Election Issues

Several Tanker trucks full of political ink have been spilled on Mitt Romney's tenure as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital. A more important story, however, is the fact that Bain alumni, now raising big money as Romney bundlers are also in the electronic voting machine business. This appears to be a repeat of the the infamous former CEO of Diebold Wally O’Dell, who raised money for Bush while his company supplied voting machines and election management software in the 2004 election.

In all 234 counties of Texas, the entire states of Hawaii and Oklahoma, half of Washington and Colorado, and certain counties in swing state Ohio, votes will be cast on eSlate and ePollbook machines made by Hart Intercivic. Hart Intercivic machines have famously failed in Tarrant County (Ft. Worth), adding 10,000 non-existent votes. The EVEREST study, commissioned by the Ohio secretary of state in 2007, found serious security flaws with Hart Intercivic products.

Nine Republican governors have the power to put Mitt Romney in the White House, even if Barack Obama wins the popular vote.

With their secretaries of state, they control the electronic vote count in nine key swing states: Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Arizona, and New Mexico. Wisconsin elections are under the control of the state's Government Accountability Board, appointed by the governor.

In tandem with the GOP's massive nation-wide disenfranchisement campaign, they could---in the dead of election night---flip their states' electronic votes to Romney and give him a victory in the Electoral College.

The Voters First campaign scored another victory against Issue 2 opponents’ ongoing effort to mislead and confuse voters. Today the Ohio Elections Commission found probable cause that the Ohio Republican Party was purposely lying voters about state Issue 2 in a recent campaign mail piece.

The Ohio Elections Commission unanimously found probable cause and the Commission will conduct a full hearing on October 4th.

Issue 2 supporters accused reform opponents of continuing their ongoing campaign to intentionally misrepresent Issue 2 to voters with false statements. The Elections Commission found probable cause to hold a hearing on the first statement, “Some of the members will be chosen in secret.” The Ohio Republican Party has also agreed to discontinue their use of the second false statement, “They’ll have a blank check to spend our money.”

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of investigative articles documenting who owns the electronic hardware and software used in the U.S. voting process. Our goal is simple: To reveal the man behind the curtain and expose the vulnerability of non-transparent, faith-based voting. ~ Bob Fitrakis, Editor.
Various far-right conspiracy researchers have been alleging for some months that George Soros somehow secretly will control the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election. The Free Press's exhaustive research can find not a single tangible link between George Soros and any manufacturer of voting equipment. Our research did find links much more frightening.

The Free Press widely reported the various dirty tricks employed by Karl Rove and company to apparently outright steal the election for George W. Bush in Ohio, and thus the nation, in 2004. Since then, a witness in our case has died in a mysterious plane crash, and all the players in the DRE (Direct Reporting Electronic) voting machine game have shifted seats in a gigantic game of musical chairs.

No, it’s not the brutal, hate-twisted racism of the old days. Today’s Republicans are capable of adoring select right-wing African-Americans. The Jim Crow revival they’re pushing — the large-scale disenfranchisement of primarily minority voters — is pragmatic.

They’re outnumbered. They couldn’t win a fair national election. What a dilemma for such a righteous political organization. Winning — securing power, implementing their agenda — is the whole point, and that means they have no choice but to put the big squeeze on Democrat-leaning voting blocs. And the most obvious of those blocs are racial and ethnic.

Democracy is as vulnerable to abuse when it’s several centuries old as when it’s brand new. And though the United States proudly waves its flag as the world’s oldest democracy, at the beginning that concept was seriously limited — to white, male property owners. And as enfranchisement spread, a tradition of virulent vote suppression spread right along with it. Democracy is never far from its own demise.

The Republican Party could steal the 2012 US Presidential election with relative ease.

Six basic factors make this year's theft a possibility:

1. The power of corporate money, now vastly enhanced by the US Supreme Court's Citizens' United decisions;

2. The Electoral College, which narrows the number of votes needed to be moved to swing a presidential election;

3. The systematic disenfranchisement of---according to the Brennan Center---ten million or more citizens, most of whom would otherwise be likely to vote Democratic. More than a million voters have also been purged from the rolls in Ohio, almost 20% of the total vote count in 2008;

4. The accelerating use of electronic voting machines, which make election theft a relatively simple task for those who control them, including their owners and operators, who are predominantly Republican; 

5. The GOP control of nine of the governorships in the dozen swing states that will decide the outcome of the 2012 campaign; and, 

The Ohio Republican Party has moved four ways to steal America's 2012 election. The Buckeye State is almost certain to emerge as a decider in this year's presidential election, and the GOP is moving fast to ensure victory, no matter what it takes.  

The strategy reflects much of what was done by the Republicans in 2000 and 2004 to steal those presidential elections for George W. Bush, as we report in the newly published WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA'S 2012 ELECTION? (now at www.harveywasserman.ning.com and at www.freepress.org).

If they get away with it, the Ohio GOP could make it virtually impossible for Barack Obama to carry Ohio this November. In the years since Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, the Democratic Party has made little headway in reforming our electoral system to make such thefts impossible:

State and local officials confirm the public records have been moved to off-site storage, though they remain in the custody of County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus...
The ballots cast in Waukesha County during the June 5th Gubernatorial recall in Wisconsin appear to be safe from destruction at the hands of one of the nation's most notorious election officials.
For now.

In our exclusive exposé earlier today, we detailed the threat made by the infamous Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus to "destroy" the county's ballots from the historic recall election between Gov. Scott Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, as early as noon today, in apparent contravention of state law. The threat to destroy the ballots was made even as they (and the rest of the ballots cast in the election across the state) are still subjects of public records requests by a number of citizen groups attempting to verify the otherwise completely unverified results of the race by examining the ballots by hand for the first time.

Here are the facts, ma'am:In the 2008 election, no fewer than:

• 767,023 provisional ballots were cast and not counted;
• 1,451,116 ballots were "spoiled," not counted;
• 488,136 absentee ballots were mailed in, but not counted.

Add it up: in the last presidential election, no fewer than 2,706,275 ballots were cast—and never counted. I have not included a quarter million (251,936) provisional ballots counted only in part (that is, for some offices).

That's the official number I've calculated from the records of the US Election Assistance Commission.

Approximately three million votes flushed away are ugly enough. But it gets worse.