"Scoop" Independent News: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0807/S00133.htm
Michael Collins: Election Fraud and Tyranny: Part 1
Banksy

"Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008"
Mark Crispin Miller (Ed.),
Ig Publishing, Brooklyn, NY

Mark Crispin Miller's new book, "Loser Take All," identifies and analyzes election fraud, the foundation of extremist power in the United States since 2000. Manipulated elections have enabled everything we've experienced from the Iraq war to the current economic meltdown. None of that would have been possible without the ongoing series of "surprise" wins for extremists and their enablers following the outright theft of the 2000 presidential election.

Miller illustrates his overarching analysis with a collection of carefully chosen essays. They map the rise of what key figures on the right and left refer to as tyrannical rule by the Bush - Cheney administration. Through a sequence of critical elections from 2000 on, Miller shows the particular outrages in each that enabled the retention and expansion of power. In doing so, he defines the basis for our current troubles.

A Sequence of Outrages
"Loser Take All" is organized sequentially beginning with the critical election of 2000 through 2006. In addition, we're given predictions of anticipated problems in 2008. Just part of what we learn is how: Gore lost Florida 2000 even before election day; key Georgia voting machines were modified before the stunning losses by Gov. Barnes and Sen. Cleland in 2002; and, Bush won 2004 in the big cities, if you believe the national exit poll. Part 1 of this series covers the 2000, 2002, and 2004 federal elections.

Larisa Alexandrovna * Michael Collins * Lance deHaven-Smith * Bob Fitrakis * Brad Freidman * David L. Griscom * James H. Gundlach * Jane Kaczmarek * Robert F. Kennedy Jr. * Paul Lehto * David W. Moore * Bruce O'Dell * Steven Rosenfeld * Michael Richardson * Jonathan Simon * Nancy Tobi

An Election Integrity Caucus has finally made its way through the bureaucratic hoops necessary to be formally recognized by the Democratic Party of Oregon (DPO)!

All of you have expressed interest in Election Integrity. If you are a registered Democrat, living in Oregon, I am hoping you will join us at this time as "official" members of the Caucus.

A good starting point for Caucus activities is to work for passage of the the DPO's 2008 Legislative Action Items (LAIs). The 2008 LAI's for Election Reform are:

* Require voter verified paper ballots and audits for all federal elections.
* Allow voters to register and vote at any time prior to the election until polls close on Election Day.
* Direct the Oregon Secretary of State to acquire, use and maintain public ownership of publicly auditable software in all aspects of elections, including election management, creation of ballot definition files and vote tallying, and to provide funds for these activities.
* Establish a Citizen's Review Panel, appointed by the Secretary of State, to oversee the implementation of the new audit provisions in the ORS code of HB 3270; prepare a report on how the audit works during its first election cycle in 2008 and recommend future improvements.
* Restore the Fairness Doctrine.
* Institute an Instant Runoff ballot system.

And, of course, the Caucus is open to exploring other issues suggested by its members.

Please write to electionintegrityor@gmail.com:

* if you would like to become a Caucus member
* if you are interested in working on any of these Legislative Action Items
* if you have additional issues you would like to bring to the EI Caucus

Our caucus webpage has recently been added to the DPO website. You can access it at www.dpo.org, through the link under the "Communities" tab.

Thanks for your interest in Election Integrity.

Dear Friends of Open Voting:

[Please pass this message to others. A copy is also on our web site at http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/blog/2008-jul-04/independence_day_message ]

Adopted 232 years ago today, we all know something about the Declaration of Independence. It's worth looking at it again. How many of us really know what it says? What is the purpose of government, according to this document?

Sure, it says we will be independent from British rule and it explains the philosophy and reasoning behind the action. Overall, it says that we-the-people run things. We can decide for ourselves. We have the right to alter the system of laws, or throw it out altogether and establish a new one -- whatever makes sense to us. The basic concept is self-governance.

Some will say it was only an idea and that, in reality, it was and remains a system created by the elite for the elite. It was a great idea, but the implementation has been poor.

Today, we the people are mere consumers of whatever they are serving. We are mesmerized by gadgetry, trained to believe we can't change things. They will do what they want.

Like everything else, the voting system is controlled by large corporations. Governments are the customers of the voting system vendors. They don't consider you to be the customer because it's been forgotten -- or they never embraced the idea -- that you are the government. This mentality is pervasive and potentially catastrophic for us and the children.

The Declaration of Independence was a great idea. We may never achieve the perfection described, but we can come much closer to it.

The voting system is only one arena where we the people need to assert oversight and control. The open voting movement has made great progress. Still, it's a struggle. People that care enough about these issues to lend support are besieged to contribute by many worthy campaigns. Horrible public policies implemented by elected officials -- elected with horrible voting technology -- have devastated our economy. Gasoline prices have nearly doubled since Election Day 2006. Our supporters are hurting, we are hurting.

OVC is now at a do-or-die moment. We have a great opportunity to show the way to a public voting system at the Linux World conference, which starts one month from today in San Francisco (AUG 4-7). We need to pull together the resources to do this. We will have to expand our base of support rapidly in the coming few weeks.

I think we can do it, but there is no guarantee. The odds are probably against us.

Bottom line: to be successful, in parallel, we have to,

1) raise enough money to finish our system and get it certified
2) build our community to a size and strength that will give officials confidence about who is taking responsibility for the software, and,
3) educate people in all our target communities

Our demonstration voting system at Linux World will help us meet all three of these needs.

We need to raise $30,000 by August 4th. John-Paul Gignac, a programmer that wrote voter interface code for our 2004 demo, started something called FOSS Factory (FOSS stands for Free Open Source Software). He continues to work for us and has now pledged $5,000 as matching funds for our fundraising drive. I am still looking for a couple of people to make similar leadership pledges. Until then, FOSS Factory will match the first $5,000 in contributions dollar-for-dollar. The Okori Group, led by Brian Fox, is also dedicating resources to the effort, including programming that will move OVC technology a large step toward commercial viability.

Part 4 of Exclusive Series with Richard Hayes Phillips, Author of Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election
By Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity Editor, OpEdNews

June 24, 2008

My fascination with this author is but a sidebar to the real story – how this important volume came this close to not getting published at all. And how, once again, the mainstream media has failed to do its traditional duty to the American people, to educate and inform. A free press is a critical element in maintaining a healthy democracy. Our founding fathers knew it. That's why the press enjoyed unique constitutional protection. One of the major functions of an emerging postal service was to distribute a myriad of newspapers and gazettes to American citizens. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without a free press or a free press without a government, I would prefer the latter." He and his cronies would be pulling out their hair over how the press has been so emasculated and co-opted, becoming little more than a mouthpiece for governmental policy and Big Business.

What happened to Phillips is hardly an isolated example. University of Pennsylvania's Steven Freeman experienced this phenomenon regarding his findings on Election Night, which ultimately became Was the 2004 presidential election stolen? exit polls, election fraud, and the official count. Mark Crispin Miller faced a similar media blackout with Fooled Again. The book got no reviews in any magazines or national newspapers, nor would any network radio or TV program have him on to talk about it--not even those on NPR or PBS, although he had appeared on many of their national shows, and more than once. (WHYY-FM, the NPR affiliate in Philadelphia, even refused to run paid ads for Fooled Again.)

Ten-second take away:
It's important that we keep this in mind every time we hear or read something. The story behind the story, what isn't heard, what's left out, tells as much about the state of the corporate media as anything else. Make efforts to become an informed consumer. And don't let Phillips' book fall into obscurity. Buy a copy for yourself and one for your local library. Read it and pass it around. We can get the word out; we just have to get a bit more creative and stop depending on traditional ways of doing it. Do your part. Order a copy of Phillips's book, which is not available in any bookstore*.

~

"How do you feel about the mainstream media not covering the story?" asked a reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, referring to evidence of fraud and suppression in the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. It was a bit late to ask this question. It was sixty-six days after the election. The Ohio electors had already been challenged, unsuccessfully, the day before, in the United States Congress.

"Every day we gave you leads which, if properly investigated, could have led to a Pulitzer Prize," I replied. Four times during the interview my words made her cry. And still, none of my words made the paper.

Why the silence of the mainstream media? Was it because John Kerry conceded too soon? Or because they don't like to run stories that have already broken on the internet? Or because they are controlled by the corporations that own them, or the government that regulates them?

A rigged presidential election is a major story, possibly the crime of the century. Already we had proof of voter suppression in Cleveland and Toledo; withholding of voting machines in Columbus; vote switching in Cleveland, Columbus, and Youngstown; and high percentages of uncounted ballots in Democratic strongholds in most of the major cities of Ohio. And we knew about the twelve southwestern counties where Kerry was awarded fewer votes than down-ticket candidates, coincident with false tabulation in Miami County, ballot alteration in Clermont County, and a phony "homeland security" lockdown in Warren County.

During this period I had been interviewed five times, always by affiliates of the Pacifica radio network. No mainstream radio station, and no television or newspaper reporter, had done so. The New York Times and the Washington Post editorialized, without looking at the evidence, that there was no fraud in the Ohio election. Those who questioned the official results were viewed as spreadsheet-wielding internet conspiracy theorists.

Note that the "mainstream" media, calling themselves "experts," were dealing in conjecture, speculating that there was no fraud, while dismissing as "theorists" those who actually examined the evidence. Indeed, if not for the internet, the story might never have gotten out.

It was an unsolicited e-mail from a mountaintop in Pennsylvania that first brought to my attention the rigged election results from Cleveland. The Columbus Free Press, an internet journal, was the first to publish my works; and this brought them to the attention of Pacifica radio. My works began appearing on websites as far away as New Zealand. At last count, a search of my name turned up 126,000 web pages. The very article you are reading was first published by OpEdNews, on the internet.

I seem to be well known and highly regarded among those who get their news from the internet. Those who rely upon television and newspapers do not even know my name.

The internet represents free speech with no quality control. Any computer-savvy web designer can create a website that looks thoroughly professional from an artistic viewpoint, and then post unsubstantiated or scurrilous information and call it "news." Even so, I find this a fair price to pay for the last bastion of free speech. The alternative would be yet another news outlet under government or corporate control.

Readers are well advised to view with skepticism anything on the internet. Blogs, rants, and phony "reporting" create so much noise that it difficult for reliable voices to be heard. Four things gave my work traction: I wrote in plain English; I used simple arithmetic; I presented the raw data; and, most importantly, I gave my real name, my address, and my phone number. I do not need to hide behind a user ID or an e-mail handle.

I stand by my work. And I could defend my work, and elaborate upon it, if the "mainstream" media would only give me the opportunity. I can take on all challengers because my knowledge of what happened in Ohio is far deeper than what is set forth in my book.

The "mainstream" media makes much of "the public's right to know." They chant this mantra in defense of even the most inappropriate invasions of privacy. But only the "alternative" media recognizes the public's right to know that our elections are rigged.

To this day, the most comprehensive and well-documented article on the stolen 2004 election in Ohio, written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was published in Rolling Stone magazine. My own voice has been heard on National Public Radio, but only once, when we filed in federal court to protect the ballots from destruction. The story made the Yahoo home page, and some of the major newspapers. That is as close as we have gotten to the mainstream.

~

To order a copy of Richard Hayes Phillips's book, use this link.
*Update: This book is now available in bookstores in Canton, Ithaca, and Columbus, only. They are, sadly, the exceptions that prove the rule.

Series Archives:

Part One: Why I was able to become an Election Fraud Investigator
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Exclusive-with-Richard-Hay-by-Joan-Brunwasser-080612-229.html

Part Two: Being Multi-faceted in a Two-Dimensional Society
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Exclusive-with-Richard-Hay-by-Joan-Brunwasser-080617-109.html

Part Three: The Broken Contract Lies Upon My Office Floor
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Broken-Contract-Lies-U-by-Joan-Brunwasser-080620-432.html

Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., has been the leading investigator of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. His long-awaited book, "Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election," was recently published.

This book is the document of record, based upon actual forensic evidence. Phillips examined 126,000 ballots, 127 poll books, 141 voter signature books, and other records, enabling him to prove that the election was rigged.

The book is hard bound, cloth cover, with 448 pages of text and tables, eight pages of color photographs, and a CD containing 1200 images of evidence from Ohio. Phillips' work was relied upon by John Conyers in challenging the Ohio electors, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in writing his article for Rolling Stone magazine, and Judge Algenon Marbley in issuing his court order protecting the ballots from destruction. Kennedy has called it "irrefutable evidence."

For more information, or to purchase the book, click: http://www.witnesstoacrime.com

To contact the author: richardhayesphillips@yahoo.com

May 5, 2008
By Joan Brunwasser

Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008, edited by Mark Crispin Miller

Warning: This book will make you uncomfortable. Mark Crispin Miller pulls no punches. He's happy to spread the blame around – politicians, the Religious Right, corporate interests, election officials, the corporate media, voting machine vendors, fanatics for whom victory is all that matters – all (and more) come in for legitimate criticism. The biggest villains of the piece are those in the GOP who seek nothing less than a permanent power grab and have a grand plan in place to pull it off. Miller described the plan in his previous book:

And right now, as we dawdle, Bush's party and the movement that it serves are busily advancing measures to consolidate their "victory" by making fair elections more unlikely…The point of all such stealthy actions is to rein in, control and thus in essence terminate American democracy – a plan that we believers in American democracy can foil, but only if we acknowledge that that plan is in the works, and that it made great progress in 2004. (Fooled Again, The Real Case for Electoral Reform, p. xvii)

Miller has been diagnosing our electoral ills longer than almost anyone. Over the last few years, he has been continually fine-tuning his message – with Fooled Again, then its expanded and updated version, and now Loser Take All. Miller is meticulous; his analysis is clear, taking the time to connect the dots in a way that is hard to refute by weaving together the chapters of investigative journalists, election experts, and activists. Two highlights from a stellar group: David Moore's "Because Jeb said so: What really happened on Election Night in Florida" starts the collection off with a bang. And in "Election 2004: The Urban Legend," Michael Collins persuasively dismantles the traditional GOP explanation for all their gains. The book bristles with statistics, graphs, and charts, but is not too technical for the average, concerned citizen.

The clock is ticking. Our heel-dragging – borne of naïveté, misplaced idealism, or denial – makes us enablers in our own doom. As Jonathan Simon and Bruce O'Dell explain in "Landslide Denied," the truth endangers the way we see ourselves, both as individuals and as a nation. Ironically, in our never-ending war on terror, we have less to fear from outsiders than we do from the enemies within. Like a flesh-eating disease that consumes its host, the anti-democratic forces are a poison quietly and stealthily diffusing throughout the body politic.

Nancy Tobi has written extensively about HAVA (the Help America Vote Act of 2002) and the profoundly negative effect it has had on the way our elections are run. The EAC, the misnamed Election Assistance Commission, was created by HAVA to be a national clearinghouse for election information. It has failed miserably at that task. In addition, its stated goal is to create an entirely opaque system without any remnant of paper to get in the way, as Tobi puts it, "Where one computer will check (verify) another. In the EAC paperless verifiable voting scheme, the voter is so incidental as to completely disappear..."

She continues,

The destabilizing effect on America's mechanism of democracy has been substantial…corporate voting company employees have become part of the election process, assisting poll workers in the use of voting equipment, administering "fixes" when the equipment malfunctions, and keeping vote data and election results in "black box" secret vaults, far away from public scrutiny. A Republican House attorney involved in the drafting of HAVA once remarked to me that "They are trying to complexify our elections to the point where citizens have no idea what is going on." (p. 218)

According to a Zogby poll taken in mid-August 2006, 92% of Americans believe that the public should have the right to observe vote counting and obtain information about the election process. We are heading in what the public recognizes as exactly the wrong direction.

Steven Rosenfeld writes about how updated Jim Crow pervades our elections. Rosenfeld points to a stratagem that allows a minority party to overcome serious demographic disadvantage and hold onto power by pre-emptively keeping voters from the polls. Voter intimidation and vote suppression have been enhanced by both HAVA and the wonders of modern technology. The state of Florida succeeded in wresting the presidency away from Al Gore in 2000 by developing a database of supposed felons that intentionally disenfranchised tens of thousands of legal, largely African-American voters. That technique has been expanded and used to great effect in every election since then. HAVA required that all voter registration databases be computerized. This election will be the first time that the system will be in place nationwide. And this is just one of the many disenfranchisement wild cards that can affect the outcome in November.

In the meantime, party loyalists, whose fierce allegiance seems to be the sole criterion for their hiring, have infiltrated every corner of our government and public life. It goes far beyond Katrina's Michael "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie!" Brown. The firings of not-political-enough Republican US attorneys who refused to fabricate voter fraud and/or other cases against Democrats right before elections, and the gutting of careerists at the Department of Justice are just two examples. Don't think I'm crying "wolf." Here's what Joseph Rich, former chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil rights division (1999 -2005), has to say on the subject. In "Bush's long history of tilting Justice", Rich writes,

[The DOJ's voting section] has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

So, the critical question arises: cui bono (who benefits) from all this?

Looking toward the 2008 election, it appears the purges – as well as the new voter ID laws, restrictions on registration drives, and stricter rules for counting provisional ballots – could be a new and legal way to accomplish a longstanding GOP electoral tactic: thinning the ranks of likely Democratic voters." (Rosenfeld, p. 238)

The stench of fascism is in the air. The combination of intimidation, the stifling of dissent, the politicization of everything, and the clamping down on whistleblowers rather than their targets, all work together to send a message as clearly as any broken window, or graffitied wall. Give up, you can't win, we're too strong, we will crush you. All they want from us is our acquiescence. Just remaining silent is enough.

If you are still skeptical, you need look no farther than, "The Ordeal of Don Siegelman." Larissa Alexandrova writes about how the former Alabama governor was railroaded in such a travesty of justice that a bi-partisan group of 52 former states attorney generals have called for an investigation. What happened to Siegelman was horrible but, apparently, not unique. I recommend reading this short but thorough article in its entirety to get the scope of the problem. "Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys"

Here's a taste,

In two states [Alabama and Mississippi] where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced 10 suspicious incidents including break-ins and arson.

These crimes raise serious questions about possible use of deliberate intimidation tactics not only because of who the victims are and the already wide criticism of the prosecutions to begin with, but also because of the suspicious nature of each incident individually as well as the pattern collectively.

The picture is grim. We can't shoot the messenger; and even if we could, it wouldn't make the message go away. Hopefully, Miller's book will cause people to sit up and take notice. I hate it when people are lambasted for speaking out about our country. Discussion, debate, and dissent are the lifeblood of true democracy. That is a point too often glossed over or forgotten of late.

The Oregonian recently published the following letter by Oregon VRC Chair, Nancy Matela.

Please also see and hear the candidates for yourself. Click the image on the right for Part One of the recent Secretary of State Candidate Forum on Election Integrity! [14]

Walker has Integrity [15]
May 4, 2008

The Oregonian missed an important opportunity to advance election integrity in Oregon in overlooking Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, for secretary of state.

The Oregon Voter Rights Coalition is the leading election integrity activist organization in Oregon with grass-roots supporters statewide. We have observed that Walker has shown a genuine belief in the importance of election integrity and has demonstrated a superior, objective understanding of Oregon's election system. She is the one candidate to openly acknowledge that our election system, although very good, is tarnished by secret electronic counting processes and that the machine-tallied results are not verified.

She is also the one candidate who promises to address these problems when in office. Her track record in the state Legislature has proved that she does what's right rather than what's politically expedient.

NANCY MATELA
Chairwoman Oregon Voter Rights Coalition Southeast Portland

CONTACT: Judy Barnes 503-232-1911; jbarnes@hevanet.com

**** Press Event Saturday, May 3, 2008 ****

Who: Democratic Candidates for Secretary of State Kate Brown, Rick Metzger and Vicki Walker, Election Integrity Advocates and Portland area voters

When: Saturday, May 3, 2008 from 10 am – 1 pm

10 AM – 12 N: Election Integrity Forum with Democratic candidates for Secretary of State

12 N - 1 PM: Reception. Meet Candidates and Election Integrity Advocates

Where: First Unitarian Church at 1211 SW Main

** PORTLAND AREA VOTERS TO QUIZ CANDIDATES FOR SECRETARY OF STATE ON ELECTION INTEGRITY ISSUES **

[Portland, OR] As May 20th primary ballots hit mailboxes, Portland area voters and citizen activists will raise election integrity issues with Democratic candidates for Secretary of State. Contenders for what many call the “second most important elected office in Oregon” will be asked their views on issues including big money in elections, how to increase voter choice, and the reliability of corporate-owned ballot counting software and hardware. A reception for candidates will follow the forum, with booths by over a dozen election advocacy organizations that are already grappling with these issues.

Study after study reveals that Oregonians are concerned about the health of our democracy and the election process in particular.

“I’m tired of having to vote for the lesser of two evils”, said David Delk of the Alliance for Democracy. “People want real choice, they want elections that focus on issues and elected officials who do what we elect them to do”.

Recent revelations about electronic voting software and hardware being decertified in other states, and hostile takeover bids in the voting machine industry, only add to voter concerns.

“In Oregon our mail-in ballots are counted by optical scanners run with corporate-owned software so secret even the Secretary of State can’t see it. How can I be sure my vote is counted as cast? Am I just supposed to take it on faith?”, asked Linda Schmoldt, a member of First Unitarian’s Democracy Action Group.

Oregon’s next Secretary of State could play a vital role in making elections fairer, more transparent and more reliable, but Oregon’s democracy will only flourish so long as citizens do the work of keeping it healthy.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Hosted by: Democracy Action Group of Portland’s First Unitarian Church and Portland Chapter of Alliance for Democracy
For more information contact: Judy Barnes at 503-232-1911 or visit www.afd-pdx.org/SOS.htm

**** Excellent visuals: all three Democratic Secretary of State candidates, just in time for the mail-out of primary ballots; booths by over a dozen election advocacy groups; participants voting in a “mock” election, using an Instant Runoff ballot.