On March 8, 1994, scarcely year into Bill Clinton's first term, The New York Times reporter, Jeff Gerth, "broke" the infamous "Whitewater" story, claiming that the Clintons were involved in some sort of cryptic land investment scandal. The story was fed to Gerth by "The Arkansas Project," a right-wing hit squad whose sole purpose was to "get" Clinton by publicizing groundless accusations. The New York Times, "the newspaper of historical record," was somehow persuaded that this news was "fit to print."
The so-called "Whitewater scandal" dogged Clinton throughout his Presidency, as scarcely a week went by without the corporate media "reporting" some allegedly "new" developments in the case.
Six and a half years and some $70 million taxpayers' dollars later, Whitewater Special Prosecutor, Ken Starr, told the House Judiciary Committee that he lacked the evidence to continue his investigation. During those six plus years, the Washington Post published over 2000 articles about "Whitewater" (Media Matters, Nexis search), but neglected to give prominent space to Starr's virtual exoneration of the Clintons.
Now compare this extended media frenzy over what turned out to be a non-story, with another story which, if true, strikes at the very heart of our democracy. This is the substantial and unrebutted evidence that the past two presidential elections, along with the intervening congressional elections, were stolen and that, by implication, the United States has, for the past six years, been ruled by an illegitimate government.
Just last month, astonishing new evidence has come forth that in 2004 millions of Kerry votes were "switched" to Bush, and millions more "graveyard votes" were added to Bush's total. Mainstream media coverage? Nada! Instead the source is the New Zealand website, Scoop , and subsequently other progressive websites. I will return to this remarkable report later in this essay.
As noted, the mainstream media have been virtually silent about the issue of election fraud. The Democratic Party, the principle victim of the fraud (apart, that is, from the American voters), won't touch the issue, as prominent Democratic politicians proclaim that their party lost these elections "fair and square." Instead, the issue has been kept alive through the internet and the independent and self-financed efforts of a few determined individuals and citizen-based organizations.
Their efforts have not been in vain. Last September, a Zogby poll reported that less than half of the American public was "very confident," and about a third "not at all confident," that George Bush won the 2004 election "fair and square." Since then, still more evidence has accumulated validating these suspicions, most recently the US Attorneys scandal and Greg Palast's purloined e-mails revealing a coordinated GOP campaign to "purge" voting rolls of Democratic voters.
Congress now has bills before it that address the issue of electoral integrity, albeit half-heartedly. In fact, many election reform advocates claim that "the Holt Bill" now before the House (HR 811) will, if anything, make the situation worse.
**The owners and managers of the leading DRE manufacturers, Dieblold, ES&S and Sequoia, are all rock-ribbed, right wing Republicans. One of these executives has been convicted and has served time for computer fraud.
**The "source codes" – the software that processes the votes, and thus can alter the outcomes – is "proprietary" (i.e., secret). DRE companies will not operate in states such as North Carolina, that require disclosure and examination of the source codes.
**There is no independent method of auditing the totals reported on DRE machines. "Recounts" are nothing more than exact repetitions of the original tabulations.
**DRE manufacturers will not allow independent experts to test the reliability of the machines. However, "purloined" DRE machines have been demonstrated to be highly vulnerable to hacking, leaving no evidence of the tampering.
Bottom line: There is simply no way to directly validate the fairness and accuracy of the DREs. To the citizens' demand for proof of accuracy, the only possible answer by the Republican manufacturers and programmers is "trust us." However, indirect evidence, namely polling, indicates that in many crucial contests, the DRE election returns have, in fact, been rigged in favor of the GOP.
The statistical, circumstantial and anecdotal evidence add up to a compelling case that in every national election of the new century, some election fraud has frustrated the will of the American voters. Thus we have suffered through two illegitimate administrations. Even in 2006, when the Democrats took control of Congress, there is good reason to believe that several contests were rigged. However, this time the collective will of the voters was too strong to be overcome by the "fixers."
On June 13, the New Zealand based website, Scoop, published Michael Collins' "Election 2004: The Urban Legend." In that election, eleven million more votes were cast than in the 2000 election. Of these additional votes, eight million were for Bush, and three million were for Kerry.
By comparing the 2000 and 2004 totals from five distinct geographical regions – rural, small towns, suburbs, medium cities, and big cities – Collins has discovered that Bush's support in the rural areas was unchanged, that he lost support in the small towns, and remained essentially even in the suburbs. These regions were the locations of most of Bush's "base," and this net decline indicated a landslide loss in the election.
Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. Partridge has taught philosophy at the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly" (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, "The Crisis Papers" (www.crisispapers.org). His book in progress, "Conscience of a Progressive," can be seen at www.igc.org/gadfly/progressive/^toc.htm .
All you have to do is a search on my name and either Ohio election or Florida election to see how passionate I feel about this.
On the other hand, the reason that a great guy like Al Gore cannot run again is because fighting election 2000 as long as he did ensured that he would have a negative/would never vote for percentage rating in the 40s for the rest of his life.
That is something that is a serious worry for anyone wanting to jump into this.
by
Steven Leser (194 articles, 39 quicklinks, 32 diaries, 1301 comments)
on Wednesday, July 4, 2007 at 10:54:40 AM
