Vote Fraud, a Sword that Cuts Both Ways

VOTE FRAUD, A SWORD THAT CUTS BOTH WAYS

We're all familiar with supposed elections in dictatorships, where only the dictator is on the ballot, then celebrates his popularity when he wins the election, unanimously.
But the US is the premiere democracy in the world, supposedly, and such a loss of electoral rights could not happen here in the Good 'Ol USA, just because a pole shift is around the corner and those in power are getting nervous, right?
Or could it?
The right to vote is central to a democracy.
To quote from Thomas Paine:

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery.

But the master architect of election fraud, Karl Rove, began practicing his magic early in Texas, long before Bush took the White House by fraud in 2000 and 2004.
In the Texas gubernatorial race, the incumbent, Ann Richards, had an approval rating of 70% going into the election but George W. Bush won.
Surprised?
But where voter fraud went almost unchallenged in 2000 and 2004, it has lately been hitting the news in the US.
Why the change, when the media ignored it for so many years?
The answer lies in the Puppet Masters intent to see George W. Bush decaptiated, so the media has come under new instructions, lately.
At first, the Puppet Master did not want the American public to realize how easily elections could be rigged.
The sheep to be kept dumb.

ZetaTalk: Kerry's Concession, written Jan 4, 2005: Anticipating a close race and a hard fight, the world was stunned to see Kerry concede quickly on the night of the election. Was this necessary? Could this have waited until the votes had been counted? Was the nation going to be demoralized by the anticipation? Those aware of the fraud intended, the paperless voting machines, the electronic and even wireless connection to the central tabulating machines, the close connection between Cheney's anticipated 51% to 48% split and the announced results, the difference between historically correct exit polls and the announced results, suspected a broader game, and a broad game it was. The polls going into the election were of course false, and if properly announced would have shown Kerry winning by a landslide, which he did. Why then would a determined former prosecutor, armed with so much evidence of wrongdoing, with the nation behind him and a history of leading the charge as he did during the Vietnam War, cave so quickly?

It is often said, by those watching power plays and comparing real agendas to those announced publicly, that elections proffer few choices to the public. For important elections, national elections or those building a buttress around important positions, there are never choices, only ideological and cooperative clones, proffered. Those in power do not like surprises, and a known entity who can be controlled by his or her weaknesses is preferable to a strong partner who may suddenly become a strong enemy. If you were king, and feared being deposed, would you surround yourself with the weak or the strong?

Given, then, that both Bush and Kerry were chosen for the race, with Kerry slated to be the winner according to the well orchestrated poll results going into the election, what changed the outcome? It was a Puppet Master decision, based on the mess laid out before him. His instructions to Bush and Cheney had been to lose, and Bush was anticipating this as his visage showed. But for some time, as we have mentioned, rebellion had been festering in the Bush Administration, with men such as Cheney and Rove ambitious for more than a Puppet status, wanting peership after the cataclysms with control of both Americas if not a larger chunk of the world. A wise Puppet Master always has several alternative plans, and this was no exception. Contemplating a messy fight that would reveal to the public the extent to which they are manipulated, versus manipulation of the Bush Administration to in essence decapitate them when the time comes, he chose the latter.

How was the 2004 election stolen?
It was done electronically, by changing totals, via the Diebold computer systems which do not have paper trails, and their tabulating computers which can have their totals changed, even from remote locations.
This was no secret!
But any mention in the media tended to mention blocking voter registration and political affiliations, avoiding details about the electronic manipulation techniques.

Bolder Colorado Weekly, Nov 2003: Feeling a bit nervous about your vote actually being counted in this upcoming election? You should be. In Ohio, Republicans are blocking the registration of new Democrats, and who can forget Florida in 2000? And of course there's the whole electronic voting debacle, where Republican company Diebold has built machines that will tally a winner in Tuesday's election-without providing any method to check for accuracy.
Voting Machine Controversy
Aug 28, 2003 by the Cleveland Plain Dealer: The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." A letter from Walden O´Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O´Dell´s company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election. O´Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president´s Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.

Per the Zetas, this electronic manipulation was key to voter fraud.

ZetaTalk: Diebold Wins, written Nov 3, 2004: Much confusion exists over the 2004 election, expected to be a sweep for Kerry, which it in fact was. Did not the turnout indicate this, the long and anxious faces on the Bush camp on election eve indicate this, and the astonishing number of newspaper endorsements going to Kerry indicate this? As was known going into the election, 1/3 of the votes would be under the cover of Diebold computers, no paper trail, central tabulating machines with an extra set of counts that could override the real count, all designed to steal the vote, which it did, particularly in Florida and Ohio. Would the massive turnout in Palm Beach be for Bush, after what occurred in 2000? Could Florida be trusted after losing 58,000 absentee ballots in a Democratic county in the month before the election? We stated that Kerry would win the Popular Vote, but as the election is in the hands of man, whether this means he takes the White House would be unsure.

As the Puppet Master's choice was Kerry, over half the vote fraud was deflected by the Puppet Masters covert operations, else the Electoral win by Bush would have been 302 votes rather than 254 with Ohio contested. But fraud on the tabulating machines was a constant battle ground, thrust and parry and counter moves, thus the heat of battle allowed some Bush victories but for a more narrow Electoral outcome. The Puppet Master is not pleased, and will enact revenge, and the Puppet Master has more cards that can be imagined. The mess Bush has made rests like a turd on the front steps of the White House. The spiral down into an increasingly hostile and resentful populace, a rebelling bureaucracy, and worldwide disgust will only accelerate.

So since the American public heard little of how the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, to install King George as our new royalty, what where the methods used?
Computers tabulating the totals can have their results changed as easily as an Excel spreadsheet on a PC.
This was demonstrated in 2004 on national television, by Bev Harris of the BlackBoxVoting website.

Excel Spreadsheet
/lou1124b.htm: On the CNBC TV show, Howard Dean had filled in as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated, the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine. That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC. Harris explained to Dean on national television, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once? What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."

Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. Harris then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts. In this demonstration Howard Dean had 1000 votes, a second candidate had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning. Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the "My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk C:," open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB" which stands for local database.

Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled "Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel. In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and the second candidate had gotten 400. Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other and gave 100 votes to Tiger Woods. They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software. As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Dean, the winner, was now the loser. They had left no tracks whatsoever. It would be nearly impossible for the election software - or a County election official - to know that the vote database had been altered.

So what if someone did not have access to the PC, could not bring up the database of totals in front of other precinct personnel, and casually change the totals?
Does this need to be done via the keyboard in the precinct?
Nope, it can be done remotely!
Here's how.

How to Hack the Vote: the Short Version
Chuck Herrin, CISSP, CISA, MCSE, CEH
'I'm just a voter who happens to be a Professional IT Auditor.': If the GEMS machine is networked - wander into the building, and quietly put a wireless access point on the same network segment as the Tabulation PC, maybe behind a copier somewhere, and then casually come in from across the street using a laptop and wireless card. We know they're connected by modems, so: find the telephone number of the office the PC is located in, and use a dialing program such as ToneLoc to dial all of the numbers in that exchange looking for a hanging modem. This technique was made famous by the 1983 movie "Wargames" and it still works today. These machines typically have hanging modems installed, so this should be a fairly easy way in.

Come in through the Internet. It is reported that many of these machines are connected to the Internet to enable results to be queried to pull data from the central PCs. Windows PCs on the Internet are inherently vulnerable, particularly if they're not behind a firewall. Since a firewall would prevent the legitimate queries from being made, these machines are likely at extreme risk for being compromised through their Internet connection. Then there are the REALLY easy ways. If you're an insider, you already have the phone numbers and any usernames and passwords you may need. Dial into the machine, authenticate normally, and then manipulate the data. If you're an insider - walk up to the machine and use the keyboard and mouse. Most poll workers, despite being good, caring people, tend to be political enough to motivate them to volunteer. It's just human nature to use the tools at your disposal to your advantage, and people have a remarkable knack for justifying even the worst acts if they can convince themselves that the cause is worthwhile.

Optical scanning of paper ballots was not expected to be a source of election fraud, as there WAS a paper trail.
For this reason, because eyes were not on the tabulation of results, this is exactly where much of the fraud occurred.
For instance, in Florida, in the 2004 election.

Optical Scanning Fraud
Nov 7, 2004: The State of Florida publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. While heavily scrutinized voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, results from optically scanned paper ballots contained substantial anomalies. In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry. In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.

The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. While all of this may or may not be evidence of vote tampering, it again brings the nation back to the question of why several states using electronic voting machines or scanners programmed by private, for-profit corporations and often connected to modems produced votes inconsistent with exit poll numbers. So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points. Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, the election was called for Bush.

Historically correct exit polls showed Kerry winning where election fraud was not possible, but showed Bush winning contrary to exit polls where fraud was possible.
Taking the exit polls as the true vote, Kerry won by 5 million votes, a landslide, but the fraudulent count had Bush winning by 3 million votes.

In some precincts, touch screens showed that the machines had been programmed to record a vote for Bush when a vote for Kerry was made.

House Dems ask GAO to Investigate Voting Machines
November 5, 2004: The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received numerous reports from Youngstown, Ohio that voters who attempted to cast a vote for John Kerry on electronic voting machines saw that their votes were instead recorded as votes for George W. Bush. In South Florida, numerous reports from voters in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties stated that they attempted to select John Kerry but George Bush appeared on the screen. CNN has reported that a dozen voters in six states, particularly Democrats in Florida, reported similar problems.

All this election fraud did not go smoothly, however.
At times, it was frankly obvious that the totals had been played with.
For instance, when a precinct recorded more votes for Bush than voters.
Notably in Ohio, considered a key state by those manipulating the election in 2004.

MSNBC: What a triumph for democracy in Fairview Park, twelve miles west of downtown Cleveland. Only 13,342 registered voters there, but they cast 18,472 votes.
Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio
November 5, 2004: An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.
Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters
November 5, 2004: According to the official election results posted on the Palm Beach County election website, 542,835 ballots were cast for a presidential candidate while only 454,427 voters turned out for the election (including absentee). This leaves a discrepancy of 88,408 votes cast for the presidential candidates.
Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud
Deland, Fla., Nov. 11, 2000
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Thompson_Diebold-2000-Fraud.htm: Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 pm, she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000, all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters.

The Republican Congress of course did nothing in 2004 about all these discrepancies, just as the Republican dominated Supreme Court had rubber stamped the election results in Florida in 2000, by declaring that the legally called vote recount must be stopped.
Were there no challenges to the Diebold systems, which lacked a paper trail so could not support a recount?
Well yes, there HAD been a challenge, an electronic voting machine system with a paper trail.
Oops, the poor man suffered a convenient accident!

Death of a Patriot: No More
March 17, 2004, Tennessean: The subject line on yesterday's email read: "Another mysterious accident solves a Bush problem. Athan Gibbs dead, Diebold lives." The attached news story briefly described the untimely Friday, March 12th death of perhaps America's most influential advocate of a verified voting paper trail in the era of touch screen computer voting. Gibbs, an accountant for more than 30 years and the inventor of the TruVote system, died when his vehicle collided with an 18-wheeled truck which rolled his Chevy Blazer several times and forced it over the highway retaining wall where it came to rest on its roof. Gibbs' death bears heightened scrutiny because of the way he lived his life after the 2000 Florida election debacle. Gibbs' TruVote machine is a marvel. After voters touch the screen, a paper ballot prints out under plexiglass and once the voter compares it to his actual vote and approves it, the ballot drops into a lockbox and is issued a numbered receipt.

It seemed that dark days were ahead, especially since the Bush crowd promptly arranged to have the Help America Vote act passed, ensuring electronic voting and lack of paper trails would be the norm, everywhere!
Help America Vote Act of 2002 which, in part, requires counties to make voting machines accessible and able to be used by handicapped voters.
This was the cover.
The actual intent was to force counties, nationwide, to switch to electronic voting machines.

Study: Fed 'Guidelines' Imperil E-Voting Security
June 28, 2006
http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3616656: Key members of the Technical Guidance Development Committee that drafted federal guidelines for designing and testing electronic voting machines admit that significant flaws in the machines could be exploited by hackers to change the outcome of local or national elections. Some of the most respected names in cryptography and cyber security say that the guidelines fail to mandate any independent means of verifying results. The guidelines, called the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, also leave gaping security holes by allowing wireless communications with electronic voting machines and by exempting commercial off-the-shelf software from testing.

But government officials charged with enacting these guidelines insist there's nothing to worry about, and that if there were, there's nothing they could do about it anyway. The evidence would argue otherwise. Simple steps could be implemented to effectively thwart the most significant types of attacks. The less-than-ideal guidelines were published because of political expediency and infighting between members responsible for drawing up the security section of the guidelines. One of the flaws, according to experts, is that voting machines are enabled with wireless communication devices. Despite being aware of this vulnerability, the guidelines did not ban wireless features.

What is behind this rush to dictatorship, to deconstruct democracy?
Per the Zetas, it's the pending pole shift, the players who would be kings in the Aftertime getting into position, and determined to hold those positions.

ZetaTalk: Popular Vote, written on Dec 15, 2000: What possible reason would there be to call out the US Supreme Court to defend a candidate that had lost the popular vote, on all fronts. Gore had won an edge of 21 electoral votes, by some 300,000 popular votes, and was only 3 electoral votes shy of winning the Presidency. Gore also won the popular vote in Florida, a fact clear to even the ultra-right Buchannan who admitted the 3,000 vote he received above what might be expected in the Jewish enclave of Palm Beach were not his votes, but Gore's. The Florida vote re-count was stopped, repeatedly, by partisan loyalists of the Bush family. Where this might have been expected in Florida, controlled by the Bush family, what would cause the Supreme Court to break its long standing tradition of not getting involved in Presidential contests - a tradition that had endured throughout its history?

In disenfranchising the American voter, as well as the Florida voter, the Supreme Court did more than express partisanship. They displayed, to those looking behind the moves, a cold and firm plan of the wealthy elite to survive during the coming changes, at the expense of democracy and the people those in government service have sworn to serve. Did those at the fore of the GOP campaign, and voting to suppress the voter's right from the bench of the Supreme Court, know of this ultimate plan? If not in full understanding of the circumstances which would call for such steps, they understood that too little would be available to go around, and that choices would have to be made.

Enter the Puppet Master, who was enraged that his instructions on who was to win the 2004 election, were ignored.
The Bush/Cheney team had been posturing to position themselves as equal to the Puppet Master, gone rogue as Puppets, and as revenge, they were to be reduced to irrelevancy as the pole shift neared.

ZetaTalk: Bush Busting, written Nov 27, 2004: We have mentioned that the Puppet Master wanted Kerry to win, for the many reasons that would benefit his interests, and was not pleased when the Bush/Cheney team, assisted by Republican designed voter tabulating computers, appeared to prevail. How does one stop a swarm of rats running across the countryside, swarming into tabulating computers in county after country in state after state, adding millions of fraudulent votes with a single keystroke? Too many rats slipped through the Puppet Master's attempt to counter this gambit by his errant Puppets in the Bush administration. Now what? He will take the Bush camp down, in subtle and not so subtle ways, reducing their influence in the world and within the United States to noise - irrelevant, discredited, despised, and ignored. What are the signs that this is in process?

The erosion of support for the US debt, funded during the Bush splurge years by the purchase of US notes, with Russia, China, and Japan indicating they are cutting back on purchases of US notes. The falling dollar, a result of the many factors that have made US products undesirable around the world, puts supporting the US debt, which daily needs to be fed in order to keep the US government running, in jeopardy. Government operations will be pinched, interest rates will be raised, and the US lie that its economy is on the rise and jobs being created will be exposed. Corporate interests will run howling to the White House to demand the mess be fixed. Since the Puppet Master controls, in the main, via his great wealth, this can be considered a spanking from this source, and one where the pain has not yet begun to be felt.

As part of this decapitation process, to bring Bush down, would the Puppet Master change his mind about letting election fraud in the US become evident?
His influence over major media kept the extent of the election fraud in 2004 out of the press, could this not be reversed, and spotlighted, for forthcoming elections?
If one were to bring the Bush administration down to utter irrelevancy, there are two key issues that would accomplish this.
One: to capitalize on the sentiment against the failed War in Iraq by showing the Bush administration knew the attack on 911 was about to happen, and did nothing, in fact effected a cover-up on the evidence that 911 was planned by far more than 19 terrorists with box cutters, and as Cheney was at the helm telling the Air Force to stand down rather than defend on that day, may have been directly complicit in making it happen.
Two: to explain the public that Bush was never their elected President, but a criminal complicit in election fraud.
Certainly, the public is being prepared for this, recently, as election fraud is in the news!

Where the 2000 and 2004 election fraud was kept out of the news, or claimed to be simply interference with voter registration or long lines in Democratic precincts or whatever, avoiding the REAL threat of easily altered election totals in the tabulating machines, in 2006, this changed.
The real kick-off was an extensive article in Rolling Stones magazine by Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
June 15, 2006: Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush - and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,'' and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.'' But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004.

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004 -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes. In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots. And that doesn't even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

Robert Kennedy then goes on to list the election fraud specifics, and the indications of fraud, starting with the exit poll discrepancies.

The first indication that something was gravely amiss on November 2nd, 2004, was the inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote counts. Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark -- they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought to be the most reliable. Unlike pre-election polls, in which voters are asked to predict their own behavior at some point in the future, exit polls ask voters leaving the voting booth to report an action they just executed. The results are exquisitely accurate: Exit polls in Germany, for example, have never missed the mark by more than three-tenths of one percent. Rather than finding fault with the election results, the mainstream media preferred to dismiss the polls as flawed. On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.

But Robert Kennedy only touched on electronic tally manipulation.

Voting machines were tinkered with prior to the recount. In Hocking County, deputy elections director Sherole Eaton caught an employee of Triad -- which provided the software used to count punch-card ballots in nearly half of Ohio's counties - making unauthorized modifications to the tabulating computer before the recount. Even more troubling, in at least two counties, Triad was able to connect to tabulating computers remotely via a dial-up connection, and reprogram them to recount only the presidential ballots. If that kind of remote tabulator modification is possible for the purposes of the recount, it's no great leap to wonder if such modifications might have helped skew the original vote count.

But things rapidly got better.
Common Cause jumped in on June 23, 2006

New Report Shows 17 States at High Risk For Compromised Election Results
June 23, 2006: A new report released Thursday by Common Cause concludes that the push to use direct recording electronic voting machines was misguided, has resulted in serious security and reliability concerns, and should be reversed.

USA Today jumped on June 26, 2006 with specifics on electronic manipulation of counts:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-06-26-e-voting_x.htm?csp=34
Analysis finds e-voting machines vulnerable
June 26, 2006: There are more than 120 security threats to the three most commonly purchased electronic voting systems, the study by the Brennan Center for Justice says. For what it calls the most comprehensive review of its kind, the New York City-based non-partisan think tank convened a task force of election officials, computer scientists and security experts to study e-voting vulnerabilities. Election officials in California and Pennsylvania recently issued urgent warnings to local polling supervisors about potential software problems in touch-screen voting machines after a test in Utah uncovered vulnerabilities in machines made by Diebold Election Systems. Among the findings:
o Using corrupt software to switch votes from one candidate to another is the easiest way to attack.
o The most vulnerable voting machines use wireless components open to attack by "virtually any member of the public with some knowledge and a personal digital assistant."
o Even electronic systems that use voter-verified paper records are subject to attack unless they are regularly audited.
o Most states have not implemented election procedures or countermeasures to detect software attacks.

Where this prestigious think tank got the issue in the news, these issues were nothing new.
The press coverage continued.
On June 27, 2006 the Washington Post hammered it home.

A Single Person Could Swing an Election
June 28, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/27/AR2006062701451.html: It would take only one person, with a sophisticated technical knowledge and timely access to the software that runs the voting machines, to change the outcome. The three major electronic voting systems in use have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities. Most of these vulnerabilities can be overcome by auditing printed voting records to spot irregularities. With billions of dollars of support from the federal government, states have replaced outdated voting machines in recent years with optical scan ballot and touch-screen machines. Activists, including prominent computer scientists, have complained for years that these machines are not secure against tampering.

The Lou Dobbs of CNN got into the act, giving the key issues of electronic manipulation of totals center stage, on prime time!

LOU DOBBS TONIGHT
June 27, 2006
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3011#more-3011: More evidence tonight that an increasing number of elections in this country can be outright stolen. And no one would ever know. It's incredible. Most Americans will be casting their ballots on electronic voting machines this November, but a new report has found widespread problems with these machines, problems that are placing our democracy at risk.
LOU DOBBS TONIGHT
June 29, 2006: Tonight, further evidence of the extraordinary threat to our democracy from electronic voting machines. Many Americans now cast their ballots on electronic voting machines, but security on many machines is, at best, lax. So lax, in fact, that a hacker can change the outcome of an election without even touching the voting machines.

How would the world be different if election fraud had NOT occurred in 2000, if Gore had prevailed?

ZetaTalk: If Gore Had Prevailed, written Sep 29, 2004: How might the world have been different if Gore had prevailed and the US Supreme Court not illegally entered into the fray, declaring a victor contrary to the popular vote and before the votes had been legally recounted as the Florida courts had ruled. Would 911 have occurred, or was it, as we have stated, directed at Bush and his arrogance, not the US as a country? Would the invasion of Iraq have occurred, or would terrorism have been treated as an international problem, as it was under Clinton, to be resolved with close coordination with other countries, including Islamic countries, rather than alienation of those countries as has occurred under Bush? And most compelling, would the cover-up of Planet X and the impact of its imminent arrival have softened, leaked, and allowed the citizens of the world the opportunity to prepare, rather than be shocked and devastated? Gore, like Kerry, was well known to the Puppet Masters, and not a wild card. Liberal and Conservative alike, Democrat or Republican, all those in key position of power, or heading there, are well aware of what the Puppet Masters who control the world by their great wealth are desiring. There are open conferences, emissaries who deliver messages, and daily directives.

The Puppet Masters want to be positioned to control the World's Oil supplies, should the pole shift predicted occur. Oil will be the next commodity, as all paper money will be considered worthless, and gold and silver as a base thus worthless also. Worth must be a real thing of value, and as oil can run ships, fly planes, fuel helicopters and tractors and formulate into fertilizer for fields, it represents growth in the future. Thus, had Gore prevailed, he would have been pressed to guard and secure the oil fields, using the US Military in this service. How does this differ from the situation under Clinton? In that the military was already guarding the no-fly zone, was there, positioned to guard both Iraq and Saudi oil, only continuation of a policy was needed. Nigeria, Venezuela, the Alaska fields, all were an easy reach for the US Military. The oil fields of Russia, operated by the giant Yukos corporation, were also considered under the Puppet Masters control. With the status quo under Clinton continued, had Gore prevailed, neither 911 nor the Iraq invasion would have occurred, and the Iraq oil fields would not be in disarray, unusable, as they are today.

Per the Zetas, Gore would have displayed true leadership, where Bush and Cheney are weak in this regard.

ZetaTalk: New Leadership, written Sep 29, 2004: Under Gore, the Earth changes and economic problems resulting from an uptick in disasters would have been the central issue, and his approach to handling this would likewise have been vastly different from the Bush/Cheney tack. Gore, as Kerry, entered the fray in Viet Nam, and did not step away into safe zones as did both Bush and Cheney, who evaded service. This points to a key difference in personality, the ability to face a frightening situation, or the reverse, an inability leading to the need to create a blockade, a safe zone for the self. Both Bush and Cheney exhibit a personality that would themselves run for safety at the first hint of danger, would themselves forgo their responsibilities to the greater good, and would themselves consider only their personal safety and comfort during times of duress. This is what they did during the Viet Nam era, and they assume the public would react as they are prone to do, and thus anticipating a public that would desert their responsibilities at the first hint of danger, they insist on a tight cover-up. Gore and Kerry exhibit different personalities, able to confront and engage a threat, and thus would assume a public that would do likewise, an extension of the self that affects all perception.

How would the world differ, if politicians controlling NASA and the USGS and able to lean on media outlets within the US with National Security directives, had been under a more stable and mature leadership, as Gore and Kerry represent? Human cultures are under constant threats, violent weather, droughts and floods, volcanic eruptions, wild fires, plagues, warfare, and earthquakes. All of this is outside of the average human's control, and most of this outside of the control of the power structures. Would an uptick in these threats, from nature, cause humans to leave their jobs, their families, their homes, and run screaming in the streets? The common man waits until the threat is upon them, else economically they cannot continue to make a living, pay the bills, care for their assets and attend to their responsibilities. If this were not true, then how does much of the world live under constant threat, yet go through their day-to-day? A steady uptick in these threats does not change this paradigm. Look to the villages on the sides of volcanoes who delay evacuation until the eruption overtakes them. The goats must be fed and the fields tended. Look to the cities along rivers likely to be flooded by deluges upsteam, where evacuation is forgone for a fight against the flood tide with sand bags and neighbor rescuing neighbor. This is the reaction of the common man, who have their hearts with their communities, and like Gore and Kerry do not run from this.

Thus, a frank discussion of increased Earth changes, and the potential threat this represents, would not create a change in the way the world runs, only increased awareness of potential threats and what steps to be taken in the event. Leave the coastlines and river basins. Plan on self sustaining communities with gardens and flocks and herds. Expect to rebuild new homes and barns, using scrap from the devastation along with carefully chosen supplies. Faced with the potential of losing homes and livelihood, and having to live in a more primitive manner, the public would consider their options. How does this differ from today, when they anticipate a volcanic eruption or a flooded city? Today, they expect shops to be open, insurance to cover losses or neighbors to offer help in restarting a homestead devastated. The potential being discussed would differ in that no such rescue would be possible, as all would be devastated. This is what Gore would have offered, by being more open about the Earth changes and less rigid in an increasingly brittle cover-up, and this is what Kerry would likewise offer and Bush unable, due to his personal inability to deal with threatening situations.

So lets here it for an inability of the GOP to manipulate elections in the future, and a return to true leadership.