TODAY'S TOPICS: Kucinich Calls for Recount!, Huckabee Unplugged, "Surge" Truths, "Free" Trade, Voter Supression
Before I get to the fantastic news that Kucinich is calling for precisely the kind of recount I did yesterday...here's some of the numbers:
These were the results as of 96% precincts reporting...as you can see, we're talking about a 8.5% swing to Hillary in Diebold counted areas (add the "differences")...notice also, that the machine counts (80% of votes counted this way) are nearly IDENTICAL, but "flipped" in favor of Hillary, as the hand counts. I will get into this more next post...but word is the numbers are EXACTLY the same, as if they were flipped...to the thousandth of a percent.
Columns represent: 1. Hand counts 2. Diebold counts and 3. "Difference between them"
Clinton 35.17% 40.71% 5.54%
Obama 39.20% 36.24% -2.96%
KUCINICH CALLS FOR A HAND COUNT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE BALLOTS
Kucinich asks for New Hampshire recount in the interest of election integrity
DETROIT, MI – Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the most outspoken advocate in the Presidential field and in Congress for election integrity, paper-ballot elections, and campaign finance reform, has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of Tuesday’s election because of “unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots.”
...He added, “Ever since the 2000 election – and even before – the American people have been losing faith in the belief that their votes were actually counted. This recount isn’t about who won 39% of 36% or even 1%. It’s about establishing whether 100% of the voters had 100% of their votes counted exactly the way they cast them.”
Kucinich, who drew about 1.4% of the New Hampshire Democratic primary vote, wrote, “This is not about my candidacy or any other individual candidacy. It is about the integrity of the election process.” No other Democratic candidate, he noted, has stepped forward to question or pursue the claims being made.
“New Hampshire is in the unique position to address – and, if so determined, rectify – these issues before they escalate into a massive, nationwide suspicion of the process by which Americans elect their President. Based on the controversies surrounding the Presidential elections in 2004 and 2000, New Hampshire is in a prime position to investigate possible irregularities and to issue findings for the benefit of the entire nation,” Kucinich wrote in his letter.
“Without an official recount, the voters of New Hampshire and the rest of the nation will never know whether there are flaws in our electoral system that need to be identified and addressed at this relatively early point in the Presidential nominating process,” said Kucinich...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5544
HUCKABEE FILES: SHOULD THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD BELIEVE IN SCIENCE?
"I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."
-- Mike Huckabee at a Baptist convention in 1998 on why he got into politics (a leading GOP candidate for PRESIDENT!!)
"biblical principles of marriage and family life," including one that said that a "wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."
-- a Huckabee signed newspaper ad in USA Today
"I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk..." (1992)
When asked about his remark in December 2007, he reaffirmed it:
"Well I believe it would be--just like lying is sinful and stealing is sinful."
-- Huckabee
"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus…we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague. It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population..."
-- Mike Huckabee in 1992, apparently unaware AIDS is not a plague, and cannot be spread by casual contact
"I do not necessarily buy into the traditional Darwinian theory, personally…If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, I'll accept that,"
-- Huckabee, thankfully accepting our ignorance
A 2005 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Americans believe that "God created humans in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it." Reported The Chicago Tribune: "The results closely paralleled those in polls taken over the last 20 years, in which nearly half of all Americans consistently agreed that 'God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.'" In light of Tocqueville's warning that democracy requires well-educated and well-informed citizens in order to function, it's alarming that many of these people vote.
Ted Rall breaks down why Huckabee should scare us…
Mike Huckabee isn't qualified for public office. He may not be smart enough to hold a job. Yet he could become our next president.
Huckabee is an affable, funny, ordinary Joe on a shoestring budget who trounced a slick multimillionaire. But he's also a crazy Christian. And he won because crazy Christians motivated by anti-Mormon bigotry voted for him.
In the Republican Party, hate trumps cash.
If Huckabee were Muslim, he'd be a radical Islamist… The ex-preacher/ex-governor is entitled to his extreme religious beliefs. His inability to reason logically is what makes his political ascendancy frightening.
There's no denying Huckabee's folksy appeal. He sounds moderate, even populist, on issues like immigration, trade and the environment. But those sugar coatings conceal the bitter pill of anti-intellectualism, a toxin that has turned the American presidency into an entropic argument against evolution--from Washington and Jefferson, to Hoover and FDR, then to the Ford and the Bushes and finally...Huckabee?
SNIP
Those who deny scientific fact will be wrong (or lie) about anything. Misrepresenting hard and fast truth is unacceptable. Whether Huckabee is feigning idiocy to appeal to religious zealots or is honestly mentally deficient, journalists have a duty not to treat him like a serious candidate.
END
VIDEO SECTION
A comic interlude from what may be an honest to goodness vote theft in NH…the Daily Show’s take on Hillary’s tears shifting the entire election…and Giuliani using the incident to talk about what else? 9/11:
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/73315/
Kerry endorses Obama…I’ve got to say, I really feel for Edwards right now…he’s so good, and he’s so right on so many things, but Obama is just too much…he’s a virtual phenomenon (which I predicted way, way back). The great question will be how he uses his great skills and talents? How courageous will he be in taking on the “powers”? How bold will he be in charting a new direction…not just talking about one? Many questions to be answered, but his potential is undeniable.
As C&L note:
While it remains to be seen how much impact this will have in South Carolina–a state that John Edwards won in 2004–it does tend to confirm the whisperings about the fallout between Edwards and Kerry after the 2004 election that Kerry did not contest, despite Edwards’ desire to. What IS invaluable to Obama is the access to Kerry’s mailing lists for outreach and fundraising.
Watch he and Kerry here…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/10/john-kerry-endorses-barack-obama/
David Letterman has a couple good bits, particularly on Romney:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/10/david-letterman-on-political-life-now/
Olbermann continues to countdown – and help us remember - Bush administration scandals…adding 3 more to the list (which may have passed 50):
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/10/bushed-kbr-rape-case-cia-waterboarding-tapes-and-katrina/
And three more scandals in Olbermann’s countdown…its important we don’t forget…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/11/bushed-ashcroft-waterboarding-and-wiretapping-phone-bills/
Rachelle Maddow breaks down yet another classic Giuliani blunder… saying all Americans must speak and write in English to become a citizen while simultaneously running an ad in Florida in Spanish! Nice…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/10/giuliani-says-immigrants-must-speak-english-airs-political-ad-in-spanish/
ARTICLE SECTION…
Sadly, history, as it is apt to do when dealing with issues related to war and conquest, is being re-written. We are currently being programmed to believe that A. the “surge” is working and B. to forget the reasons why not only the surge was initiated but to even forget the fundamental truths about this invasion and the subsequent occupation: it was based on lies, it is illegal, it is making us less safe, it is costing us lives and treasure, and the Iraqis DON’T WANT US THERE!
Finally, a Democrat is standing up to stop the mind control operation that is leading us to believe this god damn “surge” is a success! Every Dem needs to start confronting this new myth before its too late! How can increasing the level of something illegal be right or good?
Wexler, the same congressman calling for impeachment, writes this manifesto:
A new troubling myth has taken hold in Washington and it is critical that the record is set straight. According to the mainstream media, Republicans, and unfortunately even some Democrats, the President's surge in Iraq has been a resounding success. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. This assertion is disingenuous, factually incorrect, and negatively impacts America's national security. The Surge had a clear and defined objective - to create stability and security - enabling the Iraqi government to enact lasting political solutions and foster genuine reconciliation and cooperation between Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds. This has not happened.
SNIP
Enough is enough: While the Administration over-commits American forces in Iraq, we see Al Qaeda-regrouping and Osama Bin Laden still at large. We remain seriously bogged down in Afghanistan, and are witnessing a crisis in Pakistan that has left a nuclear country on the brink of a meltdown. America's resources and attention are desperately needed elsewhere and our soldiers must no longer be needlessly sacrificed as we wait for Iraqis to stand up. The Surge has failed. If my colleagues gullibly accept the moving rationale for the Surge, just as so many have for the war itself, we will have failed as well.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010908S.shtml
This is about as good a breakdown of why corporate written free trade agreements have been such a disaster, and the recent Peru trade deal, sadly supported by both Obama and Clinton, is more of the same.
A few clips:
It is a violation of truth in advertising to call NAFTA or the current deal free trade. Classic free trade agreements of the sort celebrated in the economics courses of my generation, such as Paul Samuelson’s, talked about the efficiency and win-win gains to two nations when tariffs (taxes on imports) were removed. NAFTA and the current agreement lower tariffs, but NAFTA went beyond classical free trade agreements by extending to a larger international arena strong forms of economic protectionism for particular producers.
Patent and copyright principles developed in the U.S. market are now to be imposed on all signatories to future corporate trade agreements. Indeed, this is one of the major reasons U.S. corporate lobbies push so hard to keep expanding the reach of these treaties. Signatories to these pacts are now obliged to accept monopoly control over the production and distribution of new technologies and drugs. This monopoly protection over certain industries, often justified with claims of “incentives for further research,” is a clear violation of the principles of market freedom so often touted by mainstream economists.
SNIP
NAFTA is not the sole cause of working-class woes in the past two decades. It has not sucked away millions of jobs, as its most demagogic opponents claimed, but the unequal terms of trade it guarantees combined with a fierce domestic attack on unions, the minimum wage and occupational regulation have placed intense pressure on the working class.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/08/6247/
BAD NEWS...
Supreme Court looks to be 5-4 to uphold Voting ID rules and purge the voting rolls…
By: John Amato @ 12:45 PM - PST
I’m calling this charade the “Preemptive doctrine on Voting Rights.” The hearing has begun and John Roberts is doing his part to aid the Republican machine in purging huge amounts of minorities and the elderly off of our voting rolls. They understand full well that a large percentage of these voters will not cast their ballot for the Giuliani–”Speak English” only party. The NY Times explains:
There are many ways to lose a Supreme Court case, and by the end of an argument that was before the court on Wednesday, the Democrats who were challenging Indiana’s voter-identification law appeared poised to lose theirs in a potentially sweeping way, with implications for many future election cases and in a way that will make it harder to challenge this canard again.
The justices’ questioning indicated that a majority did not accept the challengers’ basic argument — that voter-impersonation fraud is not a problem, so requiring voters to produce government-issued photo identification at the polls is an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.
The tenor of the argument suggested, however, that rather than simply decide the case in favor of the state, a majority of five justices would go further and rule that the challenge to the statute, the strictest voter-identification law in the country, was improperly brought in the first place. Such a ruling could make it much more difficult to challenge any new state election regulations before they go into effect.
Here’s Roberts doing his thing.
Chief Justice Roberts, who grew up in Indiana, did not seem to find the burden excessive.
“County seats aren’t very far for people in Indiana,” he said. Mr. Smith replied that the county seat in Lake County was a 17-mile bus ride from the county’s urban center of Gary. “If you’re indigent, that’s a significant burden,” he said. The chief justice also seemed unimpressed by the absence of known voter impersonators. “It’s a type of fraud that, because it’s fraud, it’s hard to detect,” he said to Mr. Smith…read on
Friday, January 11, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: EXIT POLLS Predicted Obama!; Diebold Precincts Swung 7% to Clinton; NH Diebold Contractor Convicted Drug-Trafficker
I’m experiencing a déjà vu nightmare! We now have the two key pieces of data I was waiting for yesterday that could help answer the question of whether we should be worried the NH results weren't correct: exit poll data and machine versus hand count tally comparisons.
Unfortunately both point to something possibly very disturbing. The exit polls have been released, and they too had Obama winning by 7 points (which fits exactly with the 8 point average all polls were showing the day before the election, and exits showed last minute deciders split evenly between Obama and Clinton). Further, initial analyses of vote tallies in Diebold districts versus hand counted ones have also been done, and they show Hillary winning machine counted areas and losing hand counted ones.
So to recap:
· All pre-polling showing Obama winning by an average of 8 points.
· Exit polls showing Obama winning by 7 points.
· A discrepancy between machine versus hand counted tallies in the Clinton and Obama race (swing of 7 points in Hillary's favor...if these are taken away, then the vote count WOULD nearly match exit polls).
· All polls being dead on accurate with every single candidate except Hillary.
· All known indicators (crowd size, turnout, momentum, etc.), experts, reporters on the ground, and well, EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING, pointing to an Obama win.
· There was a 7 point swing to hillary in Diebold counted districts.
· 80% of NH votes are counted by one private firm, using demonstrably hackable voting machines (same ones black box voting hacked in Florida), and owned by a convicted felon. Therefore 80% of all votes have not actually been counted or seen...we are going by what the computer tells us only.
· A HUGE motive for both the Clintons and/or the Republican Party to stop the Obama phenomenon - that if successful in NH - would have ended the Clinton dynasty while nearly ensuring the Republicans would have to face a much stronger opponent in November.
· An unprecedented, and what all agree to be the most miraculous and incomprehensible upset in political history, with a candidate everyone considered dead, against a candidate that was drawing record crowds and energy, coming back from as much as 10-12 points down in the last day to win by three.
· And one ludicrous theory after another presented by the nit wit pundits and corporate media for what happened - running the gamut from wildly unprecedented to ludicrous to highly unlikely – adds to my concern that they are, once again, overlooking the simplest and most obvious explanation staring them right in the face (think Ockham's razor): the vote count is wrong.
SOLUTION: We need a hand count of the paper ballots that were "counted" by Diebold machines, then have the tallies compared. Unlike with touchscreen machines, NH DOES have a paper record...this must be contrasted with the machine count.
Now I will give you Brad’s opening statement today, and all the new data I alluded to above:
“A lot of rather significant new news on the New Hampshire front. As we note the MSM is finally jumping in to this, with several stories we'll cover later today, a point of clarity: We have never charged the NH election was "rigged."
We have charged only that it certainly could have been, given the machines and companies (Diebold and LHS Associates) who privately, and secretly, ran the election on indisputably tamperable and error-prone machines. Most notably though, we've tried to express our biggest concern, that 80% of the ballots in NH have never been counted by anyone at all.
We believe voters ballots should be counted in an election -- as radical and "conspiratorial" (apparently) as that notion is. Especially in an election for which nobody has so far been able to offer a legitimate explanation for the results.”
Chris Matthews: Raw EXIT POLL Data 'Indicated Significant Victory' for Obama in NH
'Was Ahead an Average of 8 Points, Even in Our Own Exit Polls'
Even the Exit Polls showed that Obama should have won, according to Chris Matthews on Hardball today. It's the first specific indication that we've seen that the raw, unadjusted Exit Poll data, which only corporate mainstream media folks, not mere mortals, are allowed to see, confirmed all of the pre-election polling which predicted an Obama win.
He introduced his segment today this way (video at link below):
MATTHEWS: So what accounts for Hillary Clinton's victory in New Hampshire? What we don't know is why the victory is so much different in fact, then the polling ahead of time, including what we call the Exit Polls were telling us. Obama was ahead in those polls by an average of 8 points, and even our own Exit Polls, taken as people came out of voting, showed him ahead. So what's going on here?
All of them twisted and turned and contorted and grappled and speculated, coming up with every possible unverifiable, backwards-engineered explanation, save for the one that must not be named. The 600 lb. canary in the virtual living room...the fact that no human being has bothered to check what was actually on NH's vast majority of ballots (80%) which were "counted" by error-prone, hackable Diebold optical-scan machines, all controlled by one bad, horribly irresponsible private company, who has no business being anywhere near a public election...
And yet, as all the talking heads continue to use data from those post-election-adjusted Exit Polls, as speculative reasons why Clinton was announced the winner ("higher than expected female turnout" "voters who make less than $50k"), Politico's Roger Simon, at the end of the Hardball segment, asks the question about NH '08, that we've been asking about 2004 for years: "If the exit polls got the results wrong, why do we think they got the demographics right?"
Did anything go wrong in New Hampshire? Who knows? The Pre-Election Polling indicates it did. The unadjusted Exit Polling, at least according to Matthews, indicates it did. But until we realize we need to actually count ballots --- openly and transparently --- in our American elections, we expect these same questions and nightmares will continue, over and over and over, for a very long time to come...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5535
7 Point Swing for Clinton Over Obama in NH's Diebold Precincts
Analaysis Shows Candidates 'Positions Swapped' Where Ballots Counted by Hand Versus 'Counted' by Machine...
What the informal statistics show is that Hillary Clinton received a 4.5% boost in towns using Diebold voting machines compared to towns that didn't. Meanwhile, Obama was hurt in these towns showing a 2.5% decrease in the Diebold towns.
Update: Some more statistics from the data shows that Obama in non-Diebold towns garnering 38.7% of the vote to Clinton's 36.2%. The results in Diebold towns show the exact opposite: Clinton with 40.7% of the vote and Obama with 36.2%. Not only are the positions swapped but the informal statistics have the second place candidate holding 36.2% in both cases, which could easily be a pure coincidence.
What doesn't make a lot of sense to me right now and this could be a mathematical mistake on my part is where Clinton got the extra 2% of votes in Diebold towns. All the other numbers almost exact for every candidate, even Edwards who recieved 17% of the vote in Diebold towns compared to 17.6% in non-Diebold towns. That still doesn't make up for the extra 2% vote Clinton is receiving when she leads in certain towns compared to when Obama has the lead.
Update II: Another thing to keep in mind when looking at these statistics is that the Diebold machines create a 7 point difference (+4.5 for Clinton, -2.5 for Obama) which is exactly what the polls had been predicting. Again, I'm not explicitly stating there has been fraud, but in a supposed democracy such as ours, skepticism is a virtue and necessity.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5540
New Docs: Exec at NH's Diebold Vote Counting Firm Convicted of Narcotics Trafficking
Ken Hajjar, Director of Diebold's Exclusive Sales & Service Provider in New England Pled Guilty to Criminal Charges in 90's
Does the Sec. of State of NH --- or CT or MA or VT or ME --- Even Know About It?...
Does the Secretary of State of New Hampshire have any idea that a key executive in the private firm that programs and "counts" 80% of the state's ballots on hackable, error-prone Diebold voting machines is a convicted narcotics trafficker?...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5537
And this write up is BEFORE the exit poll numbers were known or the breakdown of diebold versus non-diebold districts:
Tribune Media: MSM Failed to Note 'Hackable Diebold Red Flags' in New Hampshire Primary Results
Syndicated Columnist Robert Koehler Writes for Tomorrow's Papers: 'Possibility of Tainted Results, a Prospect Most of Media Can't Bear'
Notes Problems With NH's Diebold Machines 'Remain Unsolved'...
PRIMARY CONCERNS
By Robert C. KoehlerTribune Media Services
“As the breathless sports coverage of the presidential primaries bursts around me this morning, I’m doing my best to resist surrendering to the contrived drama about “comeback kids” and the flying shrapnel of numbers and hold onto my troubled skepticism about the electoral process, or at least most of it.
First of all, before we get too enthusiastic about feminist solidarity or wax knowingly about New Hampshire Democrats’ traditional soft-heartedness toward the Clinton family, let’s ponder yet again the possibility of tainted results, which is such an unfun prospect most of the media can’t bear to remember that all the problems we’ve had with electronic voting machines — and Diebold machines in particular, which dominate New Hampshire polling places — remain unsolved.
Did the Hillary campaign really defy the pollsters? She had been trailing Barack Obama by 13 percentage points, 42 to 29, in a recent Zogby poll, as election watchdog Brad Friedman pointed out. And the weekend’s “rapturous packed rallies for Mr. Obama,” as the New York Times put it, “suggested Mrs. Clinton was in dire shape.”
So when she emerged from the Tuesday primary with an 8,000-vote and 3-percentage-point victory over Obama, perhaps — considering the notorious unreliability, not to mention hackability, of Diebold machines — the media might have hoisted a few red flags in the coverage, rather than immediately chalk the results up to Clinton’s tears and voter unpredictability. (Oh, if only more reporters considered red flags patriotic.)
The fact is, whatever actually happened in New Hampshire voting booths on Tuesday, our elections are horrifically insecure. For instance, Bev Harris, of the highly respected voting watchdog organization Black Box Voting, recently wrote that the Diebold 1.94w optical scan machines used in some 55 percent of New Hampshire precincts (representing more than 80 percent of the state’s voters) are “the exact same make, model and version hacked in the Black Box Voting project in Leon County (Florida)” a few years ago. They haven’t been upgraded; the security problems haven’t been fixed.
National, or at least media, denial about this situation doesn’t say much for the strength of our democracy.”
END
On that note, SIGN THE MOVE ON PETITION FOR PAPER BALLOTS!
This Sunday's cover story in The New York Times Magazine makes plain the threat: The winner of the 2008 presidential election could be decided by flawed, insecure, and hackable electronic voting machines.1This is the most prominent news coverage this issue has ever gotten, so it could be our one last chance to get this right before the election in November.
Congress is poised to consider a new emergency paper ballots bill next week—but we'll have to convince them to act right away.2
Can you sign this urgent petition asking local, state, and federal officials to require paper ballots for our votes?
Clicking here will add your name:
http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1670215-nQWkPv&t=4
The petition says:
"We must act quickly to secure our elections with paper ballots and audits before November." Elections are run at the state level, so we'll deliver your signature and comments to local election officials in addition to members of Congress.
Electronic voting machines are so unreliable and insecure, we might elect the wrong person president in 2008. As The New York Times Magazine reports:
[Voting machines] fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways; voters report that their choices "flip" from one candidate to another before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count backward; votes simply vanish. (In the 80-person town of Waldenburg, Ark., touch-screen machines tallied zero votes for one mayoral candidate in 2006—even though he's pretty sure he voted for himself.) Most famously, in the November 2006 Congressional election in Sarasota, Fla., touch-screen machines recorded an 18,000-person "undervote" for a race decided by fewer than 400 votes.3
I’m experiencing a déjà vu nightmare! We now have the two key pieces of data I was waiting for yesterday that could help answer the question of whether we should be worried the NH results weren't correct: exit poll data and machine versus hand count tally comparisons.
Unfortunately both point to something possibly very disturbing. The exit polls have been released, and they too had Obama winning by 7 points (which fits exactly with the 8 point average all polls were showing the day before the election, and exits showed last minute deciders split evenly between Obama and Clinton). Further, initial analyses of vote tallies in Diebold districts versus hand counted ones have also been done, and they show Hillary winning machine counted areas and losing hand counted ones.
So to recap:
· All pre-polling showing Obama winning by an average of 8 points.
· Exit polls showing Obama winning by 7 points.
· A discrepancy between machine versus hand counted tallies in the Clinton and Obama race (swing of 7 points in Hillary's favor...if these are taken away, then the vote count WOULD nearly match exit polls).
· All polls being dead on accurate with every single candidate except Hillary.
· All known indicators (crowd size, turnout, momentum, etc.), experts, reporters on the ground, and well, EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING, pointing to an Obama win.
· There was a 7 point swing to hillary in Diebold counted districts.
· 80% of NH votes are counted by one private firm, using demonstrably hackable voting machines (same ones black box voting hacked in Florida), and owned by a convicted felon. Therefore 80% of all votes have not actually been counted or seen...we are going by what the computer tells us only.
· A HUGE motive for both the Clintons and/or the Republican Party to stop the Obama phenomenon - that if successful in NH - would have ended the Clinton dynasty while nearly ensuring the Republicans would have to face a much stronger opponent in November.
· An unprecedented, and what all agree to be the most miraculous and incomprehensible upset in political history, with a candidate everyone considered dead, against a candidate that was drawing record crowds and energy, coming back from as much as 10-12 points down in the last day to win by three.
· And one ludicrous theory after another presented by the nit wit pundits and corporate media for what happened - running the gamut from wildly unprecedented to ludicrous to highly unlikely – adds to my concern that they are, once again, overlooking the simplest and most obvious explanation staring them right in the face (think Ockham's razor): the vote count is wrong.
SOLUTION: We need a hand count of the paper ballots that were "counted" by Diebold machines, then have the tallies compared. Unlike with touchscreen machines, NH DOES have a paper record...this must be contrasted with the machine count.
Now I will give you Brad’s opening statement today, and all the new data I alluded to above:
“A lot of rather significant new news on the New Hampshire front. As we note the MSM is finally jumping in to this, with several stories we'll cover later today, a point of clarity: We have never charged the NH election was "rigged."
We have charged only that it certainly could have been, given the machines and companies (Diebold and LHS Associates) who privately, and secretly, ran the election on indisputably tamperable and error-prone machines. Most notably though, we've tried to express our biggest concern, that 80% of the ballots in NH have never been counted by anyone at all.
We believe voters ballots should be counted in an election -- as radical and "conspiratorial" (apparently) as that notion is. Especially in an election for which nobody has so far been able to offer a legitimate explanation for the results.”
Chris Matthews: Raw EXIT POLL Data 'Indicated Significant Victory' for Obama in NH
'Was Ahead an Average of 8 Points, Even in Our Own Exit Polls'
Even the Exit Polls showed that Obama should have won, according to Chris Matthews on Hardball today. It's the first specific indication that we've seen that the raw, unadjusted Exit Poll data, which only corporate mainstream media folks, not mere mortals, are allowed to see, confirmed all of the pre-election polling which predicted an Obama win.
He introduced his segment today this way (video at link below):
MATTHEWS: So what accounts for Hillary Clinton's victory in New Hampshire? What we don't know is why the victory is so much different in fact, then the polling ahead of time, including what we call the Exit Polls were telling us. Obama was ahead in those polls by an average of 8 points, and even our own Exit Polls, taken as people came out of voting, showed him ahead. So what's going on here?
All of them twisted and turned and contorted and grappled and speculated, coming up with every possible unverifiable, backwards-engineered explanation, save for the one that must not be named. The 600 lb. canary in the virtual living room...the fact that no human being has bothered to check what was actually on NH's vast majority of ballots (80%) which were "counted" by error-prone, hackable Diebold optical-scan machines, all controlled by one bad, horribly irresponsible private company, who has no business being anywhere near a public election...
And yet, as all the talking heads continue to use data from those post-election-adjusted Exit Polls, as speculative reasons why Clinton was announced the winner ("higher than expected female turnout" "voters who make less than $50k"), Politico's Roger Simon, at the end of the Hardball segment, asks the question about NH '08, that we've been asking about 2004 for years: "If the exit polls got the results wrong, why do we think they got the demographics right?"
Did anything go wrong in New Hampshire? Who knows? The Pre-Election Polling indicates it did. The unadjusted Exit Polling, at least according to Matthews, indicates it did. But until we realize we need to actually count ballots --- openly and transparently --- in our American elections, we expect these same questions and nightmares will continue, over and over and over, for a very long time to come...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5535
7 Point Swing for Clinton Over Obama in NH's Diebold Precincts
Analaysis Shows Candidates 'Positions Swapped' Where Ballots Counted by Hand Versus 'Counted' by Machine...
What the informal statistics show is that Hillary Clinton received a 4.5% boost in towns using Diebold voting machines compared to towns that didn't. Meanwhile, Obama was hurt in these towns showing a 2.5% decrease in the Diebold towns.
Update: Some more statistics from the data shows that Obama in non-Diebold towns garnering 38.7% of the vote to Clinton's 36.2%. The results in Diebold towns show the exact opposite: Clinton with 40.7% of the vote and Obama with 36.2%. Not only are the positions swapped but the informal statistics have the second place candidate holding 36.2% in both cases, which could easily be a pure coincidence.
What doesn't make a lot of sense to me right now and this could be a mathematical mistake on my part is where Clinton got the extra 2% of votes in Diebold towns. All the other numbers almost exact for every candidate, even Edwards who recieved 17% of the vote in Diebold towns compared to 17.6% in non-Diebold towns. That still doesn't make up for the extra 2% vote Clinton is receiving when she leads in certain towns compared to when Obama has the lead.
Update II: Another thing to keep in mind when looking at these statistics is that the Diebold machines create a 7 point difference (+4.5 for Clinton, -2.5 for Obama) which is exactly what the polls had been predicting. Again, I'm not explicitly stating there has been fraud, but in a supposed democracy such as ours, skepticism is a virtue and necessity.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5540
New Docs: Exec at NH's Diebold Vote Counting Firm Convicted of Narcotics Trafficking
Ken Hajjar, Director of Diebold's Exclusive Sales & Service Provider in New England Pled Guilty to Criminal Charges in 90's
Does the Sec. of State of NH --- or CT or MA or VT or ME --- Even Know About It?...
Does the Secretary of State of New Hampshire have any idea that a key executive in the private firm that programs and "counts" 80% of the state's ballots on hackable, error-prone Diebold voting machines is a convicted narcotics trafficker?...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5537
And this write up is BEFORE the exit poll numbers were known or the breakdown of diebold versus non-diebold districts:
Tribune Media: MSM Failed to Note 'Hackable Diebold Red Flags' in New Hampshire Primary Results
Syndicated Columnist Robert Koehler Writes for Tomorrow's Papers: 'Possibility of Tainted Results, a Prospect Most of Media Can't Bear'
Notes Problems With NH's Diebold Machines 'Remain Unsolved'...
PRIMARY CONCERNS
By Robert C. KoehlerTribune Media Services
“As the breathless sports coverage of the presidential primaries bursts around me this morning, I’m doing my best to resist surrendering to the contrived drama about “comeback kids” and the flying shrapnel of numbers and hold onto my troubled skepticism about the electoral process, or at least most of it.
First of all, before we get too enthusiastic about feminist solidarity or wax knowingly about New Hampshire Democrats’ traditional soft-heartedness toward the Clinton family, let’s ponder yet again the possibility of tainted results, which is such an unfun prospect most of the media can’t bear to remember that all the problems we’ve had with electronic voting machines — and Diebold machines in particular, which dominate New Hampshire polling places — remain unsolved.
Did the Hillary campaign really defy the pollsters? She had been trailing Barack Obama by 13 percentage points, 42 to 29, in a recent Zogby poll, as election watchdog Brad Friedman pointed out. And the weekend’s “rapturous packed rallies for Mr. Obama,” as the New York Times put it, “suggested Mrs. Clinton was in dire shape.”
So when she emerged from the Tuesday primary with an 8,000-vote and 3-percentage-point victory over Obama, perhaps — considering the notorious unreliability, not to mention hackability, of Diebold machines — the media might have hoisted a few red flags in the coverage, rather than immediately chalk the results up to Clinton’s tears and voter unpredictability. (Oh, if only more reporters considered red flags patriotic.)
The fact is, whatever actually happened in New Hampshire voting booths on Tuesday, our elections are horrifically insecure. For instance, Bev Harris, of the highly respected voting watchdog organization Black Box Voting, recently wrote that the Diebold 1.94w optical scan machines used in some 55 percent of New Hampshire precincts (representing more than 80 percent of the state’s voters) are “the exact same make, model and version hacked in the Black Box Voting project in Leon County (Florida)” a few years ago. They haven’t been upgraded; the security problems haven’t been fixed.
National, or at least media, denial about this situation doesn’t say much for the strength of our democracy.”
END
On that note, SIGN THE MOVE ON PETITION FOR PAPER BALLOTS!
This Sunday's cover story in The New York Times Magazine makes plain the threat: The winner of the 2008 presidential election could be decided by flawed, insecure, and hackable electronic voting machines.1This is the most prominent news coverage this issue has ever gotten, so it could be our one last chance to get this right before the election in November.
Congress is poised to consider a new emergency paper ballots bill next week—but we'll have to convince them to act right away.2
Can you sign this urgent petition asking local, state, and federal officials to require paper ballots for our votes?
Clicking here will add your name:
http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11877-1670215-nQWkPv&t=4
The petition says:
"We must act quickly to secure our elections with paper ballots and audits before November." Elections are run at the state level, so we'll deliver your signature and comments to local election officials in addition to members of Congress.
Electronic voting machines are so unreliable and insecure, we might elect the wrong person president in 2008. As The New York Times Magazine reports:
[Voting machines] fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways; voters report that their choices "flip" from one candidate to another before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count backward; votes simply vanish. (In the 80-person town of Waldenburg, Ark., touch-screen machines tallied zero votes for one mayoral candidate in 2006—even though he's pretty sure he voted for himself.) Most famously, in the November 2006 Congressional election in Sarasota, Fla., touch-screen machines recorded an 18,000-person "undervote" for a race decided by fewer than 400 votes.3
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: New Hampshire Fraud?, Voting Obstacles 08', Olbermann, Padilla Suing
Quick Note: I am pressed for time due to being out sick for so long, but suffice it to say, I was totally SHOCKED by last night's results that gave Hillary a seemingly impossible 10 point turn around in one night (against someone with all the momentum, all the big crowds, and turnout)...and knowing what I know about election fraud, e-voting machines, number crunching, and basic common sense: I'm skeptical of the results.
What is key is whether Hillary's numbers in areas with Diebold machines were than in areas that were hand counted. I will keep you up to date...as the results make no sense as of yet.
The numbers are VERY peculiar, so I'm going to post large clips of Brad Blog's review, with the help of polling and Black Box Voting, of last nights shocker. I smell a rat...nothing proven yet of course. You can click to the graphs and numbers supplies by Brad at the bottom, but here's some of the most important, and disturbing, info coming out of New Hampshire:
NH Primary: Pre-Election Polls Wildly Different Than Results Announced for Clinton/Obama
Other Pre-Election Numbers, For Republicans and Rest of Dems, Nearly Dead on the Money...
I'm not sure why Obama would have conceded so soon, given the virtually inexplicable turn of events in New Hampshire tonight. What's going on here? Before proceeding, I recommend you read the third section of the post I just ran an hour or so ago, concerning the way the ballots are counted in New Hampshire, largely on Diebold optical-scan voting systems, wholly controlled and programmed by a very very bad company named LHS Associates.
As you'll note, the numbers in Zogby's latest polls, for all but Clinton and Obama, seem to have been dead-on the money for both the Republicans and Democrats. Edwards, for example, was polled at 17% in Zogby's poll, and he received exactly 17% in the MSNBC numbers, with 63% of precincts reporting. So are we to believe that only those voters who preferred Obama previously, decided to change to Hillary at the last minute? I suppose so.
While I have no evidence at this time --- let me repeat, no evidence at this time --- of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private company --- and a less-than-respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post --- runs the entire process.
I should also note that some 40% of New Hampshire's precincts are hand-counted, which equals about 25% of the votes. All the rest are counted on hackable Diebold op-scan systems, with completely hackable memory cards, all programmed and managed by LHS Associates. As Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org who seems to share my concern, says, LHS is the "chain of custody" in New Hampshire elections.
Other folks that I've spoken to, who follow this sort of thing, share my concern at this hour. Harris noted that it will be interesting to compare numbers of the hand-counted precincts with those counted on the hackable Diebold op-scan systems.
If the results don't trouble you, you may not have been paying close attention lately. Please take a look. I'd love someone to assuage my concerns...
UPDATE 9:18pm PT: This AP report includes information, said to be based on data from the Exit Polls. It indicates that the independents in NH, who may vote in either the R or D primary, voted mostly D, and were breaking for Obama. AP claims, however, that the same data show that Clinton's strength with women "offset that"...
Early exit poll data indicated six in 10 independents opted for the Democratic contest and Obama led among them, but Clinton's advantage among women offset that....The results are from exit polls Tuesday in 50 precincts around New Hampshire for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. The Democratic primary survey interviewed 1,800 voters, the Republican primary poll 1,301. The sampling error margin was plus or minus 4 percentage points for each exit poll.
Note: the Exit Pollsters used here were Mitofsky/Edison, the same ones who ran the infamous Exits in 2004 showing that, in state after state, Kerry should have won. They also later said their own polling was completely wrong (which is disputed strongly by statistics experts such as U. of Pennsylvania Prof. Steven F. Freeman Ph.D. ) So, it's lovely that AP and the TV nets hired them again...
UPDATE 9:40pm PT: While the talking heads are trying to figure out what happened here on MSNBC, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, while paging through a stack of papers said to be Exit Poll data, just said: "Of those who made up their mind in the last three days, there was a slight favoring for Obama. If there was a huge difference in a move to Hillary, in the last three days, it doesn't seem to be reflected in the Exit Polling."
UPDATE 9:48pm PT: Olbermann repeated what Russert had said earlier, that Obama's internal polls showed him winning by 14%, Clinton's internal polls had Obama winning by 11%. The effect of Obama being an African-American, the so-called "Bradley Effect", is now being discussed as the newest "reason" to explain the numbers. Though it's noted that it didn't effect Harold Ford in TN in '06, or even Obama in Iowa just five days ago.
SNIP
So where did her votes come from, if Exit Polling data showed, as mentioned by MSNBC above, that last minute deciders broke evenly, and even a bit more for Obama??
UPDATE 1/9/08, 12:49am PT: Bev Harris offers this very useful information in comments below. Worth elevating the key points up here to the original post:
New Hampshire, for the Democrats, was the exact opposite of Iowa. They used one of the worst voting systems in America and then handed programming of every memory card in New Hampshire over to a private outfit run by John Silvestro.
First order of business needs to be examining the published precinct results and comparing the hand count locations to the optical scam locations.
The results web site does not make this easy. You have to hover your mouse over each one of about 250 municipalities and then take a screen grab and then type it into a spreadsheet. So far, no one I know has completed that task.
I took the information from the NH Sec State site. A few of the locations do not have the voting system specified; if they have a low population, they are probably hand count. Whoever gets the handcount vs opscam spreadsheet done gets two points. The tools are in the two links above.
For some of the graphs go here: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5530
THE PROGRESSIVE HOPE FOR OBAMA (If he's the nominee)
At heart, there's a fundamental divide between Obama's post-partisan rhetoric, and the hunger among many progressives for a fighter who will stand up to the Right-wing noise machine and effectively slug it out with the GOP. That goes a long way to explaining why Obama, despite an almost perfect biography and the caché of being a Beltway outsider at a time when the insiders are so widely loathed, never seemed to catch on with the left "blogosphere" the way one would have expected him to.
But if Iowa showed anything, it's that it's not wise to underestimate Obama's approach. As every political observer knows, the themes a politician uses on the campaign trail often don't match his or her style of governance once elected. That's rarely considered a good thing, but in this case, people seeking real change should hope that Obama's feel-good language is just campaign spin.
That's because progressives' best hope with Barack Obama would be that he use his message of "hope" and reconciliation to bring millions of new voters into the process for the first time, gather an enormous amount of political capital, and then turn around, take off the gloves and shove that mandate right down the GOP's throat.
--By Joshua Holland, AlterNet.
VIDEO SECTION
Man can Obama give a speech…here’s his concession in New Hampshire:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/09/barack-obamas-concession-speech-change-is-whats-happening-in-america/
Olbermann’s worst persons…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/08/countdown-worst-persons-in-the-world/
Another excellent Robert Greenwald piece on Fox…this time on O’Reilly’s latest insanity, Fox’s continued attacks on Obama, and the need for Barack t o continue his boycott of their network:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/08/will-barack-obama-go-on-fox-news/
This is funny…Fox News caught rigging their focus groups…
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/73083/
GOP Strategy: Obstacles Voters Will Face in 08’
Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in cases surrounding the constitutionality of laws requiring voters to show photo identification. Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita presents one of "the most important cases involving the mechanics of election administration in decades." The case challenges Indiana's strict voter ID law, which purportedly aims to eliminate voter fraud -- an issue conservatives often drum up as a serious problem facing the country. Yet as CNN legal analyst Jeffery Toobin points out, "Nationwide, despite an attempt by the Bush Justice Department to crack down on voter fraud, there were only a hundred and twenty federal prosecutions and eighty-six convictions between 2002 and 2006 -- a period in which close to four hundred million votes were cast." Even the Election Assistance Commission "found 'little evidence' of the 'problem' now being pushed nationwide by GOP operatives as evidence that disenfranchising Photo ID requirement laws should be passed in states across the country." "First and foremost, Indiana's law is a 'solution' to a problem that doesn't exist. ... In the entire history of Indiana, the total number of reported instances of" in-person fraud preventable by ID laws "is zero." Instead of preventing fraud, voter ID laws such as Indiana's tend to discriminate against low-income and minority voters. A federal judge compared Georgia's voter ID law to a modern day poll tax. The justices will rule on Indiana's law by mid-June, a decision that could affect next fall's presidential election.
THE BURDEN OF VOTER ID LAWS: According to the Transportation Department and Census Bureau, there are 20 to 21 million voting-age Americans without driver's licenses. "A 2007 study by political scientists at the University of Washington found that about 13 percent of registered voters in Indiana lacked the required identification." In Georgia, which has a requirement similar to Indiana's, "roughly 200,000 people who have no government-issued photo ID have registered to vote, and more than 60 percent of them voted in the last general election before a photo-ID requirement was imposed." Those less likely to have IDs are not only poor or minority voters, but also urban residents who don't drive, handicapped Americans, people living in nursing homes, and other elderly voters who have a harder time getting current IDs. Upholding Indiana's law, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals wrote dismissively, "It is exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today's America without a photo ID (try flying, or even entering a tall building such as the courthouse in which we sit, without one)." Despite the judge's faulty assumption that all Americans fly frequently, voter ID laws have serious "suppressive effects" on voting, according to a Brown University study released this week. The study found that such laws lead "to lower levels of voter participation" and "discourage legal immigrants from becoming citizens, particularly for blacks and Hispanics, reducing odds of naturalization by over 15 percent."
A DEDICATION TO DISENFRANCHISEMENT: Under the Bush Administration, the Department of Justice has undergone a "sea change" from protecting minority voting rights to prosecuting voter fraud -- and indirectly disenfranchising minority voters. The Voting Rights section of the Civil Rights Division has led this effort, under the leadership of Hans von Spakovsky and John Tanner. A career lawyer in the Voting Rights section, Spakovsky used his position to pursue, in the words of six former career professionals in the section, "an agenda which placed the highest priority on the partisan political goals of the political appointees who supervised the Section." Spakovsky allegedly "used every opportunity he had over four years in the Justice Department to make it difficult for voters -- poor, minority and Democratic -- to go to the polls." He championed Georgia's voter ID law over the objection of Justice Department lawyers who said it would likely discriminate against black voters. A former Voting Rights section employee testified in October that former Section chief John Tanner was "both the cause and the effect of the politicization of the Civil Rights Division," and that until Tanner's mistakes were repaired, "the voting section of the Civil Rights Division will remain a wounded institution." Tanner also supported the Georgia voter ID law, which the employee called a "nasty piece of legislation" that had "draconian restrictions." Earlier this year, Tanner said minority voters were not affected by voter ID laws because they "die first" before becoming elderly.
THE UNPROTECTED VOTE: Even after a voter gains access to a ballot, that individual's vote is hardly safe. The New York Times magazine recently wrote that unreliabe electronic voting machines can fall victim to hackers or simply malfunction on their own. Last month, Colorado's secretary of state decertified many of the state's touch-screen voting machines, and Ohio's secretary of state released a report finding that such machines "may jeopardize the integrity of the voting process." California and Florida jettisoned their touch-screen machines last spring. As the Times magazine article explored, many touch-screen machines do not include a verifiable paper trail. They often operate using secret source code known only to the machines' vendors, creating "an environment, critics maintain, in which the people who make and sell machines are now central to running elections. Elections officials simply do not know enough about how the machines work to maintain or fix them." Some states, including Florida, have moved to replaced touch-screen machines with optical scan machines, where voters fill out bubble forms, which are then scanned and tallied electronically. Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced a bill last fall that would eliminate touch-screen voting machines starting in 2012.
JUDGE DEMANDS WHITE HOUSE PROVIDE ANSWERS ON MISSING E-MAILS: A federal magistrate yesterday ordered the White House to disclose whether it is in possession of backup copies of up to 10 million missing e-mails. The existence of the missing e-mails came to light in early 2006 when Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the CIA leak scandal revealed that the Executive Office of the President and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney failed to store all of their e-mail traffic through the normal archiving process "for certain time periods in 2003." The order was issued as the White House, claiming the "president's record-keeping practices... are not subject to review by the courts," tried to scuttle lawsuits brought by two private groups, the National Security Archive and the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who are seeking the missing messages. The National Security Archives contends that the missing e-mails could concern not just the Plame investigation, but also Hurricane Katrina and the firing of the U.S. Attorneys: "This Order will force the Executive Office of the President to tell the public whether it really erased key records of the nation's history or whether it has made any effort to preserve the information." The White House has five business days to report whether computer backup tapes contain the millions of missing e-mails.
"In another sign of a weakening job market," the number of Americans working part-time hours increased to 2.8 million in 2007 "because of slower business conditions" up 231,000, or nine percent, from 2006. "Since August of 2007, the upward trend has accelerated, and it ticked up again in December to 3.1 million people, the highest monthly figure in four years."
Blacks in the United States are "consistently" more likely than whites to receive "inferior cancer treatment." According to the findings published in the journal Cancer, the problem was "just as bad in 2002 as in 1992."
Padilla Suing Bush Administration Torturer
Convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla sued a key architect of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies Friday, claiming the official’s legal arguments led to Padilla’s alleged mistreatment and illegal detention at a Navy brig.
The lawsuit claims that John Yoo, a former senior Justice Department official, wrote several legal memos that led President Bush to designate Padilla as an enemy combatant shortly after the U.S. citizen was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago ’s O’Hare International Airport on suspicion of involvement in an al-Qaida plot.
The alleged mistreatment included forced hooding, deprivation of light and sleep, extreme heat and cold, stress positions, threats of death, use of drugs and introduction of odors into his cell. Padilla used these same claims in an attempt to be declared mentally incompetent to stand trial in Miami , but a federal judge rejected the attempt…
read on
We used the same methods of torture on him that Naomi Klein documents in “The Shock Doctrine.”
Quick Note: I am pressed for time due to being out sick for so long, but suffice it to say, I was totally SHOCKED by last night's results that gave Hillary a seemingly impossible 10 point turn around in one night (against someone with all the momentum, all the big crowds, and turnout)...and knowing what I know about election fraud, e-voting machines, number crunching, and basic common sense: I'm skeptical of the results.
What is key is whether Hillary's numbers in areas with Diebold machines were than in areas that were hand counted. I will keep you up to date...as the results make no sense as of yet.
The numbers are VERY peculiar, so I'm going to post large clips of Brad Blog's review, with the help of polling and Black Box Voting, of last nights shocker. I smell a rat...nothing proven yet of course. You can click to the graphs and numbers supplies by Brad at the bottom, but here's some of the most important, and disturbing, info coming out of New Hampshire:
NH Primary: Pre-Election Polls Wildly Different Than Results Announced for Clinton/Obama
Other Pre-Election Numbers, For Republicans and Rest of Dems, Nearly Dead on the Money...
I'm not sure why Obama would have conceded so soon, given the virtually inexplicable turn of events in New Hampshire tonight. What's going on here? Before proceeding, I recommend you read the third section of the post I just ran an hour or so ago, concerning the way the ballots are counted in New Hampshire, largely on Diebold optical-scan voting systems, wholly controlled and programmed by a very very bad company named LHS Associates.
As you'll note, the numbers in Zogby's latest polls, for all but Clinton and Obama, seem to have been dead-on the money for both the Republicans and Democrats. Edwards, for example, was polled at 17% in Zogby's poll, and he received exactly 17% in the MSNBC numbers, with 63% of precincts reporting. So are we to believe that only those voters who preferred Obama previously, decided to change to Hillary at the last minute? I suppose so.
While I have no evidence at this time --- let me repeat, no evidence at this time --- of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private company --- and a less-than-respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post --- runs the entire process.
I should also note that some 40% of New Hampshire's precincts are hand-counted, which equals about 25% of the votes. All the rest are counted on hackable Diebold op-scan systems, with completely hackable memory cards, all programmed and managed by LHS Associates. As Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org who seems to share my concern, says, LHS is the "chain of custody" in New Hampshire elections.
Other folks that I've spoken to, who follow this sort of thing, share my concern at this hour. Harris noted that it will be interesting to compare numbers of the hand-counted precincts with those counted on the hackable Diebold op-scan systems.
If the results don't trouble you, you may not have been paying close attention lately. Please take a look. I'd love someone to assuage my concerns...
UPDATE 9:18pm PT: This AP report includes information, said to be based on data from the Exit Polls. It indicates that the independents in NH, who may vote in either the R or D primary, voted mostly D, and were breaking for Obama. AP claims, however, that the same data show that Clinton's strength with women "offset that"...
Early exit poll data indicated six in 10 independents opted for the Democratic contest and Obama led among them, but Clinton's advantage among women offset that....The results are from exit polls Tuesday in 50 precincts around New Hampshire for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. The Democratic primary survey interviewed 1,800 voters, the Republican primary poll 1,301. The sampling error margin was plus or minus 4 percentage points for each exit poll.
Note: the Exit Pollsters used here were Mitofsky/Edison, the same ones who ran the infamous Exits in 2004 showing that, in state after state, Kerry should have won. They also later said their own polling was completely wrong (which is disputed strongly by statistics experts such as U. of Pennsylvania Prof. Steven F. Freeman Ph.D. ) So, it's lovely that AP and the TV nets hired them again...
UPDATE 9:40pm PT: While the talking heads are trying to figure out what happened here on MSNBC, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, while paging through a stack of papers said to be Exit Poll data, just said: "Of those who made up their mind in the last three days, there was a slight favoring for Obama. If there was a huge difference in a move to Hillary, in the last three days, it doesn't seem to be reflected in the Exit Polling."
UPDATE 9:48pm PT: Olbermann repeated what Russert had said earlier, that Obama's internal polls showed him winning by 14%, Clinton's internal polls had Obama winning by 11%. The effect of Obama being an African-American, the so-called "Bradley Effect", is now being discussed as the newest "reason" to explain the numbers. Though it's noted that it didn't effect Harold Ford in TN in '06, or even Obama in Iowa just five days ago.
SNIP
So where did her votes come from, if Exit Polling data showed, as mentioned by MSNBC above, that last minute deciders broke evenly, and even a bit more for Obama??
UPDATE 1/9/08, 12:49am PT: Bev Harris offers this very useful information in comments below. Worth elevating the key points up here to the original post:
New Hampshire, for the Democrats, was the exact opposite of Iowa. They used one of the worst voting systems in America and then handed programming of every memory card in New Hampshire over to a private outfit run by John Silvestro.
First order of business needs to be examining the published precinct results and comparing the hand count locations to the optical scam locations.
The results web site does not make this easy. You have to hover your mouse over each one of about 250 municipalities and then take a screen grab and then type it into a spreadsheet. So far, no one I know has completed that task.
I took the information from the NH Sec State site. A few of the locations do not have the voting system specified; if they have a low population, they are probably hand count. Whoever gets the handcount vs opscam spreadsheet done gets two points. The tools are in the two links above.
For some of the graphs go here: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5530
THE PROGRESSIVE HOPE FOR OBAMA (If he's the nominee)
At heart, there's a fundamental divide between Obama's post-partisan rhetoric, and the hunger among many progressives for a fighter who will stand up to the Right-wing noise machine and effectively slug it out with the GOP. That goes a long way to explaining why Obama, despite an almost perfect biography and the caché of being a Beltway outsider at a time when the insiders are so widely loathed, never seemed to catch on with the left "blogosphere" the way one would have expected him to.
But if Iowa showed anything, it's that it's not wise to underestimate Obama's approach. As every political observer knows, the themes a politician uses on the campaign trail often don't match his or her style of governance once elected. That's rarely considered a good thing, but in this case, people seeking real change should hope that Obama's feel-good language is just campaign spin.
That's because progressives' best hope with Barack Obama would be that he use his message of "hope" and reconciliation to bring millions of new voters into the process for the first time, gather an enormous amount of political capital, and then turn around, take off the gloves and shove that mandate right down the GOP's throat.
--By Joshua Holland, AlterNet.
VIDEO SECTION
Man can Obama give a speech…here’s his concession in New Hampshire:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/09/barack-obamas-concession-speech-change-is-whats-happening-in-america/
Olbermann’s worst persons…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/08/countdown-worst-persons-in-the-world/
Another excellent Robert Greenwald piece on Fox…this time on O’Reilly’s latest insanity, Fox’s continued attacks on Obama, and the need for Barack t o continue his boycott of their network:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/08/will-barack-obama-go-on-fox-news/
This is funny…Fox News caught rigging their focus groups…
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/73083/
GOP Strategy: Obstacles Voters Will Face in 08’
Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in cases surrounding the constitutionality of laws requiring voters to show photo identification. Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita presents one of "the most important cases involving the mechanics of election administration in decades." The case challenges Indiana's strict voter ID law, which purportedly aims to eliminate voter fraud -- an issue conservatives often drum up as a serious problem facing the country. Yet as CNN legal analyst Jeffery Toobin points out, "Nationwide, despite an attempt by the Bush Justice Department to crack down on voter fraud, there were only a hundred and twenty federal prosecutions and eighty-six convictions between 2002 and 2006 -- a period in which close to four hundred million votes were cast." Even the Election Assistance Commission "found 'little evidence' of the 'problem' now being pushed nationwide by GOP operatives as evidence that disenfranchising Photo ID requirement laws should be passed in states across the country." "First and foremost, Indiana's law is a 'solution' to a problem that doesn't exist. ... In the entire history of Indiana, the total number of reported instances of" in-person fraud preventable by ID laws "is zero." Instead of preventing fraud, voter ID laws such as Indiana's tend to discriminate against low-income and minority voters. A federal judge compared Georgia's voter ID law to a modern day poll tax. The justices will rule on Indiana's law by mid-June, a decision that could affect next fall's presidential election.
THE BURDEN OF VOTER ID LAWS: According to the Transportation Department and Census Bureau, there are 20 to 21 million voting-age Americans without driver's licenses. "A 2007 study by political scientists at the University of Washington found that about 13 percent of registered voters in Indiana lacked the required identification." In Georgia, which has a requirement similar to Indiana's, "roughly 200,000 people who have no government-issued photo ID have registered to vote, and more than 60 percent of them voted in the last general election before a photo-ID requirement was imposed." Those less likely to have IDs are not only poor or minority voters, but also urban residents who don't drive, handicapped Americans, people living in nursing homes, and other elderly voters who have a harder time getting current IDs. Upholding Indiana's law, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals wrote dismissively, "It is exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today's America without a photo ID (try flying, or even entering a tall building such as the courthouse in which we sit, without one)." Despite the judge's faulty assumption that all Americans fly frequently, voter ID laws have serious "suppressive effects" on voting, according to a Brown University study released this week. The study found that such laws lead "to lower levels of voter participation" and "discourage legal immigrants from becoming citizens, particularly for blacks and Hispanics, reducing odds of naturalization by over 15 percent."
A DEDICATION TO DISENFRANCHISEMENT: Under the Bush Administration, the Department of Justice has undergone a "sea change" from protecting minority voting rights to prosecuting voter fraud -- and indirectly disenfranchising minority voters. The Voting Rights section of the Civil Rights Division has led this effort, under the leadership of Hans von Spakovsky and John Tanner. A career lawyer in the Voting Rights section, Spakovsky used his position to pursue, in the words of six former career professionals in the section, "an agenda which placed the highest priority on the partisan political goals of the political appointees who supervised the Section." Spakovsky allegedly "used every opportunity he had over four years in the Justice Department to make it difficult for voters -- poor, minority and Democratic -- to go to the polls." He championed Georgia's voter ID law over the objection of Justice Department lawyers who said it would likely discriminate against black voters. A former Voting Rights section employee testified in October that former Section chief John Tanner was "both the cause and the effect of the politicization of the Civil Rights Division," and that until Tanner's mistakes were repaired, "the voting section of the Civil Rights Division will remain a wounded institution." Tanner also supported the Georgia voter ID law, which the employee called a "nasty piece of legislation" that had "draconian restrictions." Earlier this year, Tanner said minority voters were not affected by voter ID laws because they "die first" before becoming elderly.
THE UNPROTECTED VOTE: Even after a voter gains access to a ballot, that individual's vote is hardly safe. The New York Times magazine recently wrote that unreliabe electronic voting machines can fall victim to hackers or simply malfunction on their own. Last month, Colorado's secretary of state decertified many of the state's touch-screen voting machines, and Ohio's secretary of state released a report finding that such machines "may jeopardize the integrity of the voting process." California and Florida jettisoned their touch-screen machines last spring. As the Times magazine article explored, many touch-screen machines do not include a verifiable paper trail. They often operate using secret source code known only to the machines' vendors, creating "an environment, critics maintain, in which the people who make and sell machines are now central to running elections. Elections officials simply do not know enough about how the machines work to maintain or fix them." Some states, including Florida, have moved to replaced touch-screen machines with optical scan machines, where voters fill out bubble forms, which are then scanned and tallied electronically. Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced a bill last fall that would eliminate touch-screen voting machines starting in 2012.
JUDGE DEMANDS WHITE HOUSE PROVIDE ANSWERS ON MISSING E-MAILS: A federal magistrate yesterday ordered the White House to disclose whether it is in possession of backup copies of up to 10 million missing e-mails. The existence of the missing e-mails came to light in early 2006 when Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the CIA leak scandal revealed that the Executive Office of the President and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney failed to store all of their e-mail traffic through the normal archiving process "for certain time periods in 2003." The order was issued as the White House, claiming the "president's record-keeping practices... are not subject to review by the courts," tried to scuttle lawsuits brought by two private groups, the National Security Archive and the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who are seeking the missing messages. The National Security Archives contends that the missing e-mails could concern not just the Plame investigation, but also Hurricane Katrina and the firing of the U.S. Attorneys: "This Order will force the Executive Office of the President to tell the public whether it really erased key records of the nation's history or whether it has made any effort to preserve the information." The White House has five business days to report whether computer backup tapes contain the millions of missing e-mails.
"In another sign of a weakening job market," the number of Americans working part-time hours increased to 2.8 million in 2007 "because of slower business conditions" up 231,000, or nine percent, from 2006. "Since August of 2007, the upward trend has accelerated, and it ticked up again in December to 3.1 million people, the highest monthly figure in four years."
Blacks in the United States are "consistently" more likely than whites to receive "inferior cancer treatment." According to the findings published in the journal Cancer, the problem was "just as bad in 2002 as in 1992."
Padilla Suing Bush Administration Torturer
Convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla sued a key architect of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies Friday, claiming the official’s legal arguments led to Padilla’s alleged mistreatment and illegal detention at a Navy brig.
The lawsuit claims that John Yoo, a former senior Justice Department official, wrote several legal memos that led President Bush to designate Padilla as an enemy combatant shortly after the U.S. citizen was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago ’s O’Hare International Airport on suspicion of involvement in an al-Qaida plot.
The alleged mistreatment included forced hooding, deprivation of light and sleep, extreme heat and cold, stress positions, threats of death, use of drugs and introduction of odors into his cell. Padilla used these same claims in an attempt to be declared mentally incompetent to stand trial in Miami , but a federal judge rejected the attempt…
read on
We used the same methods of torture on him that Naomi Klein documents in “The Shock Doctrine.”
Monday, January 07, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: McCain, Obama, Edwards, Sarksyans, Simpsons, Krugman, GOP Theft Strategies
Beware of McCain:
The point is it's American casualties. We've go to get American's off the frontlines, have the Iraqis as part of the strategy, take over more and more of the responsibilities, and then I don't think Americans are concerned if we're there for one hundred years or a thousand years or ten thousand years.
-- John McCain
I'm barely functional due to my cold, so just a few quick posts...
Obviously we're seeing something with the Obama phenomenon not seen in my lifetime. He's clearly igniting a desire in the country, particularly among the young, for a new direction (I'm not convinced he understand what direction that must be though). It's hard to see how he can be stopped...though I will continue to back Edwards as the superior candidate. The good news is, that it appears that both Edwards and Obama may bypass Clinton when all is said and done...this bodes well for the future of the Democratic Party . Perhaps our challenge in the coming years will be to continue to push Obama to be the best President he can be, and not buckle to the special interests.
Regardless, the Republicans should be shaking in their boots....
VIDEO SECTION
On that note, this was great to see: Natalie Sarkisyan's Family Backs Edwards
My question is why is this not a story covered by the media? Edwards still can't get a dimes worth of coverage, even for a story as moving, powerful, and important as this!
The family of Nataline Sarkisyan appeared at a John Edwards rally in Manchester, NH, to speak about the importance of reforming our healthcare system after the senseless death of Nataline due to bureaucratic obstacles placed by her insurance company. Her father, Kirkor Sarkisyan, admits that their political activism was spurred by both a desire to honor the memory of his daughter but to ensure that no other parent experience the loss that he has.
On a related note, Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson, Jay Carson dismissed the Sarkisyan family’s appearance at the Edwards event by saying that when Clinton refers to people in her speeches, she’s actually helped them, not just “stories she’s pulled from the newspaper and included in her stump,” to which Edwards has rightfully questioned whether her campaign has a conscience.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/07/the-sarkisyan-family-comes-out-to-support-edwards/
The Simpsons do a take off on the Presidential primaries...great stuff:
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/72961/
ARTICLE SECTION
Alternet takes a closer look at Obama...highlighting my concerns that his bipartisan talk is just more code for selling out ones principles.
A few clips:
Yet the message is as hopelessly naïve in the real world of American politics as it is appealing on the stump, and for a simple reason: it assumes that the GOP -- dominated as it is by "movement conservatives" in the Delay-Rove mold -- and it's corporate backers are interested in engaging in a thoughtful debate over how to make America a better country. If that were the case, then bridging the divide through calm words and negotiation would certainly be better by leaps and bounds than the ugly brand of politics we have today.
But that's not the case. John Edwards' own stock response to Obama's narrative seems quite accurate:
I don't believe you can sit around a table with the drug companies, the insurance companies or the oil corporations, negotiate with them - and then hope they'll just voluntarily give their power away. You can't nice them to death - it doesn't work.
http://alternet.org/story/72807/
And Paul Krugman writes on the latest really disturbing economic numbers coming out...and how they relate to the policies of the last 7 years...and again, let us remember the true nature of the "maverick" McCain, as well as the limitations of Obama's talk of unity and change.
A few clips:
You see, for 30 years American politics has been dominated by a political movement practicing Robin-Hood-in-reverse, giving unto those that hath while taking from those who don't. And one secret of that long domination has been a remarkable flexibility in economic debate. The policies never change - but the arguments for these policies turn on a dime. When the economy is doing reasonably well, the debate is dominated by hype - by the claim that America's prosperity is truly wondrous, and that conservative economic policies deserve all the credit. But when things turn down, there is a seamless transition from "It's morning in America! Hurray for tax cuts!" to "The economy is slumping! Raising taxes would be a disaster!"
SNIP
And what I'm not sure about is whether the Democrats are ready for the fight they're about to face. Not to put too fine a point on it, Barack Obama won his impressive victory in Iowa with a sunny, upbeat message of change. But there's a powerful political faction in this country that understands very well that any real change will create losers as well as winners. In particular, any serious progressive reform of health care, let alone a broader attempt to reduce middle-class insecurity and inequality, will have to mean higher taxes on the affluent. And members of that faction will do whatever it takes to scare people into believing that change means disaster for the economy.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010708D.shtml
And finally, here's a good piece that looks deeper at Obama's winning coalition in Iowa, and more importantly, how the GOP has a very detailed strategy to prevent these voters from participating in 2008. Don't think their election theft machine hasn't been working overtime to ensure they steal another...most notably by making it VERY difficult to vote...
A few clips:
But if Obama -- or any Democrat -- is going to repeat his higher-than-expected turnout in other states, their supporters may have to surmount significant new voting rights barriers as the campaign moves through the primaries and into the fall election. That is because the new voters, young people, minorities and the poor who turned out for Obama in Iowa are the very voters targeted by numerous Republican-led "ballot security" laws that have been adopted across the country since 2004. While some of these laws have been overturned, they include tough new voter ID requirements, restrictions on registering voters and even penalties for helping people with absentee ballots.
SNIP
Many of these laws -- particularly the voter ID laws and restrictions on registration drives -- have come into effect since the last presidential election. State legislatures, usually with Republican majorities, adopted the measures to combat "voter fraud," or what the GOP has said is people impersonating other voters for partisan benefit. What's notable about these laws is they affect an entire state electorate, while the problems provoking their adoption almost always concern a handful of individuals. That disparity has led many voting rights advocates to say these laws are meant to discourage Democratic voters.
Next week, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to one of the most strident of these laws, Indiana's photo ID requirement for voters. The case is seen as being the most important election law case since the court's decision awarding the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, because it either will codify a new generation of restrictive election laws or open up the voting process.
http://alternet.org/story/72748/
Beware of McCain:
The point is it's American casualties. We've go to get American's off the frontlines, have the Iraqis as part of the strategy, take over more and more of the responsibilities, and then I don't think Americans are concerned if we're there for one hundred years or a thousand years or ten thousand years.
-- John McCain
I'm barely functional due to my cold, so just a few quick posts...
Obviously we're seeing something with the Obama phenomenon not seen in my lifetime. He's clearly igniting a desire in the country, particularly among the young, for a new direction (I'm not convinced he understand what direction that must be though). It's hard to see how he can be stopped...though I will continue to back Edwards as the superior candidate. The good news is, that it appears that both Edwards and Obama may bypass Clinton when all is said and done...this bodes well for the future of the Democratic Party . Perhaps our challenge in the coming years will be to continue to push Obama to be the best President he can be, and not buckle to the special interests.
Regardless, the Republicans should be shaking in their boots....
VIDEO SECTION
On that note, this was great to see: Natalie Sarkisyan's Family Backs Edwards
My question is why is this not a story covered by the media? Edwards still can't get a dimes worth of coverage, even for a story as moving, powerful, and important as this!
The family of Nataline Sarkisyan appeared at a John Edwards rally in Manchester, NH, to speak about the importance of reforming our healthcare system after the senseless death of Nataline due to bureaucratic obstacles placed by her insurance company. Her father, Kirkor Sarkisyan, admits that their political activism was spurred by both a desire to honor the memory of his daughter but to ensure that no other parent experience the loss that he has.
On a related note, Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson, Jay Carson dismissed the Sarkisyan family’s appearance at the Edwards event by saying that when Clinton refers to people in her speeches, she’s actually helped them, not just “stories she’s pulled from the newspaper and included in her stump,” to which Edwards has rightfully questioned whether her campaign has a conscience.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/07/the-sarkisyan-family-comes-out-to-support-edwards/
The Simpsons do a take off on the Presidential primaries...great stuff:
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/72961/
ARTICLE SECTION
Alternet takes a closer look at Obama...highlighting my concerns that his bipartisan talk is just more code for selling out ones principles.
A few clips:
Yet the message is as hopelessly naïve in the real world of American politics as it is appealing on the stump, and for a simple reason: it assumes that the GOP -- dominated as it is by "movement conservatives" in the Delay-Rove mold -- and it's corporate backers are interested in engaging in a thoughtful debate over how to make America a better country. If that were the case, then bridging the divide through calm words and negotiation would certainly be better by leaps and bounds than the ugly brand of politics we have today.
But that's not the case. John Edwards' own stock response to Obama's narrative seems quite accurate:
I don't believe you can sit around a table with the drug companies, the insurance companies or the oil corporations, negotiate with them - and then hope they'll just voluntarily give their power away. You can't nice them to death - it doesn't work.
http://alternet.org/story/72807/
And Paul Krugman writes on the latest really disturbing economic numbers coming out...and how they relate to the policies of the last 7 years...and again, let us remember the true nature of the "maverick" McCain, as well as the limitations of Obama's talk of unity and change.
A few clips:
You see, for 30 years American politics has been dominated by a political movement practicing Robin-Hood-in-reverse, giving unto those that hath while taking from those who don't. And one secret of that long domination has been a remarkable flexibility in economic debate. The policies never change - but the arguments for these policies turn on a dime. When the economy is doing reasonably well, the debate is dominated by hype - by the claim that America's prosperity is truly wondrous, and that conservative economic policies deserve all the credit. But when things turn down, there is a seamless transition from "It's morning in America! Hurray for tax cuts!" to "The economy is slumping! Raising taxes would be a disaster!"
SNIP
And what I'm not sure about is whether the Democrats are ready for the fight they're about to face. Not to put too fine a point on it, Barack Obama won his impressive victory in Iowa with a sunny, upbeat message of change. But there's a powerful political faction in this country that understands very well that any real change will create losers as well as winners. In particular, any serious progressive reform of health care, let alone a broader attempt to reduce middle-class insecurity and inequality, will have to mean higher taxes on the affluent. And members of that faction will do whatever it takes to scare people into believing that change means disaster for the economy.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010708D.shtml
And finally, here's a good piece that looks deeper at Obama's winning coalition in Iowa, and more importantly, how the GOP has a very detailed strategy to prevent these voters from participating in 2008. Don't think their election theft machine hasn't been working overtime to ensure they steal another...most notably by making it VERY difficult to vote...
A few clips:
But if Obama -- or any Democrat -- is going to repeat his higher-than-expected turnout in other states, their supporters may have to surmount significant new voting rights barriers as the campaign moves through the primaries and into the fall election. That is because the new voters, young people, minorities and the poor who turned out for Obama in Iowa are the very voters targeted by numerous Republican-led "ballot security" laws that have been adopted across the country since 2004. While some of these laws have been overturned, they include tough new voter ID requirements, restrictions on registering voters and even penalties for helping people with absentee ballots.
SNIP
Many of these laws -- particularly the voter ID laws and restrictions on registration drives -- have come into effect since the last presidential election. State legislatures, usually with Republican majorities, adopted the measures to combat "voter fraud," or what the GOP has said is people impersonating other voters for partisan benefit. What's notable about these laws is they affect an entire state electorate, while the problems provoking their adoption almost always concern a handful of individuals. That disparity has led many voting rights advocates to say these laws are meant to discourage Democratic voters.
Next week, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to one of the most strident of these laws, Indiana's photo ID requirement for voters. The case is seen as being the most important election law case since the court's decision awarding the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, because it either will codify a new generation of restrictive election laws or open up the voting process.
http://alternet.org/story/72748/
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