The media also failed to get back to us on the inexplicable discrepancies in Florida in the 2000 election. Turns out the "mainstream" media’s projections had been right all along. The problem wasn’t the exit polls, but the official tallies themselves. In analyses conducted by the National Opinion Research Center in Florida after the U.S. Supreme Court aborted the vote recount, Gore emerged the winner over Bush, no matter what criteria for counting votes was applied.
How could our media not have investigated the correlation, if any, between the increased use of electronic voting systems, with their non-transparent secret software, and the sudden demise of a half century’s experience with highly reliable exit polls? The rest of the world still considers exit polls as the gold standard of accuracy so how is it that this phenomenon only exists in the United States? Not only did our media fail to question such a remarkable coincidence, but ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the Associated Press have all refused to release the raw exit poll data, requested by Rep. Conyers on behalf of the Judiciary Committee. In his request Conyers stated that the information in the media’s possession was needed because "the American citizenry has voiced a collective lack of faith in government to carry out fair election procedures". Ironically, this very need to protect its citizens against a government not accountable to the people was what caused the founders to include protections in the Constitution so that the press would be free to provide to the people this very information it’s now withholding. "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press". – Thomas Jefferson
The Ohio Recount which followed the 2004 election, aside from being successfully thwarted, continued the electronic nightmare. In a nutshell: in an interview a former employee of Triad confessed to having altered tabulating software in a great number of counties in Ohio. The Conyers Report, stated that it strongly appeared Triad was engaged in a course of behavior to provide "cheat sheets" to those counting the ballots so that the machines would correlate with the recount and appear to be operating fairly and effectively.
See the pattern? Still think we’ll just vote them out in 2006 or 2008? We’ve lost the means to hold our government accountable. We’ve lost our constitutionally guaranteed free press – in service to we the people. We’ve lost our vote that so many Americans gave their lives for. We are all we have left if we are to save this republic. It is therefore every person’s responsibility to take this on.
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." — Samuel Adams
* originally published at freepress.org on March 17, 2006
