Thoughts and observations on early voting and a legitimate process

By Branden Ran

copy from : Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens For Legitimate Government
21 Oct 2008

‘I hit it in the square to vote for Obama. Immediately, it went to McCain.’ Early-voting problems in Putnam –Touch-screen votes switched, then corrected 21 Oct 2008 Two more Putnam County voters – Martha Louise Harrington and Michael K. Koon – have come forward about problems they experienced on early-voting electronic machines at the Winfield courthouse. Last week, other early voters in Jackson and Putnam counties said touch-screen voting machines changed their votes after they tried to punch them in… “All the voting systems [in West Virginia] are manufactured by ES&S.” [WHY are these ‘voting’ machines, aka tools for the GOP to implement Coup 2008, still *standing?*]

Ohio election Web site shut down after hacked 21 Oct 2008 The Web site of the Ohio state agency that handles voter registration and other election information was shut down briefly after it was hacked, an official said on Tuesday, vowing to guard against fraud in the key battleground state in the November 4 presidential contest. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said the agency temporarily took the Secretary of State Web site at www.sos.state.oh.us down on Monday after “one or more” security breaches were detected.

Concern That Overseas Military Votes Will Not Be Counted 19 Oct 2008 Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Defense (DoD) to obtain documents detailing the voting process for active duty military and their families stationed overseas [Judicial Watch, Inc. v U.S. Department of Defense, Civil Action No. 08-01748]. As reported by columnist Bob Novak, the federal Election Assistance Commission estimated overseas and absentee military voting rates were only 5.5% for the 2006 mid-term elections, and questions have arisen as to whether the Defense Department is adequately ensuring that overseas U.S. military personnel will be able to cast votes for Election Day.

Mega barf alert! Senate Republicans Demand ACORN Investigation 20 Oct 2008 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee maintained the conservative drumbeat against ACORN on Monday, demanding an investigation into claims of voter registration fraud at the community activist group. All nine Republicans on the panel co-signed a letter to committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy demanding an investigation into allegations of “widespread, systematic voter registration fraud” at ACORN.

PBS.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10172008/watch3.html

Bill Moyers sits down with Mark Crispin Miller, professor of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU, who has been following voter fraud allegations in his blog News from the Underground. An expert on propaganda and media, Miller’s book LOSER TAKES ALL is an anthology of writings covering election fraud.

copy from environment California. ca .gov  official website

http://www.environmentcalifornia.org/issues/election-2008/2008-ballot-measures?id4=ES

copy from BBV

Please pass this on.  VERY important.
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Posted on Friday, October 10, 2008 – 9:19 am:

You may have read about this, and Black Box Voting has sent an ELECTION ALERT about this. Here are the details and what to do about it:

THE PROBLEM: “Straight party voting” on voting machines is revealing a bad pattern of miscounting and omitting your vote, especially if you are a Democrat.

Most recently (Oct. 2008), a firm called Automated Election Services was found to have mis-coded the system in heavily Democratic Santa Fe County, New Mexico such that straight party voters would not have the presidential vote counted.

Straight party voting is allowed in 15 states. Basically, it means that you can take a shortcut to actually looking at who you are voting for and instead just select a party preference. Then the voting machine makes your candidate choices, supposedly for the party you requested.

Additional details follow, but first: PROTECT THE COUNT

1) NEVER CHOOSE THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE OPTION, because it alerts the computer as to your party preference and allows software code to trigger whatever function the programmer has designed.

2) SEND THIS INFORMATION OUT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN, blog it, root n’ toot it out there to get the word out.

3) ESPECIALLY GET THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, which have straight party voting options:
– Alabama
– Indiana
– Iowa
– Kentucky
– Michigan
– New Mexico
– North Carolina
– Oklahoma
– Pennsylvania
– Rhode Island
– South Carolina
– Texas
– Utah
– West Virginia
– Wisconsin
(Missouri and New Hampshire had straight party voting in earlier years, but have cancelled the straight party option for the Nov. 2008 election; however, the Straight Party software is still on Missouri and New Hampshire election management computers.)

4) DEMAND COMPLETE AND CAREFUL TESTING OF THE STRAIGHT PARTY OPTION IN LOGIC & ACCURACY TESTS. Bring copies of the citations in this article to buttress your case for why this is needed, if you have to. Witnesses for L&A tests in the straight party option states should specifically watch for and note whether (a) the tests were done and (b) the results were accurate.

5) LOOK FOR UNDERVOTES (high profile races with lower-than-average number of votes cast) and flag them, post them, bring them to the attention of others for additional scrutiny.

Undervotes may reveal straight-party programming fraud after the fact, but can never be reconstructed to know who the voter would have voted for. Such programming malfeasance, when found, disenfranchises voters.

MORE DETAILS ON THE STRAIGHT PARTY TRAP

October 2008: In Santa Fe, New Mexico the machines were NOT counting straight party ballots correctly, and now it turns out that voting machines have been caught giving straight party votes to the other party’s candidates, omitting the counts for some straight party votes, and generally creating mischief.

Most recent news on this can be found here:
More on that here:
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/30557559.html?elr=KArksac8P3iUec7Pa P3iUqc8P3UU
with archive copy and commentary on the claims made in the article here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/159/78362.html
NOTE: RAN does not endorse any particular party, proposition or candidate. We do support the right to free and fair elections.