consultant Jim Marsh unveiled a new chart that they described as “Roadmap to Karl Rove’s Empire of Election Fraud.”

The chart is displayed at right, here on a downloadable link, and in larger size below. The relationship chart diagrams voting machine companies, and their ownership (including by Romney and Bush family backers).  Also, it asserts that a national training network runs a significant part of the nation’s back-office election operations through private companies hired by partisan officials who conduct operations in secret because the voting companies use proprietary software immune from outside scrutiny. 

Simpson, Marsh, and Arnebeck also announced formation of a new organization, Election Protection Action. This is one of several small civic groups across the country that have developed election fraud research for years, primarily in obscurity. 

Simpson has said she formerly worked with Rove and his allies on campaign opposition research that inevitably led, by her account, to campaign dirty tricks that soured her on the Republican Party. Among her allegations is that SmarTech, a Chattanooga IT consultancy, has played major role helping Republicans control elections, government websites, and government email  traffic both through the United States and globally.

Alabama Test Run For Election Theft?

Now a progressive, Simpson says that when she was a Republican volunteer opposition researcher she visited SmarTech in the days it was handling vast volumes of sensitive political traffic. Also, she has been reported to be knowledgeable on certain circumstances of one of the nation’s most notorious election software mysteries, the late-night switch of nearly 7,000 votes in rural Baldwin County that flipped Democratic Governor Don Siegelman’s reported re-election victory in 2002.
Speaking also at the Oct. 24 news conference was Siegelman's daughter, Dana, 27. She said the family went to bed on Election Night in 2002 believing news reports that her father had won re-election, but awoke to learn that votes had been shifted electronically in Baldwin County for never-disclosed reasons. She said that Alabama's Attorney General William Pryor, a Republican since elevated to the federal appeals court, threatened to arrest anyone who tried to investigate the vote-change. 

Therefore, she said, there was nothing her father could do except try to run again for governor in 2006. However, the Bush administration indicted him on corruption charges in 2004. When that case fell apart, they indicted him against before a different judge, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller, who was able to help prosecutors secure corruption convictions by making many pro-prosecution rulings that have puzzled legal experts for years but have been affirmed by appeals courts, including Pryor's. The convictions were primarily for Siegelman's reappointment to a state board in 1999 of a Republican who had donated to a non-profit that Siegelman supported.

In 2007, Simpson broke with the Republican Party to swear that she was aware of a Republican plot for years to prevent Siegelman from running for re-election in 2006 by framing him on corruption charges with the help of “Karl” {whom  she identifies as most likely Karl Rove] and Fuller, whom she swore was picked to preside over Siegelman as judge because the judge "hated" the defendant and wanted to "hang" him.

Nonetheless, Fuller has remained on the case, and in August ordered Siegelman, now 67, to resume a seven-year sentence. Dana Siegelman, at left with her father before his reimprisonment, is leading a nationwide petition drive to persuade President Obama to pardon her father. The petition is here.
 
She said it has been signed by 34,000 people so far, including an unprecedented group of 112 former state attorneys general who separately wrote the Supreme Court that Siegelman's actions did not constitute a crime under the law. The Justice Integrity Project has gone beyond that finding and concluded that prosecutors and the trial judge framed Siegelman, thereby creating a notorious political prosecution of global significance. 
The Siegelman prosecution is the kind of result that can occur when vote thieves acquire the power to appoint prosecutors and judges. 

Simpson’s “roadmap” devised with Marsh is so other researchers, including the media and law enforcement personnel, can understand the ownership, operation, and goals of the nation’s vote-tabulation process. The critics allege that the process is increasingly secret and controlled by partisan officials seeking to rig outcomes in selected locales when the stakes are high enough.



Rove has denounced her as someone who makes incredible allegations. Also, he states that he has never met her. Vanity Fair columnist Craig Unger examined her allegations, SmarTech's responses and , and Rove’s denials in his recent book, Boss Rove. Unger found her to be more credible than Rove on the specifics.

I have reached a similar conclusion. Rove has failed to respond to my requests for comment, or an in-depth interview. Furthermore, representatives of the Romney family have denied that family or Bain investments in a voting tabulation company, HIG Capital, which controls Hart InterCivic, has a fraudulent purpose.

Historical Background of Software Fraud
 
Fitrakis, Arnebeck, and Wasserman have alleged election machine fraud for years, including in litigation alleging that the 2004 presidential election was determined by IT fraud. In their  books and unsuccessful lawsuits, they say Ohio’s electoral votes went to President Bush via what they call a “Man in the Middle” strategy whereby IT consultant Michael Connell helped arrange for SmarTech to have access to Ohio’s votes before they were announced to the public. 

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a GOP partisan, arranged Connell’s consultancy via his company, GovTech, which hosted its operations at SmarTech in Chattanooga. Blackwell denied any improper motive or result. Yet Steve Spoonamore, the top IT employee for 2008 GOP nominee John McCain, testified that the set-up enabled vote-switching without public knowledge. Connell described in a 2008 pretrial deposition the specifics of how he set up vote transfers. Connell died a month later when his airplane crashed. I summarized that history in a 2010 column. An appendix to the column provides hot links to nearly a decade of major books and articles in the field.

The concept of "election fraud" orchestrated via voting machine software is different from "voter fraud," which typically refers to ineligible voters casting ballots. Republicans have enacted many harsh voter suppress laws to restrict voting by largely Democratic groups, as Huffington Post columnist Dan Froomkin noted Nov. 12, Voter ID: The More You Know, The Less You Like It. Some voter fraud does in fact exists, counters Melinda  Pillsbury-Foster, a host of World Truth Radio who formerly had close contacts with prominent conservatives. But, she says, whatever actual problems exist in voter fraud have been grossly magnified by the media to create a false equivalence with the much-greater problem of massive elections fraud.

Summing up
Conventional wisdom is that no plot existed this year, or ever in the past. But we’ll never know for sure unless the relevant operatives and officials are examined under oath. 

Michael Duniho took the process to a new level on Election Day, Nov. 6. Let’s hope that the beginning, not the end, of any questions.

Provisional Ballots Spoiled By Restrictive State Law, ACLU of Arizona Says

ACLUAZ
Jon O'Neill

PHOENIX – A restrictive Arizona law helped invalidate thousands of ballots cast in the 2008 election, a new report by the ACLU of Arizona shows. The disfranchised voters, more than 13,000 of them, used provisional ballots, an option meant to help people who, for many reasons, wind up at the wrong precinct on Election Day. But Arizona law requires that even a provisional ballot be cast in the right precinct. All voters leave the polls expecting their ballots to be counted. But for one in every 10 Arizona voters who cast a provisional ballot in 2008, they didn't.

The ACLU report, found here, which surveyed Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Yavapai and Coconino counties, shows:

There were 131,476 provisional ballots cast in 2008 in the five respective counties. Of those, 39,741 were spoiled. The number one reason that ballots were invalidated – with 13,467 spoiled ballots – was because they were cast in the wrong precinct.

More than 10 percent of voters casting provisional ballots probably left the polling place feeling as if they had voted, when in fact their ballots were never counted.

One of every 14 Maricopa County voters cast a provisional ballot in 2008. The county then rejected 29,531 provisional ballots, nearly a third of which might have counted had the voter been directed to the correct polling location.

Those who voted with a provisional ballot in Pima County in 2008 had a greater than one-in-six chance that their votes did not count because they were cast in the wrong polling place.

"Arizona's requirement disfranchises the very people provisional ballots are supposed to help," said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona. "Therefore, we are calling on lawmakers to rescind the requirement – but until it is, it will be up to voters to prevent wrong polling place rejections."

A recent nationwide study showed that while 30 states have laws similar to Arizona's, 15 other states have rules that are less restrictive and allow voters to use provisional ballot in the way they were intended to be used.

In response to concerns raised in the report and to help alleviate problems at the polls, the ACLU Voting Rights Project also issued new Arizona-specific Voter Empowerment Cards that include tips on where to vote, what to bring to the polls and who to call to report Election Day problems. The cards can be downloaded here.

The ACLU of Arizona is also urging people to make sure they’re registered by Monday, October 4 to vote in the November election, and to take advantage of early voting by requesting an early ballot by 5 p.m. on October 22nd.

"By remaining informed about precinct changes and the limits of provisional ballots, Arizonans can protect their right to vote and ensure their ballots are counted on Election Day," added Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU Voter Rights Project.

Rep. Allen West Refuses to Concede, Seeks Hand-Count, Impounding of Ballots and Voting Systems in FL-18 U.S. House Race

BradBlog

Tea Party-backed Repub reportedly trails challenger Murphy by less than 2,500 votes as tallied by FL's flawed, failed voting systems...

By BRAD FRIEDMAN on 11/9/2012, 6:05am PT 

On Election Night, Democrats and progressives celebrated the reported defeat of far Rightwing Tea Party-backed Rep. Allen West (R-FL22) by his Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy in Florida's newly redistricted 18th Congressional district in Eastern Florida.

With precinct votes unofficially tabulated in the three counties which comprise the new Democratic-leaning district --- Martin, St. Lucie and part of Palm Beach --- Murphy reportedly leads West by 2,456 votes out of 318,200 electronically tallied to date. That number does not include what West's campaign manager describes as "tens of thousands of absentee ballots to be counted in Palm Beach County and potential provisional ballots across the district."
Nonetheless, Murphy has declared victory, which carries no particular legal weight, while West has filed legal documents in St. Lucie and Palm Beach calling for the impounding of voting systems, paper ballots and a hand-count of those ballots.

West may be a far Right extremist. A fair amount of evidence even suggests that West may be certifiably insane. But, even far right, possibly insane candidates, and especially their supporters, deserve to have their votes counted in a way that they can know, for certain, that they either won or lost an election.

Given the oft-failed, easily-manipulated, unoverseeable electronic voting and tabulation systems --- each with a long and well-documented record of failure and miscounts --- used in the three counties that make up Florida's new 18th district (as well as the rest of the state of Florida, and the rest of the 50 states for that matter), West and his supporters have every reason to demand a public, 100% hand-count of paper ballots before conceding defeat. Particularly in an election with such a slim margin, as reported by the flawed electronic systems, said to stand between the two candidates...


Machine tallied results to date

Here are the results of FL-18 as currently known at this hour, according to the Florida Division of Elections website...





That .78% difference between West and Murphy, if it holds after absentees and provisionals are added in, puts the race just outside of the .5% margin that would otherwise trigger a state-sponsored "recount" (albeit on the same faulty machines that tallied the ballots, either accurately or inaccurately, in the first place, as per FL law.)

The county-by-county results for FL-18 show where the race is even tighter, particularly in Palm Beach County, where just 11 votes(!) out of 123,903 tallied there currently separate the two candidates...

On Election Night, as reported by the Sen-Sentinel, Democrats were giddy about the prospect of the controversial West being tossed out of the House.

Florida's U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who also serves as chair of the DNC, optimistically trumpeted that "moderate voters totally rejected Allen West's brand of extremism [and] his outrageous commentary. I think they didn't want a member of Congress who was in the news every day for all the wrong reasons."

Indeed, West has made a name for himself by declaring, for example, that he has "heard" some 76 of the 81 members of the Progressive Caucus in the U.S. House are "communists", and, as the Sun-Sentinel also reports, suggesting that "Nazi propaganda chief Joeseph Goebbels would be envious of the Democrats' 'incredible propaganda machine.'"

Wasserman Schultz, the paper notes, "was the subject of one of West's most talked-about tirades, when he called her 'the most vile, unprofessional and despicable' member of the House, labeled her a 'coward,' told her to 'shut the heck up,' and said she had 'proven repeatedly that you are not a lady.'"

1.6 Million Votes Remain Uncounted in California

NoMoreFakeNews
Jon Rappoport

DID PROP 37 REALLY LOSE OR WAS IT VOTE FRAUD?

Hold your horses.

On election night, not long after the polls closed in California, the announcement came out: Prop 37 was losing.

A little while later, it was all over. 37 had gone down to defeat.

But is that the whole story? No.

As of 2:30PM today, Thursday, November 8th, two days after the election, many votes in California remain uncounted.

I tried to find out how many.

It turns out that the Secretary of State of CA, responsible for elections in the state, doesn’t know.

I was told all counties in California have been asked, not ordered, to report in with those figures. It’s voluntary.

So I picked out a few of the biggest counties and called their voter registrar offices. Here are the boggling results:

Santa Clara County: 180,000 votes remain uncounted.

Orange County: 241,336 votes remain uncounted.

San Diego County: 475,000 votes remain uncounted.

LA County: 782,658 votes remain uncounted.

In just those four counties, 1.6 million votes remain uncounted.

The California Secretary of State’s website indicates that Prop 37 is behind by 559,776 votes.

So in the four counties I looked into, there are roughly three times as many uncounted votes as the margin of Prop 37′s defeat.

And as I say, I checked the numbers in only four counties. There are 54 other counties in the state. Who knows how many votes they still need to process?

So why is anyone saying Prop 37 lost?

People will say, “Well, it’s all about projections. There are experts. They know what they’re doing. They made a prediction…”

Really? Who are those experts? I have yet to find them.

For big elections, the television networks rely on a private consortium called the National Election Pool (NEP). NEP does projections and predictions. Did NEP make the premature call on Prop 37? So far I see no evidence one way or the other.

NEP makes some calls for the television networks, but NEP is composed of CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, and AP. It could hardly be called an independent source of information for those networks.

NEP has AP (Associated Press) do the actual vote tabulating, and NEP also contracts work out to Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International to do exit polls and projections based on those polls.

Edison Media Research did the exit polls in the state of Washington for this election. How? They surveyed 1493 people by phone. Based on that, I assume they made all the projections for elections in that state, even though there is no in-person voting in Washington, and voters can submit their ballots by mail, postmarked no later than election Tuesday. So how could Edison know anything worth knowing or projecting on election night?

Both Edison Research and Mitofsky were involved in the 2004 election scandal (Kerry-Bush), in which their exit polls confounded network news anchors, because the poll results were so far off from the incoming vote-counts.

Edison and Mitofsky issued a later report explaining how the disparity could have occurred; they tried to validate their own exit-poll data and the vote-count, which was like explaining a sudden shift in ocean tides by saying clouds covered the moon. It made no sense.

So if NEP did the premature Prop 37 projections that handed 37 a resounding loss, there is little reason to accept their word.

We’re faced with a scandal here. An early unwarranted projection against Prop 37 was made, when so many votes were still uncounted.

Those votes are still uncounted.

Why should we believe anything that comes next?

Jon Rappoport

The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com