According to what’s probably
the best estimate, Obama now has a 85,1 % chance of beating Romney on Tuesday (links to the sources are blue). But will the votes be counted correctly?
FIVE WORRISOME FACTS
Worrisome fact (WF) no. 1: “One-quarter of registered voters nationwide will cast ballots on Nov. 6 using electronic voting machines that do not produce paper ballots”.
So, without paper ballots, how do they verify that these votes are correctly counted? They don’t:
WF no. 2: “[The] voting machine manufacturers [..] do not share their software code publicly.”
So, the software codes are business secrets, and not checked by outsiders(!). But you can trust these voting machine manufacturers, right? Nooooooooooooo:
WF no. 3: “[M]any of the key staffers behind our major voting-machine companies have been accused or convicted of a dizzying array of white-collar crimes, including conspiracy, bribery, bid rigging, computer fraud, tax fraud, stock fraud, mail fraud, extortion, and drug trafficking.”
WF no. 4: “[N]early all the nation's electronic voting machines are [..] owned, programmed, managed and tallied by firms with deep Republican ties.” E.g.: “[A] firm with deep ties to the Romney family and campaign has a major interest in a company that owns, programs, manages and tallies votes in at least four swing states”.
But are there any indications that election fraud has really happened? Two examples:
WF no. 5: “The Election Defense Alliance (EDA) [has] compared decades of computer-vote results to exit polls, tracking polls, and hand counts. [..] [W]hen disparities occur, they benefit Republicans and right-wing issues far beyond the bounds of probability.”
The following story is the second example:
THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CONNELL
“[
Republican Dirty Tricks-boss] Karl Rove’s chief IT consultant, [
the "Web wizard"] Mike Connell [..] mysteriously died in a private plane crash in [December] 2008.” The day after Connell was killed, the election protection organization VR wrote:
"
[A] person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how Mr. Connell can tell all about his work for George [W.] Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that [..] George [W.] Bush and [then Vice-President] Dick Cheney would 'throw [[him] under the bus [i.e. sacrifice him, probably because of his role in a case about election irregularities in the swing-state Ohio in 2004].' A tipster close to the McCain [2008] campaign disclosed to VR in July [2008] that Mr. Connell’s life was in jeopardy [..]. VR’s attorney [in the case about Ohio 2004], Cliff Arnebeck, notified [among others] the United States Attorney General [..] about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody [as a witness]."
ELECTION FRAUD IN OHIO IN 2004?
"
A lifelong Republican, [Stephen Spoonamore] is [..] one of the world's acknowledged experts on cybersecurity, with a resume that includes work for the U.S. armed forces and the FBI."
"
[I]n Ohio's 2004 presidential election [..] there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush. [..] Spoonamore concluded from the architectural maps of the Ohio 2004 election reporting system that, 'SmarTech [a firm controlled by Republicans] was a man in the middle.'" "
Spoonamore further testified that the only purpose for such man in the middle architecture is to commit crime." "
A 'man in the middle' is a deliberate computer hacking setup, which allows a third party to sit in between computer transmissions and illegally alter the data." "'
[T]here were three points on election night when SMARTech's computers took over from the secretary of state' says [the abovementioned VR’s attorney] Arnebeck. 'It is during that period that we believe votes were manipulated.'"
"
[A]t an IT conference in London [approximately in late 2006], Spoonamore confronted the pro-life Connell about the Ohio election [in 2004]: '[Connell] said, 'I'm afraid that in my zeal to save the babies [from abortion by getting Bush re-elected in 2004], the system I built may have been abused.'
Three days later, in the back of a cab [..], Spoonamore asked Connell if he would be willing to talk to a Congressional judiciary committee about what he knew. 'I actually took Mike's hand and said, 'If I can arrange for a private meeting for you to sit down with the committee and explain what you think may have happened in 2004 and how your systems may have been abused, will you do it?' And he said, 'Yes.'' Connell never did talk to the judiciary committee."
MORE ABOUT CONNELL'S DEATH
"
In September 2009, an anonymous letter was sent to [among others] the FBI [..]. 'Enclosed is a document that is not meant to exist,' begins the anonymous writer. Included is what purports to be an 'afteraction report' by a black ops agent. ['
A black operation or black op is a covert operation by a government, a government agency, or a military organization.'] All names have been redacted, but the report provides a detailed time log of actions taken to install an AMD (microprocessor) in [..] Connell's plane [..] the night before he made his fatal last flight. [..] [A] number of experts from the intelligence community who have seen the document believe it to be genuine."
"
Former CIA operative John Perkins wrote about such [assassins] in his book, 'Confessions of an Economic HitMan', and says[:] ‘It wouldn't surprise me a bit [if Connell was murdered]. They've certainly assassinated a lot of people in this country. The Kennedys were assassinated. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It's entirely possible that [liberal Senator] Paul Wellstone was assassinated. We've had a long, long history of assassinations.’”
THE US ALSO HAS A LONG HISTORY OF ELECTION FRAUD
"
From the earliest days of the republic, American politicians (and much of a cynical populace) saw vote rigging as a necessary evil. Since the opposition was assumed to be playing equally dirty, how could you avoid it? [E.g.] New York City’s Tammany Hall machine [..] ensured the suppression of thousands of votes, and controlled Democratic Party nominations for more than a century.
By the beginning of the last century, however, sentiment had begun to shift. [..] Almost overnight, commonplace corruption had become unacceptable, and vote rigging a serious crime. [..]
But as the twentieth century came to a close, a brave new world of election rigging emerged [because of] the mass adoption of computerized voting technology, and the outsourcing of our elections to a handful of corporations [..]."
BUT OBAMA WON?
The British author and journalist Simon Worrall:
"
[W]hy hadn’t they fixed it so that McCain won [over Obama in 2008]? As I would discover later, they intended to: but had backed away at the last minute when they realized that the scale of the Obama victory was going to be so great that manipulation would be impossible, without raising alarm bells."
WHY?
Why don't all the anti-Republicans in the US insist on verifiable elections? "
No doubt the fear of being branded a conspiracy theorist inhibits many". That says something about the influence of Republicans, that they can make an elementary thing, verifiable elections, seem like conspiracy theory.
Anyway, let's just hope, hope, that Obama wins.
