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Beware These Voter Suppression and Vote-Counting Fraud Tactics


THE DIRTY 30 OF ELECTION FRAUD
30 WAYS TO STEAL AN ELECTION AND DESTROY DEMOCRACY This series written, produced and hosted by Network of Citizens at http://www.networkofcitizens.org/election/index.htm


(1) Voter Fraud vs. Election Fraud: New Poll Taxes
(2) 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA)
(3) Voting Machine Vendors Policing Themselves
(4) Sproul Registration Drives
(5) Voter Rolls Purged I
(6) Voter Rolls Purged II - Accenture
(7) New Laws Discouraging Voter Registration Drives
(8) Secret Software Programs - I
(9) Secret Software Programs - II (Chuck Hagel)
(10) Paperless E-voting Machines (Ney & Abramoff)
(11) Partisan SOS 2000 - Katherine Harris
(12) Partisan SOS 2004 - J. Kenneth Blackwell
(13) Absentee Ballots
(14) Diebold Felons
(15) Provisional Ballots Rejected
(16) Caging Lists
(17) Expatriate Americans
(18) Sleepovers
(19) Mighty Texas Strike Force
(20) Phone Jamming
(21) Voting While Black
(22) Machine Shortages
(23) Spoiled Ballots
(24) Exit Polls
(25) Premature Calling of Election Winners
(26) Rigged Recounts
(27) Judicial Decisions - I (2000 - Supreme Court)
(28) Judicial Decisions - II (Bilbray/Busby; Washoe Co., NV)
(29) Media Blackout
(30) Election Day


<!-- --> <!-- 1 --> <!-- --> (1) Voter Fraud vs. Election Fraud: New Poll Taxes
Voter fraud is fraud perpetrated by individual voters, such as voting by illegal immigrants and voting more than once, both of which are felonies. The theory that voter registration drives lead to voter fraud is false. All sound evidence shows that voter registration drives do NOT lead to fraud by the voters at the polls. In addition, the notion that there are widespread occurrences of voter fraud is a myth. Not only is there a “massive void of evidence”, the existing evidence clearly shows that it is almost nonexistent, including voting by illegal immigrants. After all, why would illegal immigrants take the high risk of publicizing their presence by registering to vote? Unfortunately, when something is repeated often enough, even pure propaganda, it can take on the ring of truth.

Furthermore, the great efforts being undertaken to prevent the nonexistent problem of voter fraud take the focus off of the very real and heavily documented acts of widespread election fraud that have made a mockery out of the democratic process of voting in America.

Election fraud , is fraud perpetrated by political candidates, parties or others with a vested interest in the election outcome. Tactics employed in election fraud include voter supression and disenfranchisement, stuffing of ballot boxes, and manipulation of the election results. Such tactics can often be done on a massive scale.

Rather than addressing large-scale election fraud at the national level, Congress has chosen to focus on developing new laws that would serve to expand voter suppression and disenfranchisement. An example is the recent bill in the US House of Representatives, the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 (HR 4844). The voter identifcation requirements imposed by such legislation serve as a strong reminder of the poll taxes imposed by many Southern states in the 1950s to prevent poor and black Americans from voting.

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(2) 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA)

On Oct. 29, 2002, President Bush signed the Help America Vote Act. The stated intent of HAVA was to correct many of the problems that occurred in the 2000 election. In the 2004 election, people felt calmed by the illusion that the problems of the 2000 election were being corrected — while in fact the opposite was happening. Touch screen voting machines were touted by the industry and their lobbyists as making voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM. Congress, swiftly authorized $3.9 million to upgrade the nation's election systems, with much of the money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of America's 180,000 precincts. But as midterm elections approach this November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better.

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<!-- --> <!-- 3 --> <!-- --> (3) Voting Machine Vendors Policing Themselves



According to Brian Hancock, of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and Jorge Martinez of the U.S. Election Justice Department, there is NO federal agency with regulatory authority over the elections industry; there are NO government standards or restrictions on who can sell or service voting machines and systems; and there is NO agency or organization that even has a complete list of voting machine companies in the U.S. In other words, the highly-partisan voting machine companies are literally policing themselves.

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<!-- --> <!-- 4 --> <!-- --> (4) Sproul Registration Drives


Sproul & Associates is a Republican consulting firm run by Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona Republican Party and Arizona Christian Coalition. The firm was hired by the RNC for work in swing states and elsewhere from September 2004 through election day, to register new voters. Sproul registration drives were reported in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Nevada. Tactics reported by former Sproul employees included; recruiting workers by fraudulently telling applicants that they would be working for America Votes—a legitimate non-partisan operation; telling workers that if they brought back a bunch of Democratic cards, they would be fired; destroying registration forms filled out by Democrats & Independents; and tricking Democrats & Independents into registering as Republicans. In total, the RNC paid Sproul & Associates $8.3 million for their efforts—making it the eighth largest expenditure of the 2004 campaign.

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<!-- --> <!-- 5 --> <!-- --> (5) Voter Rolls Purged I


Of all the strategies used in Florida in the 2000 election, the most notorious was the systematic use of overly inclusive scrub lists, intending to purge ex-felons from the voter rolls but actually to disinfranchise as many Democrats—in particular, African-Americans—as possible. Katherine Harris, through a list compiled by DBT/Choicepoint, named as felons tens of thousands of Floridians with clean records, just because they shared a name or and address, with someone who had done hard time. Harris's office then purged the rolls of all those on the list, over 90,000 citizens, most of them entirely innocent. Nearly 3 percent of Florida's eligible black voters were listed. DBT/ChoicePoint's error rate was 97%.

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(6) Voter Rolls Purged II - Accenture


The issue returned again to prominence in 2004 when Florida announced another planned purge, again based on a list of felons. Accenture, a $14 billion company that has made millions doing government jobs, was supposed to help Florida create a bulletproof felon voter list. But state elections officials scrapped the list after newspaper reports reported a flaw that invalidated it.The demise of the list, which was three years in the making, renews questions about Accenture's strong Republican ties and its business practices. In fact, the company's resume is littered with connections to drama that the nation's Republican leadership would rather forget: Enron, Abu Ghraib and mysterious Saudi businessmen. The company, once part of Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, jettisoned the Andersen name in 2001 to distance itself from scandal.

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<!-- --> <!-- 7 --> <!-- --> (7) New Laws Discouraging Voter Registration Drives


A number of states are adopting rules that make it hard, and financially perilous, for nonpartisan groups to register new voters. The Florida Legislature recently adopted a law imposing fines of $250 for every voter registration form that a group files more than 10 days after it is collected, and $5,000 for every form that is not submitted, even if it is because of events beyond anyone's control, like a hurricane. The Florida League of Women Voters, which is suing to block the new rules, has decided it cannot afford to keep registering new voters in the state as it has done for 67 years. If a volunteer lost just 16 forms in a flood, or handed in a stack of forms a day late, the group's entire annual budget could be put at risk.

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<!-- --> <!-- 8 --> <!-- --> (8) Secret Software Programs - I


The United States is one of only a handful of major democracies that allow private, partisan companies to secretly count and tabulate votes using their own proprietary software. Today, 80 percent of all ballots in the U.S. are tallied by four companies—Diebold, ES&S, Sequioa Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic. The simple fact is, these machines not only break down regularly, they are easily compromised—by people inside and outside of the companies.

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<!-- --> <!-- 9 --> <!-- --> (9) Secret Software Programs - II (Chuck Hagel)


In 1995, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska was the CEO of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the voting machine company that would count the votes in his 1996 bid for the U.S. Senate. He was trailing in the pre-election polls to his opponent, former Gov. Ben Nelson, 65% to 18%, yet Hagel amazingly came from behind to win with 56% of the vote. He was the first Republican Senate winner in the state in 24 years. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, ES&S counted 85% of the votes in Nebraska. Senator Hagel retains a $1 - $5 million ownership in ES&S’s parent company, McCarthy Group, as he contemplates a run for the Presidency in 2008.

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<!-- --> <!-- 10 --> <!-- --> (10) Paperless E-voting Machines (Ney & Abramoff)


According to an April 2006 article in Rolling Stone Magazine, “Diebold paid some $275,000 to [Jack] Abramoff’s firm, Greenberg Traurig, with the apparent aim of keeping legislation requiring paper trails in the voting process from getting into HAVA. Conveniently, Abramoff pal [Rep.] Bob Ney [R-OH], one of the HAVA architects, blocked every attempt to put paper trails into law.” Since then, both Ney and Abramoff have pled guilty to felony charges of corruption.

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<!-- --> <!-- 11 --> <!-- --> (11) Partisan SOS 2000 - Katherine Harris


Florida SoS Katherine Harris oversaw the 2000 election in Florida that was awash in purged voter roles, trashed “over-votes,” uncounted military and absentee ballots, and state financing of republican campaign efforts. Harris, who also served as co-chair of Bush's Florida campaign, gleefully purged voter roles of supposed “felons.” Following Election Day, Harris was instrumental in ensuring that all the Florida votes were NOT counted.

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<!-- --> <!-- 12 --> <!-- --> (12) Partisan SOS 2004 - J. Kenneth Blackwell

In 2004, J. Kenneth Blackwell was not only Ohio's SoS, but a leader in the Bush reelection campaign. Under Blackwell’s guidance, Ohio experienced some of the most egregious and un-addressed election process failures seen to date in the age of computerized voting. Democratic precincts were severely underserved by voting machinery, forcing voters to wait in lines of up to 10 hours or more simply to cast their vote. Adjacent precincts of primarily Republican voters were well served, with sufficient machinery and no waiting. Blackwell is currently a Republican gubernatorial candidate and, as Secretary of State, in charge of running elections in Ohio.

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<!-- --> <!-- 13 --> <!-- --> (13) Absentee Ballots

Mail-in voter registration forms are protected by federal law—absentee ballots are not. According to Palast, the number of absentee ballots has quintupled in many states, with the number rejected on technical grounds rising to over a half a million (526,420) in 2004. In swing states, absentee ballot shredding was pandemic. Absentee Ballots explained

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<!-- --> <!-- 14 --> <!-- --> (14) Diebold Felons

According to Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, managers of a subsidiary of Diebold, one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, include a convicted cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions, and a softwareprogrammer convicted of falsifying computer records.

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<!-- --> <!-- 15 --> <!-- --> (15) Provisional Ballots Rejected

Introduced by federal law in 2002 as part of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the provisional ballot was designed especially for voters of color. Initially proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus to save the rights of those wrongly purged from voter rolls, it was, in swing states, twisted into a back-of-the-bus ballot unlikely to be tallied. Provisional Ballots explained

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<!-- --> <!-- 16 --> <!-- --> (16) Caging Lists

This particularly mean-spirited practice is designed to eliminate specific segments of the population from the voting roles. A classic example was during the 2004 presidential election when the Republican National Committee took the time and expense to send registered mailings to the soldier residents of an entire military base, Jacksonville Navel Air Station, in Florida. Not surprisingly, the mailings were returned to the RNC, unsigned by the addressees, since the base’s soldiers had been deployed overseas. RNC officials marched to election offices and challenged the validity of the soldiers’ voter registrations. En masse, the names of the soldiers were dropped from the voting roles. They were only allowed to vote via provisional ballots.... which would ultimately not be counted.

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<!-- --> <!-- 17 --> <!-- --> (17) Expatriate Americans

Expatriate America—a global bloc some have called the 51st State—includes up to 7 million voters. In 2002, HAVA instructed the Department of Defense to amplify a federal website (fvap.gov) to serve as a comprehensive nonpartisan clearinghouse of voting information. On August 23, 2004, the website suddenly went down just when the requests to register for the Presidential election were at their highest.

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<!-- --> <!-- 18 --> <!-- --> (18) Sleepovers

The concept of the “sleepover “ first received widespread national attention after the CA House District (HD) 50 special election in July 2006. The term “sleepover” actually refers to the act of pollworkers taking the election machinery home with them prior to the election, in some cases for longer than a week. In the close HD 50 race, in which Francine Busby lost to Brian Bilbrary, Diebold voting machines were taken home by pollworkers. San Diego County Registrar Mike Haas defended the process, noting that taking machinery home had been typical procedure for almost 40 years.

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<!-- --> <!-- 19 --> <!-- --> (19) Mighty Texas Strike Force

In 2004, the Mighty Texas Strike Force, an off-shoot of the RNC, dispersed about 1,500 volunteers to key battleground states to make phone calls to people recently released from prison, threatening them with being reported to the FBI and returning to jail if they voted.

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<!-- --> <!-- 20 --> <!-- --> (20) Phone Jamming

On Election Day in November, 2002, the New Hampshire Democratic Party found itself suddenly unable to operate its phone lines in its GOTV efforts for the close Senate race between Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and Republican John Sununu. It was later discovered that the phone lines were maliciously jammed by operatives connected to the Republican Party. Although the perpetrators of the jamming were convicted of their crimes, their goal was attained. The Democrat’s later inability to contact their voters during the critical GOTV effort had an impact on the election; Shaheen lost a close election. Civil suits continue regarding this case, and disclosures reveal a close connection between the perpetrators and the White House.

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<!-- --> <!-- 21 --> <!-- --> (21) Voting While Black

Almost 40 years after enactment of the historic Voting Rights Act, many Americans are still subjected to threats and intimidation when they try to exercise their right to vote. Although voter intimidation is a federal crime, most violators are never punished because federal prosecutors do not pursue these cases.

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<!-- --> <!-- 22 --> <!-- --> (22) Machine Shortages

Unequal distribution of voting machines has allowed partisan election officials to effectively deny people the right to vote. Voters in heavily Democratic districts faced massive lines due to insufficient machines, requiring voters to stand in line for hours before being able to cast their vote. In addition, these locations were often supplied with older, malfunctioning machines.

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<!-- --> <!-- 23 --> <!-- --> (23) Spoiled Ballots

The nasty little secret of American democracy is that, in every national election, ballots cast are simply thrown in the garbage—over a million of them. Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, "as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled [in the 2004 election] by faulty voting equipment – roughly one for every 100 cast."

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<!-- --> <!-- 24 --> <!-- --> (24) Exit Polls

Historically, exit polls have proven to be very accurate, often to within ½ of 1% (0.005). Discrepancies between exit polls and the final vote counts is solid evidence that something in the election results is wrong. According to computer security expert Chuck Herrin, “the sudden unreliability of exit polls in the U.S. coincides with the use of paperless electronic voting machines.”

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<!-- --> <!-- 25 --> <!-- --> (25) Premature Calling of Election Winners

In the early morning hours of November 8, Fox News Channel declared that the pivotal state of Florida had gone for George W. Bush. At 2:16 a.m. Fox announced that the Texas governor had won the state, thus securing the 271 electoral votes needed to win the presidential election. The other television networks followed suit in a matter of minutes. The call was subsequently withdrawn.The individual responsible for recommending that Fox call Florida for Bush was John Ellis, who led the network's decision desk. Ellis was not a disinterested party in the presidential election, but the first cousin of the Republican candidate and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush. In response to the call by the networks Al Gore telephoned Bush to concede the election. But as Gore was on his way to deliver his concession speech, the vice president's advisors urged him to turn back, telling him Bush's lead had dropped to only several thousand votes. Gore phoned Bush rescinding his concession after the networks reversed their call, putting Florida back in the undecided category.

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<!-- --> <!-- 26 --> <!-- --> (26) Rigged Recounts

Sherole Eaton, Deputy Director of Elections for Hocking County, Ohio testified in a signed and notarized affidavit regarding the 2004 presidential election recount that: A Michael Barbian, Jr., a representative of the voting machine company Triad GSI, unilaterally sought and obtained access to the voting machinery and records in Hocking County Ohio, modified the computer tabulator, learned which precinct was planned to be the subject of the initial test recount and made further alterations based on that information, and advised the election officials how to manipulate the machinery so that the preliminary hand recount matched the original machine count.

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<!-- --> <!-- 27 --> <!-- --> (27) Judicial Decisions - I (2000 - Supreme Court)

The Supreme Court's ruling in Bush vs. Gore, which stopped the Florida recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush, was one of most controversial rulings in the court's history. According to Alan Dershowitz, "The decision may be ranked as the single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history, because it is the only one that I know of where the majority justices decided as they did because of the personal identity and political affiliation of the litigants ... No honest person can any longer trust them to do justice, as distinguished from politics."


<!-- --> <!-- 28 --> <!-- --> (28) Judicial Decisions - II (Bilbray/Busby; Washoe Co., NV)

In the CA House District (HD) 50 July 2006 Special Election, Republican Brian Bilbray won a close victory over Democrat Francine Busby. But the issue of “sleepovers” prompted local election reform activist, to file a citizen’s challenge to the election, citing the violation of CA certification rules. Immediately after the election, and before the election was certified, Brian Bilbray was whisked off to Washington, D.C. and sworn into the office by Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. The San Diego District Court Judge declined to hear the citizen’s case, citing that the court lacked jurisdiction, since Bilbray was already sworn in as a U.S. Representative.

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<!-- --> <!-- 29 --> <!-- --> (29) Media Blackout

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 makes it possible for one company to dominate 35% of a national TV market and on the local level to own 40% of radio stations. As a result, media corporations are gobbling up smaller and independent stations. The result is censorship by omission as commercial and partisan concerns overwhelm democratic values. The mainstream media’s response to any request to cover election fraud stories is to shut up and get over it.

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<!-- --> <!-- 30 --> <!-- --> (30) Election Day

Check back on Election Day for the breaking news on election fraud.


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