by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
May 15,
2006

That the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen has
become an article of faith for millions of mainstream Americans. But there has
been barely a whiff of coverage in the major media about any problems with the
electronic voting machines that made those thefts possible---until now.

A recent OpEdNews/Zogby People's poll (http://tinyurl.com/hgkgl) of
Pennsylvania residents, found that “39% said that the 2004 election was stolen.
54% said it was legitimate. But let’s look at the demographics on this question.
Of the people who watch Fox news as their primary source of TV news, one half of
one percent believe it was stolen and 99% believe it was legitimate.
Among people who watched ANY
other news source but FOX, more felt the election was stolen than
legitimate. The numbers varied dramatically.”

Here, from that poll,
are the stations listed as first choice by respondents and the percentage of
respondents who thought the election was stolen: CNN 70%; MSNBC 65%; CBS 64%;
ABC 56%; Other 56%; NBC 49%; FOX 0.5%.

With
99% of Fox viewers believing that the election was “legitimate,” only the
constant propaganda of Rupert Murdoch’s disinformation campaign stands in the
way of a majority of Americans coming to grips with the reality of two
consecutive stolen elections.

That the New York Times, Wall Street
Journal and Washington Post finally ran coverage of problems with electronic
voting machines this week is itself big news. It says the scandals surrounding
computer fraud and financial illegalities at Diebold and other electronic voting
machine companies have become simply too big and blatant for even the bought,
docile mainstream media (MSM) to ignore.

The gaping holes in the
security of electronic voting machines are pretty old news. Bev Harris's
blackboxvoting.org has been issuing definitive research since Florida 2000.
Freepress.org warned of the impending electronic theft of Ohio 2004 with Diebold
machines eight months before it happened.

After that election, Rep. John
Conyers (D-MI) issued a report confirming that security flaws could allow a
single hacker with a wi-fi to shift the vote counts at entire precincts just by
driving by. Then the Government Accountability Office reported that security
flaws were vast and unacceptable throughout the national network of electronic
machines.

Despite overwhelming evidence that George W. Bush has occupied
the White House due to the fraudulent manipulations of the GOP Secretaries of
State in Florida and Ohio, none of this has seeped into "journals of record"
like the Times and Post.

Until this week. The Times was sparked out of its stupor on May
11, after officials in California and Pennsylvania warned that Diebold
touch-screen machines, slated to be used in upcoming primaries, were hopelessly
compromised. Michael Shamos, a professor of computer science and
Pittsburgh's high-tech Carnegie-Mellon University, called it "the most severe
security flaw ever discovered in a voting system."

Douglas W. Jones, a
computer science professor at the University of Iowa, says "this is a barn door
being wide open, while people were arguing over the lock on the front door."

The Times refers to the uproar as "the latest concern about touch-screen
machines" while having completely ignored dozens of complaints in Ohio 2004 that
voters who selected John Kerry's name saw George W. Bush's light up, or saw the
light on Kerry's repeatedly go out before they could complete the voting
process.

The Wall Street Journal ran the following kicker: "Some former
backers of technology seek return to paper ballots, citing glitches, fraud
fears."

The WSJ could have ran that story last year after the bipartisan
commission on federal election reform co-chaired by President Jimmy Carter and
former Secretary of State James Baker noted in no uncertain terms that:
"Software can be modified
maliciously before being installed into individual voting machines. There is no
reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other
industries."

Indeed. There's every reason because of the
unprecedented power and money involved in U.S. politics to trust them less than
anybody else.

In its March 2006 primary, it took a week to tally
Chicago's votes because of technical problems in Sequoia Voting Systems
equipment. In Maryland, electronic voting scandals prompted a unanimous vote by
the State House of Delegate demanding that touch-screen machines be scrapped.
The Maryland Senate effectively killed that bill, which is certain to come back.

Citizen law suits are being filed in Arizona, California, New York and
New Mexico by the nonprofit Voter Action organization.

The new concerns
about Diebold's equipment were discovered by Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer
expert who was working at the request of Black Box Voting Inc. The new report
forced Diebold to warn of a "theoretical security vulnerability" that "could
potentially allow unauthorized software to be loaded onto the system."

In other words, one of
the prime manufacturers of the machines on which America casts its votes has
admitted those machines can be hacked.

But as the Times
has finally reported, the company, in one of the new century's most truly
laughable letters, has claimed that "the probability for exploiting this
vulnerability to install unauthorized software that could affect an election is
considered low."

A company spokesman has admitted the flaw was actually
built into the system to allow election officials to upgrade their software. But
Diebold is apparently confident that those officials would never, ever cheat.
"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you
have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce
a piece of software," says Diebold's David Bear. "I don't believe these evil
elections people exist."

The Times has thus far chosen not to report on
the staggering history that frames such statements. As freepress.org reported in
2003, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell promised in a GOP fundraising letter to "deliver
Ohio's electoral votes to George W. Bush." The election chief in Florida 2000
was Katherine Harris. In Ohio 2004 it was J. Kenneth Blackwell. Both controlled
access to their state's electronic voting machines, and are widely believed to
have exploited their now obvious flaws. Both served simultaneously as Secretary
of State and as state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. As of today, the
electronic access cards for Ohio's electronic voting machines have been ordered
into Blackwell's personal office, despite the fact that he is the GOP nominee
for governor in the upcoming November election.

Recently
passed House Bill 3 in Ohio does not mandate post-election audits of electronic
voting machines, nor does the Help American Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. The rush to
electronic voting machines was fueled by the passing of the HAVA Act, which
authorized more than $3 billion in federal funds to purchase new voting
equipment. HAVA's principal architect was Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), whose financial
ties to Diebold, through disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, have yet to be fully
exposed.

Blackwell
personally negotiated a no-bid contract for Diebold touchscreen Direct Recording
Electronic machines (DREs) while holding stock in the company. Under HB3
Blackwell will decide whether the machine will be audited or not in an election
where he is running for governor.

"We're prepared for
those types of problems," said Deborah Hench, the registrar of voters in San
Joaquin County, California, according to The Times. "There are always activists
that are anti-electronic voting, and they're constantly trying to put pressure
on us to change our system."

Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer
science at Johns Hopkins University, did the first in-depth analysis of the
security flaws in the source code for Diebold touch-screen machines in 2003.
After studying the latest
problem, The Times reported Rubin said: "I almost had a
heart attack. The implications of this are pretty astounding."


More coverage from the mainstream corporate media may surface
as the machines malfunction in the 22 primary elections scheduled in May and
June. The next major e-vote meltdown should occur during the May 16 primaries in
Kentucky, Oregon and Pennsylvania.

There's still time to move to
hand-counted paper ballots for the November 2006 election. And if current trends
continue, some of the mainstream media may actually start reporting on the
issue.

--
Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis are co-authors of HOW THE
GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at
www.freepress.org. They are co-editors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED
IN OHIO? forthcoming from The New Press.

We mince no words.  Time is of the essence.  Iraq is a human and political
catastrophe, stark testament to the deceitful behavior of the Bush
administration.  The dangers are clear and present, and too many human beings
are dying for an ignoble cause.  The preemptive war launched against Iraq on
March 20, 2003 stands illegal to its roots. Premised on lies, misstatements, and
subterfuge, the destruction of that sovereign nation and its people has
destroyed the reputation of America, perilously debilitating its
military.

These malefactions, in violation of a host of international treaties,
protocols, and conventions, have placed the military, in particular its officer
corps, in legal and moral peril.  West Point Graduates Against The War
(westpointgradsagainstthewar.org), a grassroots movement to redeem the honor of
our country, stands opposed to the Bush administration and its callous disregard
for honorable behavior.  At issue -- which directly assaults the West Point
Honor Code -- are the falsehoods of the Bush administration, culminating in
Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations on February
5, 2003.

The West Point Honor Code -- "A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, or
tolerate those who do" -- defines honor and duty as a way of life.  This
provides graduates with a lifelong sense of duty, a shared responsibility for us
all to do the right thing, even admonishing our country's leadership when
democracy and its inherent freedoms are at stake.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States, and West Point
class of 1915, was a champion of the right to dissent.  "Here in America we are
descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels," he said, "men
and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine.  As their heirs, may we
never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."  His words inspire us to
act.

Eisenhower was even clearer when it came to preventive war, the kind that
Bush and his chickenhawk ilk fancy so dearly.  He stood foursquare against it. 
"When people speak to you about a preventive war," said Eisenhower, "you tell
them to go and fight it.  After my experience, I have come to hate
war."

When West Point graduates took their commissioning oath of office, they
swore to protect the nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The
deceitful connivances of the current administration have resulted in a war
catastrophic to our nation's interests: politically, economically, militarily,
and morally.  The time has come for West Point graduates to speak out about
these deplorable conditions.

We will not serve the lies of this administration.  To remain silent is to
tacitly serve.  So we speak out, clearly and directly.  We seek justice for all
victims of this illegal war, both servicemen and servicewomen, and the citizens
of Iraq.  We stand opposed to the undoing of Constitutionally guaranteed
freedoms by this most dangerous, oppressive administration.  And so, too, would
President Eisenhower.

"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison," he said. 
"They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an
American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he
must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."

Nor shall we graduates of the United States Military Academy at West
Point.

[James C. Ryan is a co-founder of West Point Graduates Against The War.  He
is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, class of 1962.  Ryan spent
five years in the army artillery with assignments in the United States and
Europe.  Thereafter a businessman, he subsequently became a writer.  He divides
his time between Istanbul, Turkey where he lives, and New York City where he
teaches in the summer at Columbia University.  Father of four, Jim has eight
grandchildren.]