Archive for the 'Government & Politics' Category


Jan 29th, 2008

‘Criminal Enterprise’ Running New Hampshire Recount

Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org and whom was an integral part of the production team for the HBO special, Hacking Democracy, said that a “criminal enterprise” is running the New Hampshire primary recount and has called for Secretary of State William Gardner to resign and his assistant, David Scanlan to be fired. With the evidence stacking up, prosecution of those involved in alleged vote fraud may be in the cards, and resignation is considered a start, as long as it doesn’t include immunity.

“I think assistant Secretary of State David Scanlan, who is actually their operations guy, should be dismissed from his position and the Secretary of State should resign, and they need to refund the money for both candidates and recount all those ballots in public,” said Harris.

“What they’re doing here is a criminal enterprise,” she added, “It has all the earmarks of it.”

In the video below entitled Sham chain of custody, poignant questions are clearly asked of public officials regarding the chain of custody and ballot box tampering only to receive vague responses from obviously squirming officials. One official is heard calling for security to have Harris removed.

LATEST: YouTube Video: Who’s responsible for chain of custody breakdown?
YouTube Video: Sham chain of custody
YouTube Video : LHS Associates

Harris stated on the Alex Jones Show, “I knew that somebody needed to get to New Hampshire and protect or find out what they’re doing with chain of custody of the ballots” she said in reference to Republican candidate Albert Howard’s attempts to oversee the recount. “New Hampshire has the memory cards for 81 percent of its votes counted by this one company - we found there was a convicted felon involved in that….that’s why I wanted to see what the chain of custody was” Harris continued.

Election officials claimed that a special tape was in place to seal the ballot boxes, but Harris disproves these so called seals in the video and the tape can easily be peeled off and re-applied.

“It’s a post-it note,” said Harris, “You can rip it on and off, on and off.”

A company by the name of Butch and Hoppy were hired to transfer the ballot boxes instead of by state police, which was the understood protocol. These two truck drivers raced around the state at high speeds up to 90 MPH in 65 MPH zones in an apparent effort to ’shake’ those trying to witness the chain-of-custody.

“We caught them meeting up with a green jeep in the middle of nowhere half way through their route and we walk up to them and they drive off in a different direction,” said Bev Harris.

“I wanted to see what the ballots looked like when Butch and Hoppy take them off the truck, well sure enough they didn’t have seals on them and some of them weren’t even closed - they had the box top open with big gashes and tears in them,” said Harris. She also revealed that officials have left ballots in their offices in lieu of storing them in secure vaults.

Click here to listen to the Alex Jones Show interview.

The Republican New Hampshire primary candidate Albert Howard, who requested the recount of the republican ballots, has called for a legitimate and reconcilable “recount.”

The following letter was hand delivered to Secretary of State Bill Gardner yesterday:

January 28, 2008 HAND DELIVERED

Secretary of State
State of New Hampshire
Dept. of State
107 N. Main St. Rm 204
Concord, NH 03301
Re: COUNTERS’ TALLY SHEETS

Dear Mr. Gardner:

I respectfully request a slight change in the recount procedure.

Current Procedure

The people who are counting the votes are entering the results on individual ward and town tally sheets. They are all using pens with red ink. They then sign and walk the tally sheets to the front of the room where they are handed to a state employee.
The state employee says she checks for discrepancies before manually transposing the figures from the local tally sheets to a County-wide tally sheet, using the same red ink used by the counters. The state employee then enters the figures from her County-wide tally sheet into her computerized master recount file (an excel spreadsheet). Only then does the state employee make and hand me a copy of the counter’s tally sheet.

New Procedure

I wish to receive a copy of the tally sheet for each ward and town, before it is handed to the state employee. It is simply too easy for anyone to alter a figure(s) on a counters’ tally sheet in order to narrow or eliminate a discrepancy. Such evil could never be uncovered short of yet another statewide recount.

Please know that I have no reason to suspect anyone of such mischief. My purpose is merely to tighten up the procedure, in favor of the candidate, and to eliminate any temptation to commit such wrongdoing.

Very truly yours,

Albert B. Howard

truthseeds.org chronology of New Hampshire Primary Election 2008:

Undressing Diebold: Disparities in New Hampshire Recount

Presidential Candidate Requesting New Hampshire Recount

‘Errors’ Transposing Votes and Diebold Machines Removed Votes From Obama and Paul

New Hampshire Vote Fraud? Don’t take my vote bro!



Jan 20th, 2008

Paul Places 2nd in Nevada Caucus

The Nevada Caucus was said to have poor turnout, with 44,315 people showing up to vote, or about 5% of the population. While Romney won big, Paul’s second place showing is also a victory.

With 1,789 of 1,789 precincts reporting:
Mitt Romney 51 % 22,646
Ron Paul 14 % 6,084
McCain 13 % 5,650
Huckabee 8 % 3,616
Thompson 8 % 3,519
Giuliani 4 % 1910
Hunter 2 % 890

Paul received 14 percent of the vote and second place with over 6,000 votes, far behind Mitt Romney’s 51 percent and 22,646 votes. See the caucus results here.

In an AP press release about the feat, Paul is said to have taken “several swipes at former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who got fewer votes than Paul in Nevada and was trailing Paul in returns being tabulated Saturday night in South Carolina.”It continues by saying that Paul told the audience about a confrontation with Giuliani during this month’s debate in South Carolina. He said Giuliani “cut me down.”

“Tonight, if this is the final tally on that confrontation, we got three times as much vote as the mayor got,” he said, referring to Nevada amidst the cheering supporters. He continued, “Millions of people have heard this message and this is why coming in second is very great, it sends a great message.”

Paul collected four delegates from the Nevada caucus to Giuliani’s one.

The demographics of the vote in Nevada demonstrate that the age breakdown was fairly skewed towards older - age 60+ voters. Also take into account that ironically, Nevada has a large Mormon population. Romney receiving 50% of the vote there is no surprise given these factors. But Paul received about 49% of the independent voters in Nevada and won among the younger voters.

The Nevada triumph should serve as a springboard into Super Tuesday for Paul. His grassroots support has another massive fund raising day on Monday. Aside from Romney, and Paul, all of the other GOP campaigns are running on fumes, but the Paul campaign had $8 million bank at the end of the 4th quarter. With another infusion of cash with the MLK moneybomb, he is positioned to outlast everyone else and challenge the media anointed front-runners McCain and Romney.

The Paul campaign shows no sign up letting up and neither do his supporters. The Meetup group members surpassed 100,000 people and have increased at a rate of over 500 members a day for Dr. Paul:

Meetup Members Past 7 days: http://www.ronpaulgraphs….

Meetup Members overall: http://www.ronpaulgraphs….

And this success and growth despite the omissions and distortions by the likes of the New York Times, MSNBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, ETC.

The “official results page” on the New York Times website does not even list Ron Paul as a candidate.

Despite Ron Paul leading Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson in almost every state so far and his second place showing in Nevada, the New York times thinks this isn’t worthy of their ink to print. Ron Paul also out performed Senator Edwards today 3 to 1 in percentage points, but they don’t even print his name.

In the below screen capture of the inappropriately named ‘You Decide 2008′, the 4th highest ranking candidate is not listed amongst the candidates on the “official results” page:

Fox News continues to disregard the fact that Ron Paul is one of the GOP presidential candidates.

It’s not a surprise that the MSM ignores or marginalizes Paul. They stand to lose all they’ve been building with the consolidation of the MSM that has been happening for over 50 years. Now most major news stations, magazines, newspapers and other media outlets are owned by SIX mega-corporations. This is no accident or coincidence and the current monetary system and corporate welfare, which Paul opposes, lends to it’s control grid and growth. Corporate ownership may be a secret but the role of the big banks, and their monopoly over the issuance of credit which gives them a tremendous advantage in the marketplace (and to buy controlling shares in these corporations) is no longer a secret. Edward Griffin’s ‘The Creature from Jekyll Island, a book Paul has gave a positive review of, discusses these ’secrets’ in depth. Bank issued credit and the monopoly of banks and corporate control are the reality we live with today and Ron Paul stands opposed to this in his striving to return to constitutional principles, which is why the controlling interests (not necessarily individual journalists) are opposed to him overtly and covertly.

The strong showing in Nevada begs the question: Are these the numbers of a fringe candidate? In the swing state of Nevada, these numbers could help the Paul campaign with perceived viability and earn him broad appeal.


Jan 17th, 2008

Undressing Diebold: Disparities in New Hampshire Recount

Disparities between the hand-counted ballots and the Diebold Accuvote optical scanner electronic voting machine count are already surfacing in this the first day of the Democratic recount. The Secretary of State recount page has an on-line tally of the recount. While the results are consistent in some Wards when comparing the hand versus machine count, the disparities are occurring at alarming rates in many Wards and to all candidates from Paul to Obama, Clinton to Romney, throwing the election results further into doubt.

The republican candidates listed at the end of the tally received write-in votes on democratic ballots. So the votes are few for the write-in Republicans in comparison, but one can’t help to notice the disparity between the machine count vs. hand-counted ballots for Ron Paul. In an ironic twist though, Dennis Kucinich, who requested the partial Democratic recount, has fewer votes with the hand-recount.

The recount in Manchester’s Ward 5 revealed Clinton and Obama gained a 10% bump, and Edwards a 15% bump with the Diebold count. Further review of the data from Hillsborough County shows Ron Paul gains 13 votes with the hand-count. With 63 registered Democrats casting a write-in vote for Paul, that equates to a 20% increase over the machine count in this county when the ballots are hand-counted. Although this is a very small sampling, the irregularities being uncovered should command the attention from the voting public.

Albert Howard and Dennis Kucinich, the presidential candidates who filed for the recount, are asking for ground support and people with cameras to document the recount efforts at all precincts. The donations and the support from many concerned citizens worried about our election integrity have made this recount possible and despite it almost being stymied. Paypal froze the account of the donors and the Secretary of State Gardner almost rejected the request incorrectly citing election law misunderstandings. But an anonymous donor ponied-up the entire re-count fee of $55,600 and Howard delivered it in time and it was accepted by Secretary of State Gardner for the Republican hand count. So far, perseverance, persistence and pure will has lifted those fighting for the will of the people and election integrity to overcome these roadblocks.

A concerned Albert Howard, among others, said “I’ve heard some reports that some of the seals were broken and the Republican ballots were there and weren’t supposed to be there unless I was there.”

Many suspicions surround not only the machines, but with the sole-source private contractor, LHS, and the chain-of custody questions, defective systems that many states recognize and have banned and memory card malaises, make a strong statement against these optical scanner electronic voting systems. The vulnerable memory cards used in New Hampshire’s Diebold machines are “missing” according to state officials.

Voting Rights attorney John Bonifaz said, “I’m very concerned that this is not a fully transparent process that is happening there.”

Bonifaz, “Says he was told by Secretary of State William Gardner that his office doesn’t get involved in tracking what happens to those memory cards. Some have reportedly been returned to LHS, and may have had their memory erased already,” reports Brad’sBlog.

“When you have a private company counting 80% of the votes, and you later learn that the memory cards are unaccounted for, you have a serious question about the transparency and accountability in that process,” Bonifaz said.

Federal law mandates that all materials from elections be preserved for 22 months thereafter. If the memory cards have been erased, LHS Associates, who it was revealed last week had hired a narcotics trafficker to a high-level executive position, could be facing criminal charges.

Bev Harris witnessed a majority of ballot boxes had 8 inch slits in their side. Election Defense Alliance’s Sally Castleman followed the boxes back to the ballot vault and also noticed the cuts. Read Bev’s report here. Bev Harris, who is also in New Hampshire assisting with the recount efforts, posted the following on Black Box Voting.org:

“We are finding in New Hampshire: the best of the best in MOST situations, but considerable naivety and in some areas, and an alarming and willful negligence.

Among the “best of the best” of New Hampshire situations:
(1) Beautiful, community oriented hand counted paper ballots in more than one hundred jurisdictions.
(2) Very democratic and participatory township structure of government, combined with very high level of representation of local areas in the state legislature
(3) Amazing level of responsiveness of public officials. Secretary of State Bill Gardner, for example, answers questions personally and tirelessly from just about everyone. Many, many high level officials perfectly willing to talk with and answer all questions from the public.
(4) Beautiful, participatory 100% hand counted recounts.
(5) Very good public records laws. If they have it in their possession, they let you see it THAT DAY. Along those lines, Paddy Shaffer did a hand written records request today which elicited some very good information. The dream team here is in the process of editing another request as I write this.

On the almost schizophrenically BAD side:

(1) A reckless reliance on a sole source private contractor. Not particularly bothered that the company has private chain of custody during critical points, no policy or even apparent concern with having convicted felons involved in the voting system.
(2) Use of a system with known defects without even taking any mitigation steps that other states took.
(3) NO REQUIREMENT to even save the memory cards. The explanation is that they get a disk with the “program” on it. VotersUnite attorney Jon Bonifaz questioned the assistant attorney general on this closely today, because federal law requires records retention of 22 months on electronic media.
New Hampshire has a haphazard policy of allowing the memory cards to be kept, or not, with a chain of custody, or not, shipping back to LHS, or not, and it’s perfectly okay with New Hampshire if the memory cards are erased altogether the day after the election. They profess to believe that if they just have LHS ship them a disk containing some purported program — BEFORE the election, when there aren’t even any votes registered — everything is okay. No one could tell us if this is the memory card program, or the GEMS database file, or the optical scan chip. They seem to have no idea what they are doing with this and I would call this willful ignorance, not naivety.
(4) Lack of documentation and lack of diligence on keeping documentation or written procedures in key areas
(5) Ballot chain of custody procedures with major holes and a few very creepy areas that will be the subject of a future article.

The upshot will be that New Hampshire could be the role model for the nation, but not until they purge themselves of a limited number of very significant problems.
The problem with chain of custody: You can have a strong, beautiful, stainless steel chain but if one link is broken, the rest doesn’t matter. ”

See BradBlog, and SoS, and check back for updates.

Next »