In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank,
grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate
its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and
easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election
turned.
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1529
Departments
Election 2004
Powerful Government Accounting Office report confirms key
2004 stolen election findings
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 26, 2005
As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the
Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government
report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their
alleged election to the White House is crumbling.
The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that
the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely
powerful, penetrating report from the General Accounting
Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media
coverage.
The government's lead investigative agency is known for
its general incorruptibility and its through, in-depth
analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely
dismissed as "conspiracy theories" adds crucial new weight
to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business
being in the White House.
Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat
John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate
electronic voting machines as they were used during the
November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came
amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that
often shocking irregularities defined their performance.
According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee
received "more than 57,000 complaints" following Bush's
alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized
under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits
in public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by
the Free Press and other election protection
organizations.
The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, "some of
[the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been
realized and have caused problems with recent elections,
resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."
The United States is the only major democracy that allows
private partisan corporations to secretly count and
tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent
software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted
that "public elections must not be conducted on
privately-owned machines." The CEO of one of the most
crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren
O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to
deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush.
Bush's official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775
votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election
protection advocates argue that O'Dell's statement still
stands as a clear sign of an effort, apparently
successful, to steal the White House.
Among other things, the GAO confirms that:
1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast
ballots or system audit logs, thus making it possible to
alter them without detection." In other words, the GAO
now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an
open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000
votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines,
some seven times Bush's official margin of victory.
2. "It is easy to alter a file defining how a ballot
appears, making it possible for someone to vote for one
candidate and actually be recorded as voting for an
entirely different candidate." Numerous sworn statements
and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.
3. "Falsifying election results without leaving any
evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards"
can easily be done, according to the GAO.
4. The GAO also confirms that "access to the voting
network was easily compromised because not all digital
recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory
functions password-protected, so access to one machine
provided access to the whole network." This critical
finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not
require a "widespread conspiracy" but rather the
cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the
power to tap into the networked machines and thus change
large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast
on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed
to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one
programmer.
5. Access "to the voting network was also compromised by
repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily
guessed passwords," says the GAO. So even relatively
amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered
the Ohio vote tallies.
6. "The locks protecting access to the system were easily
picked and keys were simple to copy," says the GAO,
meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy
matter.
7. "One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such
a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine
would cause the entire network to fail," says the GAO,
re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the
Presidency of the United States was decided.
8. "GAO identified further problems with the security
protocols and background screening practices for vendor
personnel," confirming still more easy access to the
system.
In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank,
grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate
its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and
easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election
turned.
The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the
context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State
simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney
campaign. Far from what election theft skeptics have long
asserted, the GAO findings confirm that the electronic
network on which 800,000 Ohio votes were cast was
vulnerable enough to allow a a tiny handful of operatives
-- or less -- to turn the whole vote count using personal
computers operating on relatively simple software.
The GAO documentation flows alongside other crucial
realities surrounding the 2004 vote count. For example:
The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an
unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush.
Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada
and New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility.
A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former
ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the
ballot-making machine in Auglaize County
Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at
least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to
Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry's name saw Bush's name
light up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim
the problems were quickly solved, but sworn statements and
affidavits say otherwise. They confirm similar problems
in Franklin County (Columbus). Kerry's margins in both
counties were suspiciously low.
A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25
million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed.
In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a
so-called "electronic transfer glitch" gave Bush nearly
4000 extra votes when only 638 people voted at that
polling place. The tally was allegedly corrected, but
remains infamous as the "loaves and fishes" vote count.
In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that
their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper
trail.
In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the
county's central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote -
19,000 more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for
Bush at the same percentage as prior to the additional
votes, a virtual statistical impossibility.
In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals
turned up for obscure third party candidates in
traditional Democratic African-American wards. Vote
counts in neighboring wards showed virtually no votes for
those candidates, with 90% going instead for Kerry.
Prior to one of Blackwell's illegitimate "show recounts,"
technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up
unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and
removed the computer hard drive.
In response to official information requests, Shelby and
other counties admit to having discarded key records and
equipment before any recount could take place.
In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff
Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry
confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that
had a touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no
correlation with ethnicity, social class or traditional
party affiliation---only with the fact that touchscreen
machines were used.
In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that "by and
large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average
voter is getting a lemon - the Ford Pinto of voting
technology. We must demand better."
But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting
machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly
engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with
minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough
votes to put George W. Bush back in the White House.
Given the growing body of evidence, it appears
increasingly clear that's exactly what happened.
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE
GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008,
available via http://freepress.org and
http://harveywasserman.com. Their WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO,
with Steve Rosenfeld, will be published in Spring, 2006,
by New Press.
--
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