2004 Voting Fraud

My letter to the Colorado Springs Independent and to the Colorado Springs Gazette:

Dear CS Independent,

Accusations by Republican lawmakers that their colleagues who objected to certification of Ohio’s electoral votes are “sore losers” are off-base and disingenuous. I urge anyone with similar inclinations to closely examine all the evidence before they rush to judgement.

As a computer professional I am alarmed over the so-called Blackbox voting machines. These come with proprietary code only accessible to the company. Further, two companies with 80% of our e-voting machines are run by two brothers and both are GOP enthusiasts and fund raisers. Wally O'Dell, president of Diebold Corporation expressed in a letter to Bush in mid-2003 that "he was committed to delivering the electoral votes of Ohio.." to the president.

Anyone who has read Bev Harris' book "Blackbox Voting" understands that these machines are designed with backdoors and untraceable opportunities to commit massive fraud. IN EVERY CASE that these machines were used in this last election, the exit polls favoring Kerry ended up swinging massively to Bush--a statistical impossibility. Indeed, exit polls have historically shown to be universally accurate within 1/10%. Strangely, everywhere else in the nation, where paper ballots were used, the exit polls matched the actual results. Clearly this cries out for a full-scale investigation by the FBI. Criminal activity is indicated. Read Bev Harris' book before you make any judgements. Prepare to be astonished. The entire book is available on the web at blackboxvoting.org.

Republican leadership has stood in the way of meaningful electoral reform, especially on the issue of an auditable paper-trail for electronic voting, despite common sense and bi-partisan efforts supporting it. It's unconscionable. How is it that every ATM can give a secured receipt, but not the touch screen machines that capture and tally our votes? It's the integrity of our democracy that's at stake. If we don't address this then the Republican candidate for president may as well be crowned "King" and we the people will have been had. Goose stepping and sieg heil are right around the bend.