STEALING AMERICA: VOTE BY VOTE, a new documentary by Emmy Award winning and Academy Award nominated filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman on corruption of the U.S. electoral process, is showing in Philadelphia beginning Friday, Aug 22 through Thursday, Aug 28. Showings are at 2:40 pm & 7:30 pm at the Ritz at Bourse (400 Ranstead St. -- 4th St. between Market & Chestnut). I did Q & A after the opening show on Friday, and will do Q&A for 30 minutes after each showing today (Sunday) and maybe tomorrow. Lynn Landes, who also appears in the film, has organized the Philadelphia showings and is also doing Q&A.

The film received a great review from the Philadelphia Inquirer: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20080822_Vote_fraud__crumbling_democracy_s_bedrock.html

Posted on Fri, Aug. 22, 2008

Vote fraud, crumbling democracy's bedrock

By Steven Rea,  Inquirer Movie Columnist and Critic

Rating: 3 stars (out of 4)

Stealing America: Vote by Vote begins with a quote from founding father Thomas Paine: "The right to vote . . . is the primary right by which other rights are protected."

Dorothy Fadiman's persuasive documentary ends with accounts of massive vote switching; hacked, whacked voting machines; and destroyed voting records. Both of George W. Bush's presidential wins are called into question.

If the film shows a liberal bias, it also makes the point that rigged elections are antithetical to everything this country stands for. In one of many clips from Jon Stewart's The Daily Show mixed in with the talking-head interviews (economist Paul Craig Roberts, pollster John Zogby, Ohio State Sen. Bob Hagan), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is asked about allegations that his uncle stole the 1960 election by fixing the ballots in Illinois. JFK's nephew winces at Stewart, then says voter fraud is wrong, no matter who the perpetrator.

It's a people's issue, the film emphasizes time and again. Not a red-state, blue-state, liberal or conservative one.

Stealing America lays out one jolting scenario after another: lost, miscounted and deleted ballots, incidents of racial bias at the polls, and sworn testimony before Congress from computer engineers who say computerized voting machines can be, and have been, tampered with.

And the mainstream news media - the networks, CNN, newspapers - also are culpable, Fadiman says, failing to address voter concerns, and ignoring off-the-chart discrepancies between historically accurate exit polls and final tallies in the 2004 election.

Stealing America: Vote by Vote is sobering. The film suggests that come Nov. 4, the votes of Republicans, Democrats and independents alike might not be counted fair and square.

Thomas Paine must be spinning in his grave.

All shows of "Stealing America" for the next week will be followed by live Q&As featuring Steve Freeman, Lynn Landes and other interviewees featured in the film. film.

Detroit:  Aug 22nd thru 28th at the Main Art 3 3118 North Main Street, Royal Oak, MI

Minneapolis:  August 22nd thru 24th, 7 pm at the Oak St. Cinema  309 Oak St.

Washington, DC:  Aug 29th thru Sept 4th at the E Street Cinema 555 11th Street NW

Boston:  Aug 29th thru Sept 4th at the Kendall Sq Cinema    One Kendall Sq. Cambridge, MA

Santa Fe, NM:  Aug 29th thru Sept 4th at the Devargas Mall Cinema 6   562 N Guadalupe St.

From The New York Times today:

Flaws in voting machines used by millions of people will not be fixed in time for the presidential election because of a government backlog in testing the machines’ hardware and software, officials say.

The flaws, which have cast doubt on the ability of some machines to provide a consistent and reliable vote count, were supposed to be addressed by the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that oversees voting. But commission officials say they will not be able to certify that flawed machines are repaired by the November election, or provide software fixes or upgrades, because of a backlog at the testing laboratories the commission uses.

“We simply are not going to sacrifice the integrity of the certification process for expediency,” said Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the commission.

As a result, machine manufacturers and state election officials say states and local jurisdictions are forgoing important software modifications meant to address security and performance concerns. In some cases, election officials in need of new equipment have no choice but to buy machines that lack the current innovations and upgrades.

The federal government does not require that states use machines that the commission certifies, but most states depend on the commission to approve new machines and software, and at least 10 states have rules or laws requiring federal certification.

The article does not entertain the possibility that machines should not be used at all.

The major article in the upcoming print issue of The Nation is election reform. The Nation has a dubious record of sincerity on election reform. They were primary culprits along with the Washington Post and the New York Times in derisively ridiculing allegations of election fraud in November 2004 [1]. The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund funded Russ Baker’s ludicrous “investigation” published in early Jan 2005 again dismissing allegations of fraud. (my response to Baker). That said, here is "Just Democracy" by The Nation's publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel.

 
[1] See Freeman & Bleifuss 2006: xiv, 182 or the epilogoue of Mark Crispin Miller’s Fooled Again

Write to me if you can take a leadership role in this, help out, have some thoughts on design, or want to buy some.

Many of us, including the NY Times editorial team, were justly concerned on March 2 when it was learned that big military contractor, United Technologies Corp (UTC) launched a bid to take over Diebold <tinyurl.com/2pjd48>. 

The $3 billion bid to buy Diebold was for $40/share, a 66 percent premium over Diebold’s closing price of $24.12. Accordingly, the stock value spiked. Diebold's management refused the offer, but the stock value stayed high.

On May 20, AP reported that Louis Chenevert, UTC’s chief executive, told the Electrical Products Group conference, "We'll not buy that property without appropriate due diligence. They've not published financials.” Chenevert said “UTC likes Diebold's business model a lot, but noted it was not ‘a must have.’" But the Diebold stock value stayed high.

On May 29, Reuters reported: “‘So far the Diebold management has not wanted to talk to us,’ said Louis Chenevert, who heads the world's largest maker of elevators and air conditioners. ‘UTC will not buy Diebold if we cannot do due diligence...it would not be prudent.’”  But the Diebold stock value stayed high.  

Since then, there has been no more news. If there were any reasonable expectation that this deal is not going to happen, Diebold's share price would drop like a rock. But the stock value has stayed high.  

One only conclude that UTC and Diebold are talking and they're just waiting for the right day when no one is paying attention, to announce the takeover. So expect on some lazy day this summer, probably over the weekend, it will come to pass that one of the world’s biggest armaments makers will formally, directly, become America's leading counter of votes.

Dutch ban voting computers over eavesdropping fear

Back to basics

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/20/dutch_ban_on_voting_computers/

By Jan Libbenga 20 May, 2008

The risk of eavesdropping has driven the Dutch government to ban electronic voting computers from future elections.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs says that the development of safer voting computers has "insufficient added value over voting by paper and pencil". Dutch election officials will return to using paper ballots instead.

The decision is a victory for the obliquely-named Dutch We Don't Trust Voting Computers Foundation, which in the past demonstrated that many Dutch e-voting machines could be easily intercepted from 20 to 30 metres away.

Dutch intelligence service AIVD tested over 1200 Sdu e-voting machines in October, and deemed them totally unreliable. The radio signals used by the computers to record votes could be intercepted without difficulty. Minister for Administrative Reform Atzo Nicolai immediately withdrew the permit for the use of the computers in the provincial elections in March 2008.

The Dutch government had decided last year to pull the plug on its e-voting venture, citing the lack of a paper trail as its biggest shortcoming. With no automated paper counting solution deployed, the Dutch will have to revert back to the humble pencil.

A group of experts headed by professor Bart Jacobs told Dutch site Webwereld that "even with meticulous testing it would have been almost impossible to safeguard printers against eavesdropping".

Voting machine manufacturer Nedap says it is disappointed by the decision. "It would have been technically possible to prevent eavesdropping altogether," the company says. "And now that we return to paper voting, isn't there a risk voters can be filmed with webcams?"

I just saw the HBO’s new film, Recount, which dramatizes the count-the-ballots battle in Florida after the 2000 election. I usually have a hard time with popular  on subjects about which I am knowledgeable, because of errors, shortcuts and important omissions which seem inevitably to be part of the process. But I saw no errors or inaccuracies in Recount. Almost everything and everyone was portrayed consistent with my understanding of what happened and the cast of characters. It was amazing actually that they touch on every important point despite the standard length film time and story-line constraints.

And it's a great story, tightly told and cut with many powerful scenes, including the final scene of ballots (that weren't counted) in boxes in a warehouse. The acting is as good as it gets.  Whether or not you think you already know what happened, this is a highly compelling film.

There are of course things that can be expounded upon, and I’m thinking about doing a Q&A about Florida 2000. If anyone has questions about what happened in 2000 or the aftermath please ask them here. (Feel free also to post comments about the film.)

Thanks, Steve

According to the New York Times,

"Wounds from the Florida recount, still healing for many Democrats, are being ripped open again for some prominent former advisers to Al Gore. They say that a coming HBO film dramatizing the ballot battle after the 2000 election unfairly blames them for the Democrats’ failure to secure the White House.

Warren Christopher, the former secretary of state who served as the public face of the Gore team in the early days of the recount effort, said this week that he believed the film, “Recount,” was “pure fiction” in its portrayal of him as a weak strategist unprepared to stand up to the aggressive tactics of James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state who was the chief Republican adviser....

The film, which has its premiere on May 25 on HBO, stars John Hurt as Mr. Christopher, Tom Wilkinson as Mr. Baker, Mitch Pileggi as Mr. Daley and Laura Dern as Katherine Harris, then the Florida secretary of state. Kevin Spacey plays Ron Klain, the Gore lawyer who led the on-the-ground recount effort and through whose eyes much of the action is seen."

This could be a useful form of advocacy for election integrity reforms. 

The Election Assistance Commission is hiring Alice Miller, who has been investigated for fraud, then the investigation was blocked, and now she is to be rewarded with a new job, as chief operating officer for the EAC.  More information on her and this story is provided below.

Here is an easy way to sign on as protesting this hiring to your senators and representatives and your local newspapers.  Please click on this below link, take the needed 1 to 2 minutes, and fill out the form and send it off.  If you have time, call your Senator and Representative also.  I called mine, Senator Sherrod Brown today, and asked that congressional hearings take place on Alice Miller's EAC job in light of the issue of alleged fraud in her past and the apparent theft of tens of thousands of dollars. 

Thank you for your quick response!  Her start to work date is scheduled as June 2, 2008.

http://www.usalone.com/cgi-bin/petition.cgi?pnum=837

More on the story (from DC Watch):

"Scheme to obtain unlawful pay raises and back pay. After the BOEE General Counsel received a pay raise (from $109,515 to 121,406) based on recently enacted legislation designed to ensure retention of practicing attorneys in the District government, legislation that would permit raises to the Director of OCF by removing the statutory cap was sought by OCF but not obtained.

Because the salary of the OCF Director is capped at the highest step of DS-16 ($109,515) of the District's excepted service schedule, attempts to process such a raise through normal channels would have been rejected by the Office of Personnel unless the cap were removed.

For this reason, the technical assistance of a computer security technician employed by the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) was enlisted to make the salary changes directly to the District's computerized payroll system. This change to the electronic payroll unlawfully effectuated the raise by circumventing the administrative safeguards that ensure that employees receive appropriate salaries."

http://www.eac.gov/News/press/eac-picks-d-c-elections-director-for

This above site points to the promotion of the fraudsters via the EAC press release on this.  DC Watch site below has a big report on the whole investigation situation.  Those of you able and willing to go beyond filling out and sending in the above form, are asked to call your representative and/or Senator and ask that hearings are called on this issue, in this very important election year.

 http://www.dcwatch.com/govern/ig030522.htm

The Ohio Election Justice Campaign hopes you will speak up on this important issue, ASAP.  The press release dated 5-9-08 reports that Miller will start to work on June 2, 2008.  Unless the citizens of this country stop it.  Go fast, do something meaningful.

Those of you in the Boston area may wish to attend the Profile in Courage award at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston on Monday, May 12.

Debra Bowen, Secretary of State of California, and Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State of Ohio, will be presented the award for political courage by Caroline Kennedy and Senator Edward M. Kennedy at a ceremony (I’m not sure what time -- Further information: Brent R. Carney (617) 514-1662, Brent.Carney@JFKLFoundation.org)

From the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation press release:

Two public officials who challenged the reliability of electronic voting systems in a bid to ensure the integrity of the vote in their states have been named this year’s recipients of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award,…

“As we prepare to cast our ballots for the next President of the United States, our confidence in the integrity and reliability of the voting process has never been more important,” said Caroline Kennedy, President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation “Secretaries of State Debra Bowen and Jennifer Brunner have each demonstrated exceptional leadership in working to ensure that voting systems provide a full and accurate count of the vote. Our democracy depends on voter trust.  Debra Bowen and Jennifer Brunner’s efforts to earn that trust have made them true profiles in courage….

The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award is presented annually to public servants who have made courageous decisions of conscience without regard for the personal or professional consequences. The award is named for President Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, which recounts the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers, incurring the wrath of constituents or powerful interest groups, by taking principled stands for unpopular positions.

Debra Bowen, Secretary of State, California

After a $450 million investment by California counties in electronic voting systems aimed at modernizing elections, newly elected Secretary of State Debra Bowen ordered an independent review of the new voting technologies to ensure they adequately protected the integrity of the vote.  When the study revealed troubling flaws in the systems, Bowen strictly limited the use of direct-recording electronic voting machines, and imposed significant security and auditing requirements on systems to be used in California’s February 5 presidential primary election. Bowen’s decision was met with resistance by voting system vendors and many county elections officials.

Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State, Ohio

A series of voting irregularities in several major Ohio counties that use electronic voting systems led newly elected Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to order that paper ballots be provided to any voter who requested one during the state’s March 2008 presidential primary.  Furthermore, Brunner called for the replacement of all of the state’s electronic voting systems – used in 53 of Ohio’s 88 counties – with paper ballots and optical scan technology before the November 2008 presidential election.  Critics have objected to the cost and questioned the necessity of Brunner’s proposals.