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Court Orders Re-Evaluation of New Jersey E-voting Machines
Source: NJ.com
N.J.'s 11K Electronic Voting Machines Ordered Re-evaluated to Determine Accuracy, Reliability
By Jeanette M. RundquistFebruary 01, 2010, 8:22PM
TRENTON -- New Jersey’s 11,000 voting machines must be re-evaluated by a qualified panel of experts to determine whether they are "accurate and reliable," a Superior Court judge ruled today, in a case challenging the validity of computerized voting machines that do not produce a paper record.

All voting machines and vote tally transmitting systems must be disconnected from the Internet; all people who work with them, and third-party vendors who examine or transport the machines, must undergo criminal background checks; and the state must put in place a protocol for inspecting voting machines, to ensure they have not been tampered with, ruled Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg in Mercer County.
She did not, however, go one step further and enforce a 2005 state statute requiring that all voting machines in New Jersey produce a voter-verified paper ballot.
Technician James Kaufman checks out a back-up voting in a Belleville warehouse
"I am disappointed the court did not take the step of mandating a voter-verified paper trail or scrapping the electronic machines altogether," said Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton Borough) one of a group of Mercer County residents who brought the suit against the state.
The suit was brought five and half years ago by plaintiffs who wanted to improve election security in New Jersey. The plaintiffs, including a voter who said, after casting her ballot in 2004, she received no indication her vote was recorded, charged the state’s touch-screen machines were vulnerable to tampering that could allow vote fraud.Corporations Are Not the People: A PEN Action to Reverse 'Citizens United' Court Ruling
Using the PEN action page, you can simultaneously send a letter to:
(1) Your U.S. Representative in Congress
(2) Both your U.S. Senators, and
(3) The editorial letters page of your regional newspaper
Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php
Congress must act swiftly to block and override this Court ruling by enacting legislation to reject the "Corporate Personhood" doctrine and reassert that governments regulate corporations, not the other way around.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D FL 8) has already assembled proposed legislation in the House to counter the Court's ruling. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) is doing the same in the Senate.
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SCOTUS: Corporate Purchase of Elections = 'Free Speech'
Freespeech for People.org
"On January 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations are entitled to spend unlimited funds in our elections. The First Amendment was never intended to protect corporations.
This cannot stand. Join our campaign to protest this decision. Protect our democracy! Free speech is for people — not corporations."
http://freespeechforpeople.org/about
Responses to the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court Ruling
Read the Freespeech for People.org press release responding to the Supreme Court decision issued January 21, 2010.
Read the Freespeech for People constitutional draft amendment.
Read the Supreme Court ruling.
Listen to press call on Supreme Court decision.
Read background articles . . . Resources continue @ Read More
Was California's Proposition 8 Election Rigged?
Related article: The complete report, Citizen Exit Polls in Los Angeles County: An In-Depth Analysis, by R. H. Phillips
INTRODUCTION
Was California's Proposition 8 Election Rigged?
By Sally Castleman and Jonathan Simon
This report presents evidence that in the November 2008 election the tabulation of the vote for California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative repealing marriage equality, was probably corrupted. It is beyond the scope of this study to know if any corruption was due to honest error or intentional fraud. Further investigation is warranted.
Much media attention has been focused on California over the past several years regarding gay marriage, abortion, and other hot-button social issues. In November 2008, two such issues appeared on the California ballot: Proposition 8 outlawed marriage equality (a “yes” vote opposed same-sex marriage); Proposition 4 mandated a waiting period and parental notification before non-emancipated minors were allowed an abortion (similar measures had been defeated twice before).
Election Defense Alliance, a national nonprofit group dedicated to restoring integrity and public accountability to the electoral processes, worked with several other election integrity groups to conduct public election verification exit polls (“EVEP”) in eight states in November. The polls were meant to validate or detect problems with the official vote counts. Ten sites, representing 19 precincts, were located in Los Angeles County, California. This paper presents the analysis of the L.A. County polling results as they pertain to Proposition 8.
Who Knows What Really Happened in MA Senate Election?
EDA is reproducing this content as a public service, with full credit to Bev Harris and Blackboxvoting.
Hand-counts Favored Coakley
Hand-counted Results Generally Arrived Faster Than Machine Counts
Machine Counts Favoring Coakley Arrived Late -- After Concession
Sole-source E-voting Contractor, LHS Associates
. . . and No Exit Polls to Check Any of It
__________________________________________________By Bev Harris
This article is about our right to know, not about Martha Coakley or Scott Brown. And lest you think something here favors a Democrat, just you wait, I'm still working on anomalies in the NY-23 election that are just plain hard to 'splain. As Richard Hayes Phillips says when people tell him to forget it, "I'm a historian, I've got all the time in the world." NY-23 still has history to be written. My public records are starting to arrive. But that's another story.
Back to Massachusetts, I think you have a right to know that Coakley won the hand counts there.
You can discuss this here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/80830.html
That's right.
According to preliminary media results by municipality, Democrat Martha Coakley won Massachusetts overall in its hand counted locations,* with 51.12% of the vote (32,247 hand counted votes) to Brown's 30,136, which garnered him 47.77% of hand counted votes. Margin: 3.35% lead for Coakley.
Massachusetts has 71 hand count locations, 91 ES&S locations, and 187 Diebold locations, with two I call the mystery municipalities (Northbridge and Milton) apparently using optical scanners, not sure what kind.
ES&S Results
The greatest margin between the candidates was with ES&S machines -- 53.64% for Brown, 45.31% for Coakley, a margin for Brown of 8.33%. It looks like ES&S counted a total of 620,388 votes, with 332,812 going to Brown and 281,118 going to Coakley. Taken overall, the difference -- 8.33% Brown (ES&S) added to 3.35% Coakley (hand count) shows an 11.68% difference between the ES&S and the hand counts.Of course, as Mark Twain used to say, there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics. These statistics don't prove anything, and probably shouldn't be discussed without a grain of salt handy before examining more detailed demographics.
Newsmedia "False Calls" Can and Do Manipulate Elections
Republished as a guest contribution to The EDA Blog with attribution and appreciation to Bev Harris, Blackboxvoting.org
By Bev Harris
Shining a Bright Light on an Undemocratic Tactic
For 10 years, I've been watching a trend to manipulate elections through premature "call" of the race by a media outlet. See below for predictions on what may follow a media call for either candidate in Massachusetts.The media "call" can be manipulated because the public doesn't know that projected winners come from a system that is not even a governmental source! In fact, the media "calls" elections based on data from just one media outlet -- usually a quiet little division of the Associated Press that occupies a little corner somewhere and answers very few questions.
Volunteers call in result reports to the corporation. The reports are often inaccurate (see below for examples). The names of these volunteers are not part of the public record. We will never get the list of names for those who will call in the 351 numbers which will result in "calling the election" for Tuesday's Massachusetts election.
How the Media "Call" May Ultimately Control Policy
If Tuesday's Massachusetts special senate election is "called" for Democrat Martha Coakley, expect to see a rush to install her, copying a Republican tactic in 2006 whereby San Diego's Brian Bilbray was seated by the US House of Representatives before tens of thousands of votes were even counted.'The media "call game" is a political game that can be played dirty,
and in Massachusetts, the media "call" could ultimately control national healthcare policy'
Yes, the Senate can override the actual election results, or pre-empt the real results, and pre-emptively install a candidate based on a media prediction, or a bunch of unofficial tallies, or whatever they want. It can be done. It has been done. And if the media calls the race for Coakley, expect to see it done again.
If the race is "called" for Republican Scott Brown, expect to see a rush from Republican lawyers to claim that Brown has the right to vote immediately, instead of Paul Kirk who is current interim successor to Ted Kennedy. If that fails, look for an attempt to force abstention on the Massachusetts vote while stall tactics play out.
Sixty votes are needed. If Coakley is called and installed, they've got the 60. If Brown is called and stalled, they've got 59. Either way, the media "call" on Massachusetts is going to be under exceptional political pressure.
No matter where you stand on the controversial healthcare bill, be aware that what you see reported on Election Night is not only not "official" or "final", but is not even real, and may not even be the numbers written down by poll workers or printed out by the voting machine.
Election Defense Alliance 2009 Year-End Action Report
Click to view our
Election Defense Alliance 2009 Year-End Action Report
EDA Study Shows 2008 CA Prop 8 Results Appear to Have Been Corrupted
The following study of suspect Proposition 8 election results in Los Angeles County, CA, is drawn from data gathered in EDA's Election Verification Exit Poll (EVEP) analysis of the 2008 Presidential election, which reports similarly questionable election results in several states.
Although this exit poll analysis cannot provide conclusive proof of election fraud (because such proof would require access to memory cards and computer code accorded proprietary exemption from public examination) it does provide the strongest indirect proof available that election results have almost certainly been altered by manipulation of the computerized voting systems.
Deviations between exit polls and official results far outside margins of error, cannot be explained away by demographics or polling factors. The facts established in these reports cannot responsibly be dismissed or evaded.
Election Defense Alliance calls on legislators, secretaries of state, attorneys general, the voting public, and especially candidates in upcoming elections, to read these reports and seriously confront their implications.
An EDA Investigative Report
'Exhaustive analysis of exit polls conducted in Los Angeles County has led to the conclusion that the vote count for Proposition 8 (the ban on same-sex marriage) appears to have been corrupted.
There were not enough Republican voters to account for the disparity between the exit poll and official results
even if every Republican non-responder voted for Proposition 8.
The Edison-Mitofsky exit poll showed a similar disparity statewide,
indicating that altered vote counts may not be limited to Los Angeles County.'
CITIZEN EXIT POLLS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY: AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS
Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
Download the PDF
Appendices added
Related report: Introduction and Executive Summary
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Abstract
Exhaustive analysis of exit polls conducted in Los Angeles County has led to the inescapable conclusion that the vote count for Proposition 8 (the ban on same-sex marriage) was corrupted. The data were drawn from questionnaires filled out by 6326 voters at ten polling places scattered across Los Angeles County, and were properly adjusted to match the gender, age, race, and party affiliation of the electorate.
For Proposition 4 (which would have required parental notification and a waiting period for minors seeking abortions), the official results differ from the adjusted exit poll data by only 0.64%. But for Proposition 8, the disparity between the official results and the adjusted exit poll data is 5.74%, enough to affect the margin by 11.48%. Because Los Angeles County comprised 24.23% of the statewide electorate, an error of that magnitude would have affected the statewide margin by 2.78%, accounting for most of the official 4.48% statewide margin of victory. There were not enough Republican voters to account for the disparity between the exit poll and the official results even if every Republican non-responder voted for Proposition 8. The Edison-Mitofsky exit poll showed a similar disparity statewide, indicating that altered vote counts may not be limited to Los Angeles County.
EDA Exit Polls Generally Match 2008 Election Results, But Find "Wide Disparities" in NH Vote Counts
This report is meant as a warning. It does not provide conclusive proof of election tampering, but what is revealed here is strong enough to suggest that Legislators, Secretaries of State, Attorneys General, AND CITIZENS must pay close attention to what is reported in all future elections. Candidates entering races in 2010 Mid-Term Elections should especially read and understand this report and take notice of the current state of our electoral system.
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'We know that there are huge disparities between the exit poll data and the official results
at all four polling places in New Hampshire, and that adjusting the raw data
to account for party affiliation does not explain them. . . .
We are forced to conclude that it is very possible that the official results in New Hampshire are not true and correct.'
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2008 and 2004 Presidential Exit Poll Discrepancies Compared
Introductory Summation:
In 2008 the exit poll discrepancy was considerably smaller than in 2004, but it was still well outside the margin of error. I won’t calculate an exact number, since we don’t have all the data yet. But it’s safe to say that the difference is very unlikely to be explained by chance alone.The fact that pre-election polls provided an estimate very similar to the exit polls in 2008 (The Obama lead was a little bit less in the pre-election polls, but it was surging upwards in the last couple of days, so probably the two were about equivalent) makes it even more likely that they were both accurate.
So that leaves two possibilities: Exit poll bias (and pre-election poll bias as well) or impaired election integrity – that is, election fraud.
Consequently, EDA undertook an effort yesterday to capture exit poll statistics from all major statewide races (President, Senator, and Governor) prior to “adjustment” of the statistics to match the official election results. (Once the statistics are “adjusted” to match the official election results they are worthless for the purpose of assessing the exit poll discrepancy because the “adjustment” erases the discrepancy.)









