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| Questions and Answers -- Victoria Col... |
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| Author |
Message |
    
Kathleen Wynne
Moderator
Username: Admin_ii
Post Number: 76
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, September 1, 2005 - 3:08 pm: | 
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First, many thanks, Victoria for agreeing to participate in the Black Box Voting Think-Tank. We look forward to benefitting from your insights and understanding of this complicated issue in that it will help raise awareness significantly in how we can effectively and expeditiously bring about real election reform.
Here's some questions for you:
1. Many still believe there is no other recourse except to use electronic voting machines, due to complicated ballot design; large number of races on each ballot; lack of uniformity in election laws from state to state; convenience and efficiency for election officials and citizens alike.
Do you have any suggestions on how we could realistically implement hand counting paper ballots at the precinct level throughout the country, without having to resort to time consuming legislation that often times doesn't go far enough in protecting the integrity of our votes?
2. How would you go about convincing extremely reticent election officials to make the transition from electronic voting machines to hand counting ballots at the precinct level? (For example, Freddie Oakley, Registrar of Voters from Yolo County, California stated this would be too much of a burden on the poll workers to do hand counts - too long of a day, the complication of seperating the ballots for counting, etc.)
Thanks.
Kathleen |
Sharona Merel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Earthangels
Post Number: 43
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 8:44 am: |
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Victoria:
It's good to see you with us in the think tank!
Victoria, you have had the unique experience of growing up in the midst of your family's 25-year long investigation into the inner workings of vote fraud in America. As a result, you come to the election justice effort with unique perspective and wisdom, beyond your young years.
Since the passing of your father, James, and uncle, Kenneth Collier, you have been faithful in carrying this torch forward. We thank you and Phylis, Jim's wife and your mom, for this important contribution to the cause of truth and integrity in America's elections.
The National Ballot Integrity Project encourages anyone, who has yet to read the riveting "Votescam -The Stealing of America," or who has not yet had the opportunity to view the video of Jim Collier's remarkable and revealing interview(s), to do so as soon as possible. These materials shine important light on the depths, breadth, and scope of the vote fraud problem, in America, and illustrate, clearly, that what we are contending with today, has, in fact, been long on the drawing board, and unfolding systematically for decades.
The book and video tape are available from http://www.votescam.com. Contact editor@votescam.com for more information. |
Sharona Merel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Earthangels
Post Number: 44
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 9:14 am: |
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Victoria:
From the findings of the Collier family quarter century investigation into vote fraud, your father and uncle reported that vote rigging was already, in fact, a $1 billion a year industry in America, by the early-to-mid-1990's.
If this is the case, could what we are witnessing today be the attempted facilitation of the AUTOMATION of vote rigging, right before our eyes? Right under our noses?
If so, this factor, alone, would seem more than sufficient reason for a "Declaration of Independence" from the irresponsible privatization and "automation" of America's voting systems, and for a return to the low-cost simplicity of paper and pen - to hand counted paper ballot elections, with citizen observed vote counts.
With such a simplified system, we the people will regain control, as the Founders intended, over this most basic and critical function of our democratic system. As Bill Moyers says, "Elections... the reform upon which all others depend."
Gone will be the invisibility and secrecy of the vote count, itself, which is the citizens' right and patriotic duty to observe. Gone, the so-called "central tabulation" carried out with suspect software so full of holes, one can drive a truck through it. Gone, the need for enormous unnecessary and ongoing expense to the citizens. Gone, the need for privatized partisan "oversight" of suspect systems and "services," etc.
Indeed, "PAPER + PEOPLE = POWER," as Pat Vesely, has said.
Do you agree? |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 736
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 9:46 am: |
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Victoria,
Some people who are upset about the 2004 election feel that stealing elections is a partisan issue (Republicans are stealing elections from Democrats). What's your perspective?
Many people are bewildered that the Democratic leadership are doing very little to address election integrity issues (e.g. not questioning or calling for recounts in the 2004 election). What's your personal perspective on this? |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 737
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 9:50 am: |
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Some people have observed that it is mostly adults with gray hair who show up at meetings on this subject.
What can we do to support more young adults becoming informed and involved in election reform? What tactics would you suggest? |
John C. Ervin
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Muservin
Post Number: 15
Registered: 06-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 3:00 pm: |
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Hail, Victoria! We salute thee. You and your predecessors comprise the First Family of Voter Protection, pioneers without whom we would be oh so much farther behind in this epic battle. I was particularly impressed by your interview with Bill Headline several years ago, and posted it everywhere, so revelatory did we find that.
Can you update us a bit, thumbnail sketch, on the history of the Media manipulation of Election Day Polling by the networks and, now, NEP. Apparently Mitofsky took over where Headline left off: which seemed, at its core, to be one of the hugest scams and coverups in world history. We saw that Headline, as head of VoterNewsService, or whatever, resigned in mid-scam at the eve of the '02 elections when they had a major systemic failure of their ability to make projections. Do you have any theories of what that was about? I thought: maybe hacking by freedom fighters? Sheer incompetence? A cover for Headline, a la CYA, as too much scrutiny from activists was dogging his steps (thanks to you!). It was a very curious thing that he stepped down at that particular moment. And then, once again, rather than disbanding such a questionable and unverifiable enterprise ~~the polling of exiting voters without any public scrutiny or oversight ~~ they simply switched hats and logos again, and re-surfaced, with little fanfare, as NEP. (And Headline himself ducked under the cover of "European News Consortium" or such like, to give the appearance of having disappeared to far shores, though I see they have offices all over the world, and NY, DC, etc.) And the results Mitofsky has given, and fatuously "defended," about the weird shift of Kerry ~up by 3 points at poll closing on 11/2 to losing by 3 points in the wee small hours of 11/3~ have never been even remotely well accounted for, and the perpetrators of the most elaborate hoax since Piltdown Man are still "at large."
Anyway, my sense was that there are few who can give more insight into all the intrigue that was going on around that time, than you. I, myself, was actually surprised, after ranting at media for months without a single reply, to have none other than Tom Hannon, Senior Executive Producer at CNN for Political Coverage (does that sound like a spook job description to you, or, what?)write me THREE times, on a SUNDAY, after the 11/2 debacle, asking me to stop writing him. Hilarious, but true. Hannon seems to be some sad little homeboy kind of Headline clone. Can you give any background on the Spookified power elite behind Network News that is co-opting all the info about elections, that rightly belongs to the American people? How does Hannon figure in? AND: what can we do to bring the public into a more transparent view of what the networks are doing, how can we "pay [MORE] attention to the man behind the curtain?"
The whole network exit-poll/vote-reporting operations just smacks ~~no, reeks~~ of CIA and Intelligence community control and ownership, and do you have any suggestions on how to remedy this sad situation??
~John E |
Sharona Merel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Earthangels
Post Number: 47
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 3:30 pm: |
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John, good questions!
For more information on covert ops and defense industry involvement in America's elections, read the Collier brothers' revealing "Votescam -The Stealing of America" and view the video of Jim Collier's remarkable interview(s). Once again, the book and video tape are available from http://www.votescam.com. Contact editor@votescam.com for more information.
See, also, investigative journalist, Lynn Landes' superb research, "Raw Notes," at http://www.ecotalk.org/votingmachinecompanies.htm , Lynn's many excellent articles, Black Box Voting's landmark investigations, and the following:
OVERVIEW:
"Overview of America's Elections: An Inspired Vision Off Course - Correcting Our Course."
http://www.ballotintegrity.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=printer_format&om= 370&forum=DCForumID1
ETERNAL VIGILANCE:
"Eternal Vigilance & Protecting Our Elections: Why America Must Say NO! - Right Now - to Electronic Voting (Part 1 of 3)"
http://www.ballotintegrity.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=printer_format&om= 339&forum=DCForumID1
"Eternal Vigilance & Protecting Our Elections: Why America Must Say NO! - Right Now - to Electronic Voting and the Help America Vote Act (Part 2 of 3)"
http://www.ballotintegrity.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=printer_format&om= 340&forum=DCForumID1
"Eternal Vigilance & Protecting Our Elections: Why America Must Say NO! - Right Now - to Electronic Voting and the Help America Vote Act: Red Flags –Unduly Elected & Covert Ops In America’s Elections (Part 3 of 3)"
http://www.ballotintegrity.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=printer_format&om= 350&forum=DCForumID1
Such information, addressing what is long occurring, globally, in the underbelly of election engineering is essential, if we the people are to make informed decisions regarding the security and future of America's elections.
Sharona Merel, Co-founder
National Ballot Integrity Project &
New Hampshire Ballot Integrity Task Force
Member, Democracy for New Hampshire -
Fair Elections Committee (DFNH-FEC)
EarthAngelsNtwk@aol.com |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 1
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 3:34 pm: |
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Hello everyone,
I'll take these questions one by one, starting with Kathleen's. First I will start by explaining my general position.
My family has been at the forefront of the movement for clean elections since 1970. Well, there wasn't really much of a "movement" until after the 2000 election, but my father and uncle had uncovered extensive, systemic vote fraud long before the public fiasco of 2000, and they tried unceasingly for decades to inform the American people of the "cancer" on the American vote count, as they put it. What they found was that all the avenues for citizens to effectively disclose corruption and pursue justice in America were blocked, so to speak, barricaded, by corruption itself.
These avenues are the corporate Press, the Justice Department, and -- in the case of elections -- the offices of election officials and the Secretary of State.
Both Jim and Ken Collier, my father and uncle, were patriotic Americans who believed strongly that the use of hand counted paper ballots was the only appropriate means of vote counting. They understood from their investigative work that computers were being used to rig elections across the country -- in 1970! And that increased technological sophistication would only further veil computerized vote fraud. I believe they have been proven right. I believe George W. Bush did not win the presidency in 2000, or in 2004.
Both Jim and Ken are dead now, and I am left to speak for them. I can tell you now that, were they here, they would be raising bloody hell over HAVA and the lunacy of the paperless touch screen voting machines which are NOTHING BUT TROJAN HORSES for election thieves.
They would also be quick to inform people who claim that optican scanners are the best alternative that these computers can also be manipulated without detection.
This is the main point, which I'm sure others have already made in this forum. While paper ballots can be tampered with under inadequate security conditions, that tampering can be easily caught and also prevented with proper security conditions. This is not the case with the use of computers. ONLY COMPUTERS ALLOW FOR UNDETECTABLE VOTE RIGGING.
To this date, the supporters of computerized vote counting can only offer one solution to security and transparency problems: paper. They call it a paper trail, or a paper receipt, but what it is is a paper ballot. There is no way to trust the computers alone. You must use and count paper in order to assure the accuracy and veracity of the results.
So why spend billions on the computers? No one has ever been able to give a decent reason. Instead, we are told repeatedly that our election system is too complex for the use of paper, and our poll workers can't count all that paper, etc.
This is absolutely wrong headed, dangerous, irrational thinking. If the people controlling our elections are willing to abdicate their responsibility to oversee the safety of the vote count so that they can count more votes faster, THEY SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THEIR POSTS. These are not the kind of minds we need in these positions of power in America. We need courageous visionaries and hard workers, not people who will sell out to companies like Diebold out of laziness, fear or corruption.
As far as how we can implement successful hand counts, I would say that we must look to the other first world countries that are already doing it.
The Swiss voting method is apparently very quick and efficient and involves paper ballots with special grooves in the cards. I have seen a demonstration of this method that was very compelling. Canada, Isreal, India, and other heavily populated countries continue to use paper. We should study their systems and then -- hey, we're Americans, right? -- make it even better! How does that sound?
What I have found among the computer scientists promoting VVPB and other insufficient fixes to the touch screen problem, is that they are absolutely not willing to consider using only paper, and therefore will not offer their minds toward the goal of devising a very safe and effective paper system.
This is key to understanding why the paper vs. computer battle continues to rage within the vote reform movement. I believe that if all the people currently on the computer voting bandwagon would join with those of us who want TOTAL TRANSPARENCY in our vote count, we could devise a paper system that would be safer, faster, and more accurate than anything used in the past.
This has to be our intent, EVERYONE'S INTENT. As long as computer experts like David Dill and election supervisors across the country refuse to make TOTAL TRANSPARENCY their #1 priority, I do not know how we are ever going to implement a really effective paper ballot system.
However, as soon as total transparency and accountability becomes the goal, paper will be the only option, and our wonderful ingenuity as human beings will allow us to implement the systems we need. It is all about intent. Currently that intent is not present among election officials and many supporters of computerized voting.
The VVPT legislation currently on the table provides insufficient bandaids to democracy's gushing wounds. It is helpful ONLY in furthering the debate and bringing the discussion to the table. But the Holt bill and others like are NOT THE ANSWER, and are offering only a false sense of security to voters who are not fully educated about the dangers of computerized vote fraud.
I was recently told by one computer supporter that a recent poll of Americans showed that they want to use computer to cast their ballot. I just shook my head in disbelief. Not that people want computers -- I bet most of them still do -- but that this woman thought she had won the argument.
Americans, for the most part, HAVE NO IDEA how dangerous the use of computers are to count elections. They have no idea how the computers work, who controls them, how corrupt the system has become. What the hell does taking a poll tell us? Absolutely nothings, except that we have got to continue educating people, because Americans will withdraw their support for these machines very quickly once they understand the situation. |
Sharona Merel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Earthangels
Post Number: 48
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 4:00 pm: |
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Victoria wrote:
"Americans, for the most part, HAVE NO IDEA how dangerous the use of computers are to count elections. They have no idea how the computers work, who controls them, how corrupt the system has become. What the hell does taking a poll tell us? Absolutely nothing, except that we have got to continue educating people, because Americans will withdraw their support for these machines very quickly once they understand the situation."
--------
So true, Victoria. We've been saying, for some time, that e-voting is, in fact, a big "F - you" to the American people, wrapped up in a pretty package. |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 2
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 4:09 pm: |
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Catherine:
That is a good question. Is vote rigging partisan? Man, we could spend a long time on this one. I'll try to sum up my sense of things.
When I was in high school, I started my first activist newspaper with Roy Karp (called, idealistically, Uprising). Roy is the son of Walter Karp, a well known writer and thinker who wrote a book called "Indispensible Enemies." It is an extremely detailed investigation into the myriad ways the Democrats and Republicans work with each other to maintain THEIR power. I highly recommend this meticulously researched book.
Yes, one party will always be in the minority, but always they will share and maintain the status quo and KEEP OUT ALL VIABLE THIRD PARTIES.
I believe this to be true, and really, any common sense, unbiased, unsentimental examination of the realities of political power will lead to this understanding.
Vote rigging has historically been perpetrated by both parties, but I feel it is more to keep the independents and third parties out of the game rather than a truly pitched battle between the two heads of the one monster that controls this country.
Yes, I understand, this sounds radical. But you'll notice that the Democrats roll over and play dead whenever the GOP really needs them to. We have seen that truth play out in horrible ways in the recent past. When it comes to the really major issues like coporate globalization and the war in Iraq, the two parties function as one. Because ultimately they are really two branches of one corporation. The Democrats are really just the nicer branch, they give more benefits to the workers.
However, having said all this, I will say that the major computerized voting corporations are controlled by Republicans, and clearly the right has been gaining ground everywhere, in each election, despite how miserable conditions are becoming in America. So I'd say the Reps have their hand on the joy stick right now, which is why workers are seeing so FEW benefits in America Corp these days. If they have a job at all.
But we need to look further than that. More serious changes are taking place in this country. I think that a very, very dangerous group of psychopaths within the right wing have risen to power through corrupt means, and they are doing things that frighten even the GOP hard liners.
The Bush family should be viewed very much as a crime family. I think that in 2000, the election was set to go to Gore, whether he won it or not. That's why Voter News Service called it for Gore in Florida. Believe me, VNS absolutely DID NOT WANT ANY ATTENTION called to itself. It was not in the script that night for anything to go awry.
Then the Bush family, from my perspective, staged a coup. They knew they had the power to pull it off, and they did, with the help of the Supreme Court (by the way, Antonin Scalia is featured prominently in our book, Votescam, when he helped to cover up vote fraud my father and uncle uncovered decades ago). Jeb and his criminal cohorts did what they had to do in order to wrest power into their hands so they could begin their Project for a New American Century. And now we are reaping what they have sowed.
I firmly believe that the current administration is not Democrat or Republican. It is a group of oil executives and uncontrolled criminal thugs who are implementing a plan for their short term gain that is so insane, it might actually destroy our entire economic infrastructure. And Congress, that pathetic corporate Board of Directors, is letting it happen because they are too scared, too bought off, too corrupt themselves to stop it.
America has got to stop thinking that it's business as usual around here. It's not. |
Sharona Merel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Earthangels
Post Number: 49
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 4:13 pm: |
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There are certainly good, gifted, and well-meaning people, such as certain technologists, who earnestly desire to bring about a voting system that delivers an earnest vote count to America (such as the late Athan Gibbs)and OVC.
It's just that there are remote invisible technologies in existence - of which we the people have not even been made aware - that are ready, willing, and able to invisibly circumvent such systems, unbenownst to even their originators.
Can we really entrust the security of our lives, our families, our fortunes and future to such surreptitious technology, and to its covert ops and defense industry overseers?
That's the question. |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 3
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 4:25 pm: |
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Catherine:
Another really good question. Young adults, yes. Where are they?
Well, they are fighting for a lot of other causes. I am acutally 29 (not 28 anymore, as it says in my bio) and I guess not that young anymore, but I have been working with young activists ever since I dropped out of high school to become one when I was 16.
What I know is that most of them want to work on issues like environmental protection, social and racial justice, legalization of marijuana, etc. They need to understand that these problems are SYMPTOMS and THE DISEASE IS VOTE FRAUD.
These good kids and young adults want to vote in someone like Nader or Kucinich, but they can't, and they don't fully understand why. They know they can't make change with the ballot, so they take to the streets. Thats why we are seeing so many protests, because its either the ballot or the bullet. It's either the voting booth or the riot. Protests have died down recently, but they will start up again, and likely become more violent as desperation grows in this country.
The youth and young adults of this country belong to a lot of non-profit organizations, and I FIRMLY BELIEVE that we have got to get the established non-profit organizations with big budgets and huge members lists (like Global Exchange, PIRG, Greenpeace, etc) to make clean elections an emergency priority. Like, they need to STOP WHAT THEY'RE DOING and recognize the SHARED THREAT, recognize the ROOT DISEASE, and focus their energy there, where it will effect EVERYTHING ELSE.
This is not unprecedented. In Canada this happened during the period the Canadian government was debating whether or not to join NAFTA. Many organizations came together to fight that shared threat. Yes, they failed, but we can succeed. We've got to link together, stop being solitary pawns on this chess board. Where is our power and money? It's already tied up in myriad non-profit organizations dealing with all the symptoms of our diseased country. We need to refocus this power.
I'm telling you, this is an important part of the strategy. These organizations are suffering right now terribly, watching decades of their social and environmental gains be destroyed by these enemies of the public who are occupying the White House.
We need to work hard to educate their directors and convince them to make paper ballots and clean elections a major educational focus, regardless of what their mission has been. |
John C. Ervin
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Muservin
Post Number: 16
Registered: 06-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 4:26 pm: |
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Hear, hear, Ms. Collier! I've read your first response about where we stand in the voting movement, generally, and I'm looking around for a trumpet of some kind to sound a "charge!" or whatever is our movement's equivalent (not software related, that's sure).
Whoever supports any kind of computer interfacing with the vote, anything beyond paper where it involves counting, is completely antagonistic to democracy. That may sound like a provocative way of putting it, but I say that in order to draw a CLEAR line between true reformers and faux reformers: tech trolls and moles. And we have just a plethora of those in the movement. We here have a simple pass/fail with reform advocates: they are either for all paper. Or not. ( We give some leeway to many folks who are trying to grapple with how they get some kind of accurate vote in their district while still encumbered by machinery of different kinds, but we do not absorb or associate with anyone or any position that actually WANTS to implement machinery, long term. That's the difference.) People need to step forward and be clear: are they for machines long term, or not? I was just thrilled to hear you just now speak of David Dill and his anti-reform positions. When I first got involved with this, I naively assumed he was on our side: I don't believe anything could be farther from the truth, and all the tech people who, for whatever special interest, are trying to expand the base of technological support for voting, who are FOR machines, have got to get into another line of work. As well as officials. I was dumbfounded to hear Dill get on the Keith Olbermann show shortly after the latest, greatest Heist, 11/2, and pontificate in his supposed expert capacity that there really was no evidence yet of fraud, and so forth. I almost threw my steel-tipped boot through my set. And, likewise, I've met up online with many others who have extended a hand to our brand of activism, people from "official" vote protection groups, and then say things that were just patently absurd. I got flamed, privately, by Ellie Theissen of Voters Unite, and after we had had a friendly exchange, for my suggesting that the New Hampshire recount was a joke, and she with some warmth demanded that I remove her from my list, calling me "unbelievably arrogant," as I had just pointed out that all parties involved in that NH snow job, fronted by Nader, had to, a priori, have had vested interests of some kind, since they never even allowed that what they found, (that the recount matched the original 11/2-3 tallies) could have been heavily manipulated. She wrote me a couple of fiery letters, saying I didn't know those people, and she was there, and she could vouch for their sincerity, and purity of purpose, etc., and I wrote her back that I stood by what I had said, that all my gut instincts told me that the recount had just been a far worse, more grievous disservice to our cause than if it had never been conducted at all. It was crucial. And NOW we find that optical scanners were shown, in June, via news from BBV, to be easily riggable, as I'm certain they were in NH (how do you go from a double digit lead in the exit polls to barely winning the state, y'know?) And you, of course, say above that your Collier family had been saying that all along. I wrote Kim Zetter that too, of wired.com, as she had not written with any depth of analysis about what went on there, NH, and that I had also felt betrayed by her putting me on hold for several months while she had promised, repeatedly, to get back to me on a tip I gave her about Hart InterCivic, which she said she wanted to investigate, and then never did. I went on radio a few weeks later and spoke about it, myself, and Hart's huge subsidies in Texas via Veridian, a defense contractor that recruits directly out of the CIA. Finally I told Zetter, as well, that I now felt she was "one of them" and she wrote me back a long and pained letter, more soft spoken that Theissen's, more apologetic, saying that I must have misunderstood. But the fact remained, with both of them: intelligent people in this movement know, or should know, when there are significant blank spots unfilled in the process, and the NH Recount was a farce, and all the Himalayan mountain range of verbiage going on about this gizmo or that gadget being worse/better than another. If they're seriously telling me that they don't understand they are complicating and postponing a return to (or birth of?) democracy by all this blather about future machines, then I either highly over-rate their analytical abilities, or they too are chock full of preservatives, pesiticides, anti-biotics, and various other Big Biz chemicals, and represent an attrition of our forces through special interests having "gotten to them." I'm sorry, I'm at the stage when I see no other strategy than to really start to "call out" and "choose out" these parties and organizations that are not supporting a transparent system. It's largely because THEY ~~these tech sympathizers~~ have not copped to the simplicity (and, oh, might I add: much lower cost) of a highly visible and obvious paper system, that we are completely misunderstood by a public that, as Victoria has just noted, was polled as wanting to vote with computers.
The Irish got it: I use them as Exhibit A, because their involvement is most recent. Within the last year the Irish government invested 50 million euros in these TROJAN HORSES and the public rose up with one voice, realizing it was their heads on the chopping blocks, and as one Gael has just told me: "there was such a huge public outcry they're all now in warehouses collecting dust."
Scripture has it: "You shall know them by their fruits. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit." And yet all these "offical" voting activists are putting us further and further from our survival as a democracy, as a people, and as a country, by indulging in this (no doubt highly-remunerated) tech talk.
My question of the hour: how do you think we can draw that LINE: that demarcation between the true reformers ~by DEFINITION Paper People~ and these other "passengers?" To succeed, we need all to be on the same boat, and those others need to float alone. Peace: JE
"You don't need to bury the Truth! You only need to delay it until nobody cares."
~Napoleon |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 4
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 4:32 pm: |
|
Hi Sharona,
Thank you for all your support and kind words.
Yes, I know there are some computer scientists who honestly want to devise an honest, open system of vote counting using computers, but what I appreciate even more are the computer scientists who state clearly that computers should never be used to count votes, period. I know you feel the same way.
I am honestly tired of arguing with the other computer scientists and their supporters who will not accept that "averge" citizens have the right to witness the counting of their ballot. I cannot make it any clearer to them. They have got to stop believing that only the code-literate have the right to control and verify the vote count. It is a totally undemocratic perspective. |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 5
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 4:34 pm: |
|
Hi John,
I am just now tackling your questions. This might take a while. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 1728
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 4:41 pm: |
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Hi, Victoria,
It is wonderful to have you here. Your advocacy in this issue, and the historic work of your father and your uncle, truly takes my breath away.
I heard this morning that Boulder County Colorado is looking at the Swiss system, hand counted paper ballots. I also heard that Boulder County is doing a new purchase, so I'm not sure what's true.
However, wondered if you'd heard anything about Boulder County specifically, and also we are very interested in purchasing sample ballots and info on the Swiss system.
Some Texas counties that are hand counting are also resisting the machines, from what I understand. Do you have any poop on other renegade spirits? |
John C. Ervin
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Muservin
Post Number: 17
Registered: 06-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 4:49 pm: |
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Thanks, Victoria: when someone of your (and your family's) relevance and value to our movement needs time to ponder, I have all the patience in the world! [ Sorry to say, my second post is just as labyrinthine, but I think I make some important points! ] |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 6
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:08 pm: |
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John:
Whew. Okay. The media.
Well, here's where things get weird. And ain't nobody talking about it cept my dad and uncle.
I started doing radio shows after my father died in 1998. He died in September (wow, 7 years now), and what happened in November, 1998? Glad you asked!
There was an election. And it so happened that ABC News posted the results of the election on their website.
The night before the election.
Well, I wasn't even paying attention to the election. I was grieving, I was trying to figure out what to do next, and my phone starts ringing off the hook with people looking for Jim. They told me what happened, they wanted Jim to get on the radio all over the country. They felt this was some real vindication because one of the darkest parts of the Votescam investigation involves the aiding and abetting of vote fraud by the corporate press.
I don't want to re-write Votescam here. If people haven't read it, they need to read it now.
I started doing radio shows shortly after that 1998 election, because there was no one else to fill the void left by Jim and Ken. But I soon stopped talking about this aspect of the Votescam investigation because I had to deal with so many radio talk show hosts who had a hard time dealing with "conspiracy" of any kind. It was bad enough to just discuss the computerized fraud, the involvement of the media was, unfortuntaly more than they could handle. Most of them. Except for Alex Jones, of course!
But again, we need only use our common sense, drop our naivete, vomit up the poisonous lies we've been told about how our country actually works, wake up from the fairy tale, and take a look around.
The media is corrupt. They don't tell the truth. The networks are a communications branch of America Corp, and little else.
And one thing is starkly, undeniably true. VOTE FRAUD CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT THE COMPLICITY OF THE PRESS.
If you can't handle that right away, just get up, take a deep breath, drink a glass of water, or whiskey, and think about it again.
If the press was doing its real job, as they say in NYC, fuggedaboudit! These scamming crooks would be behind bars, not in the White House or in Congress.
And remember this -- it does not take everyone. Not every reporter and NBC janitor is "in on it." Absolutely not. It takes ONLY THE EDITORS AND OWNERS. A handful of people. Very, very powerful people. Maybe the most powerful people in the world.
Anyway, the Votescam book details how the press was involved in rigging the 1970 Dade County election, and the role of the networks in counting (or miscounting) votes on election night through News Elections Services / Voter Research and Survey / Voter News Service.
Again, read the book. I can't write it all here.
As for present day madness, John, I think your guess is as good as mine as to whats gone down. To be honest, I haven't been following all the move on the board, I know its corrupt and they'll do whatever they can to keep it that way. I would agree with your assessment of VNS slithering off into the shadows because a spotlight was being shone on them for the very first time. And yes, they have emerged, as they always will, the same cast of characters doing the best they can to control the information.
As for suggestions on remedies -- how flattering that you think I have any.
I was in Washington DC with Kathleen Wynn and Sharona Merrel about a year ago now, and we were strolling pleasantly down the shady lanes discussing this very thing, and Sharona said that a friend of hers felt that the media was the #1 threat, and Sharon felt it was vote fraud.
Well, I feel they are one and the same. My thought is that, along with the voting booth, the media should be the focus of our civil disobedience.
Forget IMF headquarters, the White House, or any other popular target. We should be marching to FOX headquarters and locking down the ABC building and calling international attention to the Soviet style propaganda machines controlling information and DISinformation in this country.
Again, the focus of activism is what I return to. I've been an activist and organizer since I was 8 years old and led a march of 3rd graders to protest the unfair practices of our gym coach. I feel strongly that vote fraud and the corrupt media need to be EVERYONE'S FOCUS. We can kiss all our dearest causes goodbye unless we make some serious headway fighting the core corruption. |
John C. Ervin
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Muservin
Post Number: 18
Registered: 06-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:13 pm: |
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Kathleen:
As I mused about your first comment, that tops the talk here today, "Many still believe that there is no other recourse except to use electronic voting...." I concluded, "She's right: many still DO believe that, especially those who haven't heard the truth and the grave dangers clearly explained." And then, hot on the heels of that thought: "Of those many, what percentage SAY they believe there is no other recourse, and how many actually do?" Therein lies the litmus test of how many of them are really on our side. And we really believe there are, more or less, forensic ways, litmus tests, for finding that out. Peace: JE |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 7
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:16 pm: |
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Hi Bev,
Thank you for asking me to be here. My family certainly appreciates all that you've done to further this cause, and we know you have withstood all the attacks that can be thrown at you. You have added a tremendous body of knowledge to the movement. The power of what you have uncovered cannot be underestimated.
I do not know what is going on in Boulder. Perhaps Lotus does. I don't know if he's a guest here, but of course he has done fantastic, courageous work with his Tea Party. He spent time in jail for throwing a few dry tea bags at a computerized voting machine in Colorado -- his modern day Tea Party. He even wore Revolutionary hat while he did it! He has been an extremely articulate and dogged activist. I hope he is present here somewhere.
I will track down the people who demonstrated the Swiss voting method here in New Mexico and get them in touch with you. They are actually basedin Colorado, so maybe they are making headway there! That would be fantastic. |
Kathleen Wynne
Moderator
Username: Admin_ii
Post Number: 94
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:23 pm: |
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Victoria,
FYI. I did call the people you said demonstrated the Swiss hand count method for you. They will be back after Labor Day.
So, don't spend the time tracking them down, at least for now.
Kathleen |
Kathleen Wynne
Moderator
Username: Admin_ii
Post Number: 95
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:26 pm: |
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Thanks, John.
It amazes me how resistent people have been to the facts about these voting machines and how dangerous they are to our democracy!
If we crack this nut of resistence, we will be halfway home to election reform we can all live with in peace!
Kathleen |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 8
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:26 pm: |
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John:
I'm with you as far as your frustration goes with people supporting the use of computers who really should know better. I know that Sharona was reminding me about the "good guys" on the computer team because there have been such pitched battles lately, and our internal strife is certainly not helping anything.
But what do we do when people refuse to acknowledge our right to a transparent, totally accountable election? I'm really getting fed up with computer experts treating me like an idiot who should stay out of the debate because I didn't get a degree from MIT. This has to stop. This is not what democracy is about.
These people are furthering the debate, but ultimately hindering the successful movement for real democracy. They have got to get off their pedestal and join the rest of us common folk in engineering safe, accurate, transparent, inexpensive, paper voting systems and putting intense pressure on elections officials to implement them before the next election. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 763
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:39 pm: |
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Victoria,
You'll be really glad to read another post here on BBV just today--it's by Bob Fleischer, an experienced programmer & systems analyst who's recently made a submission to the MA General Court:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?tpc=9954&post=11022#POST11022
Make sure you follow the link to his succinct and outstanding paper. I think you'll be very, very happy to read it. (I've been recommending his post and yours to others all day today! --Especially to the well-meaning folks who are still talking about "audit trails" and recounting a certain percentage of each election.) |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 9
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:43 pm: |
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I guess I'm done with this session, so I'll close by saying this:
I know that people are looking for solutions, for a strategy, for success. None of us have any quick fixes. We are in a very serious situation, and we needed to start fighting this decades ago.
That said, more is happening now than ever before. There is a real movement forming, conflicted and often misinformed as it is, at least we are waking up.
What will change this country is people like Bev Harris, Kathleen Wynn, Sharona Merrel and the many other activists who are working tirelessly and using many different tactics. We don't know what the tipping point will be. Probably it is nothing we can forsee. We just have to keep educating people, keep educating people, and offer workable solutions for when the time comes to implement them.
More and more people are coming over into the paper ballot camp. I know, because at one point I was the only voice out there yelling at all the Holt bill supporters, and I felt very alone. And then I met Sharona, and others starting appearing, and now hand counted paper ballots is NOT considered a return to the stone age or other such nonsense.
We need more people with letters behind thier names coming out in support of paper ballots. We need more computer scientists who will state publicly that computers are unsafe for use in counting ballots.
We need non-violent civil disobedience at voting booths.
And perhaps we need class action lawsuits. I think the NASS is a great target (the National Association of Secretaries of State). They are very powerful pieces in this game. And how handy that they are all grouped together in one organization!
We need all the non-profits and PACs to wake up and put their resources toward wresting the control of the vote back into the hands of the people.
We need citizen watchdog groups to expose how the vote count CANNOT be watched.
We need a few people with a lot of money to fund some very big public education project. Even an ad in the New York Times would be great.
We need people who already have a lot of fame to become spokespersons for this cause. Movie stars, activists -- where is Michael Moore? Where is Amy Goodman? Noam Chomsky? Howard Zinn? Arundhati Roy? We need to approach these people again and again until they speak out. They have the ear of millions.
Those are my ideas. If I think of any more, I'll let you know. |
John C. Ervin
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Muservin
Post Number: 19
Registered: 06-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:48 pm: |
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Victoria: I got you beat: I was marching around near LAX airport when I was three years old, with a picket in hand, shouting "Stevenson RAH! Eisenhower BOO!" But I was put up to it. However, I did found, edit and publish the first underground magazine in California at a private school, which might also be comic, except that most of the others who didn't get expelled for involvement, unlike the Editor, went on to fame and fortune as cartoonists (Channing Lowe) or National Book Critics Circle Awards (Anne Fadiman) and so on. In this tiny place I passed Hank Haldeman III every day, for five long years!
So: Bo' Knows Activism. Having said that: I know your father's, uncle's book, I've read so much in excerpt and attribution, reference, that I probably have read almost every word, but I know well the plot line.
I don't blame you for not weighing in more heavily on the actual plan of attack, or whatever kind of strategy might occur, since it's a rather thorny issue. I know a good deal about voting issues, having long ago downloaded and printed every page of Lynn Landes' site. Her positions and simplistic courage make her my avatar. And you are definitely preaching to the choir when you slam the Media: "I've written them tirades that have gotten republished all over the country, one called: "American Media: Most Evil Institution in World History" just in case they were unclear on the concept after my many flames. They went far in drowning our baby in the bath, with what WaPo and NYT wrote directly after the Heist of 11/2. If you haven't read it, google H. Bruce Franklin of Rutgers' amazing review of "The Quiet American" with Michael Caine, and he, himself a former intelligence officer, speaks of New York Times and Life magazine's involvement in falsifying the blame for the Saigon Car Bombings at Place Garnier in 1952, which were at the heart of Graham Greene's great novel, and the movie. Green wrote that it was the closest to "pure rapportage" of anything he had written, and Green himself was a British Intelligence Officer, good enough to have kept that secret until after his death ten years ago, all while becoming one of the greatest and widely sold novelists of the Twentieth Century. The name of Franklin's article, himself a gifted writer on such things, is "By The Bombs Early Light."
Here is the Axis of Evil in America: Media, CIA and other "Intelligence," and Vote Fraud. But I believe it's the control of access to, and perversion of, information that makes the CIA the tops on my Peopl'es 10 Most Wanted List.
That's why we, affiliates of mine and other friends and sympathizers, are calling for a world wide "People's Intelligence Community." Truth be told: this has been happening, organically, online, and this here site, BBV, is an excellent example of that movement. But we would like to go much further: forget Media, forget Murdoch, forget Scalia and Bush and Mitofsky and all the rest: the truest Evil, the one that has become the most aggressive cancer (i.e., rapidly, speedily fatal)is the strange and unnatural combination of CIA with Mafia with Islamic fascist with rogues with criminals association that is taking down democracy all over the world. Just as in MSM, where not all are devils (though almost exclusively whores), just so in intelligence communities many many are honorable. However, it is the control and domination of information, and the secrecy applied to covert operations, that has allowed the global community to be gravely afflicted with these metastasizing rogue "cancers." 9.11, as you must know since you know Alex Jones! and 7.7, and God only knows what's coming, are all "Valentines" from these cabals. AND THE ONLY WAY TO DISBAND THEM IS TO EXPOSE THEM. However, what is to keep those individuals who expose them, from becoming like them, and simply replacing them? That is why: INTELLIGENCE MUST BECOME A FREE, AND FREELY ACCESSIBLE, COOPERATIVE, WHERE INFORMATION ABOUT COVERT MOVEMENT IS PUBLICIZED AND MONITORED WITH INCREASING FOCUS. Cancers cannot exist in a high oxygen environment. They are ANAEROBIC. Oxygen disintegrates their cellular walls. In the same way, these rogue "cells," these cancers that operate within our intelligence communities, can be disintegrated ONLY by increasing their exposure to light and air. And it's bloodless. With no group or groups of people controlling intelligence information, but the entire body of: low power radio broadcasters (AMARC and Prometheus Radio, for example), alternet journalists, bloggers, activists, etc., we can create a world body, the first People's Forum of Intelligence, or "General Intelligence Agency," that will be decisive in disbanding "Centralized Intelligence" the nemesis of mankind, and at this forum intelligence threats could be closely monitored, globally, and exposed.
As you say, we need to get at the root.
And that's when we realized that until we have a popular, global Intelligence Agency that is many many times greater than the small national ones, yet non-linear, non-hierarchical, i.e., ruled by NO-ONE, we will continue to be under the heel of psy ops and covert ops.
"If you build It, THEY will leave."
If you form this Union, we can finally disperse these dark clouds of special operations that are damning our planet.
Only then, we believe.
Peace in Re-membering Democracy, "one limb at a time": John E |
John C. Ervin
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Muservin
Post Number: 20
Registered: 06-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 5:58 pm: |
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Victoria,
Those computer experts are not on a pedestal, but they think they are and won't get off it: because they see in this, as Lynn Landes wrote here the other day, "a life-time employment deal they're cooking up." But I go further, and suggest that many of the so-called vote reformers are in it, not so much for the money, as for the power: if they are the gate-keepers of the vote, and not the people, they have made themselves power brokers and king makers. Or pimps. But, whatever we call them, a rose (or whatever) by any name...and all that. It's struck me that vote "reformers" who want to be the tech specialists overseeing the life-blood flow of our democracy, the vote, are really a "Third Force" such as we created in VietNam in the fifties, and elsewhere. They sniff out the huge power potential that being close to the heartbeat of these machines might provide, but I'd have to tell them, it's all Fool's Gold.
Don't be baffled by the self-proclaimed tech "experts." I called out Kathy Dopp a few months ago, and she wrote me four letters, ten pages total, in one late evening. Methinks she doth (Dopp?) protest too much. She tried the same gimmick, she probably can't add a grocery receipt, but she does Power Point presentations, and smells some kind of gravy train. She sent Lynn Landes a photo show of her travelling the country in an RV and snap shots of her brother in his 101st Airborne uniform. Meanwhile, she ranted incoherently at me for pages on end. Must have pushed a "button." ( But it won't record my vote about her.)
Power to the People in Paper and Pens !!! ! JE |
Victoria Collier
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Victoria
Post Number: 10
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 2, 2005 - 6:00 pm: |
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John:
I was marching at pro choice rallies at 5. I guess you won, but I'm close.
I'm with you with all of it, but watch out, you're saying things most people cannot yet hear.
I did some work some years ago in Asheville, North Carolina. We started the Town Hall Project, which was along the lines of your General Intelligence Agency. We did some great public forums, flew in speakers from all over, had a lot of support and planned to buy a building in which to house a sorto f alternative to City Hall. An alternative government building for the people, with info centers, access to the net and all the tools people would need to foment actions in the community, plus a great big old meeting and lecture room.
However, I had a damed hard time getting my activist partners to get on the vote fraud bandwagon, and it pissed me off so much that it caused a rift. They were more interested in the "sexy" issues, like freeing Mumia, police brutality and, of course, legalizing marijuana. Ultimately I became aware of the interesting project known as "chemtrails" and discovered that my radical young activist friends could not and would not even discuss the issue with me. Even though it was happening right over our heads. This got me so depressed I finally left town.
Well, it's a wacky world out there. Lets focus on what we can. Most people are not going to swallow the red pill all at once. |
Catherine Ansbro
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