Electronic
Voting: The stolen election of 2004
Centre for Research on Globalisation
by
Larry Chin
Online Journal
5 November 2004
The stolen election
of 2004: welcome back to hell
Using
a variety of criminal methods that they have perfected over the past
four years, the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney-Karl Rove syndicate stole
another election, and extended their illegal occupation of the White
House.
Experienced, informed and unblinking observers were not fooled by any
aspect of this utterly predictable goose-step towards full dictatorship.
But to those who are "shocked" as they watched the election
night numbers mysteriously slip away amidst controversy; those who are
struggling to understand "what happened" let this cold realization
serve as bracing edification.
Welcome to hell. Welcome to the horrifying reality that whistleblowers
have suffered and fought through every day, over lifetimes. No more
illusions.
This is reality.
It Is a Rigged Game.
The US political and economic system, exemplified by Bush-Cheney, is
deeply criminalized. It is designed to profit by killing things. It
thrives on war and oppression. It is sustained by collusion, fraud,
lies, and cover-up, and the indoctrination and manipulation of minds.
It does not, and never has, represented its people. Its operatives heed
no laws. They "make" law. These facts must be burned into
the consciousness of every decent human being.
As Mike Ruppert writes in Crossing The Rubicon : "That profits
of crime and war, which are destructive of human life, of labor, of
happy, healthy neighborhoods (whether in the US or in Afghanistan, Africa
and Iraq) are in effect a keystone of the global economy and a determinant
of the success in a ruthless competition, is a compass needle for human
civilization. One cannot expect to follow the recipe for roadkill stew
and produce a crème brulee."
Criminals do not obey laws. Criminals do not believe in "democracy".
Criminals do not "permit" elections.
It is foolish, then, to expend one’s energies in "clean"
election activities, and expect good results. To quote one of George
W. Bush many recent Freudian non-slips, "we make elections."
The 2004 presidential election was just one more "manufacture".
How John Kerry Unwon the Presidency
How Bush-Cheney stole the 2000 election was a matter of obvious historical
fact, confirmed by post-facto mainstream media reports of a Gore win,
and detailed by numerous investigators such as Greg Palast in his book
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Voters complained about old machines
and paper ballots.
Then came the "black box voting" machines.
(For
detailed analysis of black box voting, read the work of Bev Harris .)
In the 2002 mid-term elections , the Republicans "shocked"
Democrats by solidifying their power in Congress, using the same fraudulent
methods, along with new and improved black box technology.
"The technology had a trial run in the 2002 mid-term elections.
In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor
and senator were both unseated in what the media called ‘amazing’
upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the
last pre-ballot polls. In computerized Minnesota, former Vice President
Walter Mondale — a replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone,
who died in a plane crash days before the vote — was also defeated
in a large last-second vote swing. Convenient ‘glitches’
in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the Democratic
candidate registering instead for Governor Jeb "L'il Brother"
Bush. A Florida Democrat who lost a similarly ‘glitched’
local election went to court to have the computers examined —
but the case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the innards of
America's voting machines are the ‘trade secrets’ of the
private companies who make them."
In 2003, black box voting also helped oust Governor Gray Davis and installed
Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Democratic stronghold of California.
The probability of a fix was obvious throughout the 2004 presidential
campaign. Corporate media polls continued to predominantly favor Bush,
never dipping his rating below 48 percent, despite his trouncing in
three straight debates with Kerry, and despite mushrooming war scandals.
This was in stark contrast to independent surveys that showed Kerry
with commanding leads.
Kerry momentum, and massive Kerry/anti-Bush voter turnout, was evident
on election day, and confirmed by exit polls with dominant Kerry numbers.
Then what?
Greg Palast reveals in exhaustive detail that John Kerry won the 2004
election and had it stolen through such methods as "spoilage",
intimidation, polling place chicanery, ethnic cleansing of polls. (See
Kerry Won .) Once again, criminals do not "permit" elections.
They make them. This time, the Bush forces had years of unencumbered
time to orchestrate it, from Ohio
(where its notorious secretary of state is the head of the Bush re-election
campaign), and, of course, Jeb Bush’s Florida.
The Triumph of the Bush Machines
But there is one overriding fact that has been left out most of the
ridiculous post-election punditry that renders all other analyses completely
irrelevant. It is also the reason why the smiles on the faces of Bush
crime family members are so bright, as they watched the returns on election
night.
Air America Radio’s Mike Malloy gave the most succinct and passionate
explanation in his Wednesday, November 3, 2004, program [my links included-LC]:
"The American vote count is controlled by three major corporate
players, Diebold, ESS, Sequoia, and a fourth, SAIC, Science Applications
International. All four are hard-wired into the Bush power structure,
the Bush crime family. They have been given millions of dollars by the
Bush regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines
that were just used in the 2004 election. The technology involved had
a trial run during the 2002 mid-term elections. Georgia had Diebold
machines in every precinct. As a result, a popular Democratic governor
and senator were both unseated in what the media called an "amazing"
16 percent swing.
Diebold’s Walden O’Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, publicly
committed himself to delivering his home state Ohio’s votes to
Bush.
At Diebold, the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob’s
brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The
brothers were originally staked by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the
Council For National Policy , a right-wing steering group stacked with
Bush true believers. Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist
Christian Reconstruction Movement, which advocates the theocratic takeover
of American democracy.
The four companies are interconnected; they are not four "competitors".
Ahmanson has large stakes in ES&S, whose former CEO was Republican
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own
company counted the votes, and his victory was considered "an amazing
upset". Hagel still has a million dollar stake in ES&S.
Sequoia is the corporate parent of a private equity firm, Madison Dearborn,
which is partner in the Carlyle Group . (Also see here .)
Meanwhile, SAIC is referred to a "shadowy defense contractor".
They have gotten into the vote count game both directly and through
spinoffs by its top brass, including Admiral Bill Owens, former military
aide to Dick Cheney, and Carlyle Group honcho Frank Carlucci and ex-CIA
chief Robert Gates. SAIC’s history of fraud charges and security
"lapses" haven’t prevented it from becoming one of the
largest Pentagon and CIA contractors, and will doubtless encounter few
obstacles in its entrance into the vote counting business.
The mad rush to install these unverifiable computers is driven by the
Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush! The chief lobbying group pushing
for the act (while we dumb asses sat out here and thought, ‘That
sounds like a good idea!’) was a consortium of arms dealers including
Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin.
When you hear people saying, ‘take a deep breath, we will pull
through this’, ‘we need to work harder’, ‘we
need to organize’ — no. We will not. It’s over.
Unless electronic vote tabulation is history, and these companies are
driven out of business, it’s their country. Not ours. Nobody knows,
and no one will ever know, what the actual vote count was. There are
no checks and balances left. The US Senate now has 55 of these Republicans.
When they hit 60, which is what will happen in 2006 mid-term elections
— trust me — that means that no matter what Bush and the
crime family want to do, they can do it. The House (of Representatives)
is gone for the next two to five generations. It’s gone.
The last thing rational people in this country need right now is this
whistling-past-the-graveyard horse hockey. Nothing is going to happen;
it’s going to get worse. There will never again be a legitimate
election in this country.
Until we get rid of the machines.
The people who put the software together—do you think that they
are in this business to promote democracy? To promote representative
government? Then you are a fool, and you don’t deserve anything
other than the lash. Kerry did not lose the election. The vote was stolen.
Get that through your head."
The Bush syndicate owns and runs the machines that make the votes. They
control all branches of the federal government.
There is nothing more painful than witnessing the Kerry voters, liberals
and progressives as they agonize over "what went wrong," second
guessing their Herculean efforts, grasping for solutions in outdated
ideas, and vowing how "next time, we’ll work harder, and
we’ll really get out the vote!", and that "we’ll
nominate even better candidates!"
Still others are asking reasonable questions. Why aren’t Walden
O’Dell, Jeb Bush, and J. Kenneth Blackwell under arrest, or in
jail? Exactly how did Associated Press pull it off on election night?
Will any of the Bush administration criminals ever be punished for their
war crimes? Then one must ask, who is going to prosecute? Who is going
to hear the cases? The Bush Justice Department? The Bush FBI? The Supreme
Court?
When you play fair in a rigged game, it doesn’t matter how hard
you work, or even what you do. Insanity is repeating the same mistake,
expecting a different result.
Kerry Welcomes Fascism with Open Arms
John Kerry’s pitiful and immediate capitulation, surrendering
with even less of a fight than Al Gore in 2000, despite clear, overt
and gross vote fraud across the country, including Ohio — Diebold’s
home state — was sickening.
Bush’s Skull & Bones fraternity brother then spoke of "healing"
and uniting behind Bush, a speech grotesquely reminiscent of Al Gore’s
sickening 2000 declaration that Bush was "mah president."
Twice now, with Gore and Kerry, Democrats have won the White House,
and then refused to speak the truth about the crime, and fight for the
people who bled for them. Twice, America has been sold out.
Could it be that this time, Kerry played the American people in just
another game of bait-and-switch?
Will those who supported Kerry actually heed his command, and obediently
march in step, "without anger or rancor," and follow George
W. Bush, the strutting tyrant, and the most dangerous and irrational
collection of mass-murdering war criminals in modern history?
In a cynical view, and one that is likely accurate, the election of
2004 may have been nothing more than an elaborate trial balloon, a "good
cop-bad cop" theater that is mandated every few years to uphold
the appearance of legitimacy. Our candidates lie, all the while gauging
the effectiveness of long-term manipulation programs. They think, are
the people still gullible and uninformed? What slogans and illusions
can we fool them with? Is the "war on terrorism" mindset still
unwavering? How far can we push them? Will they accept the baseball
bat in the face, or the velvet glove to the nose? How many beatings
will this republic take, before its people wake up? When will the people
realize what is really happening, and "chase us down the street
and lynch us" (as George H.W. Bush said to reporter Sarah McClendon
)?
To hell with Bush. To hell with Kerry. Wait, We’re All Already
Here.
As sadistic Bush slurred in his "acceptance" speech, "a
new term is a new opportunit." If the last four years brought the
world to its knees, imagine what is to come as Bush-Cheney giddily pry
open a new set of larger Pandora’s Boxes.
Webster Tarpley , author of the Unauthorized Biography of George Bush
writes: "If Bush retains control of the White House, we can expect
a neocon fascist dictatorship or martial law emergency regime in 2005
or 2006, possibly as the result of synthetic terrorism. The neocons
are in a desperate flight forward mentality which seeks to avoid the
penal consequences of what they have already done with Valerie Plame,
the Niger yellowcake forgeries, the Israeli mole scandal, and the Chalabi
betrayal of state secrets. The neocon preference is for early war with
Iran. War with Russia and China cannot be excluded somewhat further
down the road."
Add to that the relentless horror that will be inflicted when the effects
of Peak Oil (also see From The Wilderness and Richard Heinberg ) crash
home in earnest, the body bags pile higher with new wars, and the lives
of Americans (including Bush drones) and people all over the world continue
to be destroyed.
Some members of the current Bush crime organization may leave or retire,
and the possibilities include Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft (possibly
replaced with Marc Racicot, a long-time friend of George W. Bush, and
W’s first choice for attorney general in 2000). Expect their replacements
to be less well known criminals who, if anything, may be more toxic.
Robert Lederman wrote of Racicot: "Numerous members of the Bush
family, including his father and brothers and at least one of GW's prospective
cabinet appointees — potential GW Bush Attorney General Marc Racicot
— have a history of alleged involvement in drug running at the
highest levels. We're not talking about buying drugs for personal use
here but massive importations of heroin and cocaine with the full involvement
of foreign dictators like George Bush pal Manuel Noriega and the Mafia."
(See Murder and Drug Running in Montana )
In Robert Payne’s biography The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler,
he writes of Hitler (whose Third Reich was, in fact, financed by the
Bush family ): "For all the foreseeable future, he will remain
to haunt us, more alive than ever although he is dead. He hides in shadowy
places and at the pinnacle of power, always urging men to commit the
ultimate crime, the perfect atrocity,
the most ferocious massacres. Into the ears of generals and politicians
he whispers: "Be merciless. It is very easy now because I have
lived. I have reduced the value of man to a fraction of what it was
before. You will find, if you continue along the path I have opened
for you, the value of man will decline still further. Remember, mankind
is always valueless and its only use is to serve our interests. We alone
are transmitters of civilization, and the people are nothing but cattle.
Napalm is good for them."
Hitler himself wrote: "The victor will not be asked, later on,
whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war, it is
not right that matters, but victory. Have no pity."
Hitler had nothing on the George W. Bush administration.
What, if any, silver lining can be found in the wake of this new goose-step
in the abyss? Perhaps only that the same bellicose, predictable and
clumsy villains remain right where they have been for the last four
years: right in front of us. Better that than a crafty and likeable
neoliberal John Kerry administration that lulls the world to sleep before
poison is administered. We cannot be fooled.
Larry Chin is
a freelance journalist and a Global Research Contributing Editor.
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI411B.html
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