Guest blogged by Winter Patriot
The Atlanta Progressive News has published a long article about a situation we were very interested in yesterday, which otherwise seems poised to fall off the map. How curious!
The APN piece is called Machine Vote-Flipping Claimed in McKinney Primary and I have found it on the net in a very few places. But I can’t find any other news about this story on at all. Anywhere. Even the “McKinney for Congress” website is quiet — it hasn’t been updated since yesterday afternoon as far as I can tell.
In the interests of getting this story a bit more exposure, we provide not only a link to it (above) but we will also post generous excerpts below the fold.
By the way, according to the “official” results of the election, McKinney got more votes than any of the other candidates, but not a majority, and she will have to go through a run-off against her most successful opponent, Hank Johnson, to whom votes were being flipped yesterday according to the reports we have received.
Let me repeat: The McKinney Campaign says they have documented complaints of voters here in Georgia whose votes FLIPPED BEFORE THEIR VERY EYES on Diebold machines.
“It started early this morning. There were well over 25 to 30 calls that came in [to the campaign office]. Many of them went to the poll manager [after this happened]. In some cases, the poll managers said there’s nothing we can do. In some cases the voter left frustrated as if their vote had been compromised, as if it had been stolen,” Fitzpatrick said.
And many voters hadn’t even selected the “cast ballot” button yet, when they were told it was already too late, Fitzpatrick said.”I believe that was their instructions. There’s no question in my mind they were following instructions,” from the Elections Division under Cathy Cox, she said.
“The zero results report didn’t come up zero on many precincts today. Whenever it doesn’t come out a zero, that means votes didn’t get counted,” Fitzpatrick said.
McKinney’s campaign showed APN a stack of affidavits from who they say are traumatized voters. APN hopes to interview some of these voters very soon and bring you the details.
…
“With automated voting, you’re entrusting what you put on a ballot will be encoded [properly],” Fitzpatrick said.
The many programming insecurities in electronic voting have been covered extensively previously, including an extensive study recently by the Brennan Center.
“It doesn’t take much to say, Every tenth voter, I want you to do this with Cynthia’s vote,” Fitzpatrick said.
McKinney’s campaign has reported a volume of elections irregularities. “We had so many failures,” she said. There are situations where people got the wrong party ballot, of Democrats who received Republican ballots.
Fitzpatrick said she is also concerned with “how the state of Georgia is trying to block the poll watchers, the only eyes and ears. They want to put elections in a black box.”
Other problems included people’s polling places having been changed without them being informed, machines going down, and the slow processing speed of electronic poll books delaying the voting process.
The Congresswoman’s “passion is to ensure the rights of everyone across all color lines, that your right of Democracy is protected, that your right to vote is yours, and that the vote you cast can be counted,” Fitzpatrick said.
“We’ve got to put the public on notice that the office that’s supposed to be ensuring the integrity of the elections process is not going their job, and is working against their interest because they are disenfranchising people. Their primary job is to administer transparent elections in the view of the public,” Fitzpatrick said.
…
McKinney received the most votes in the Primary, but […] not enough to avoid a runoff with Hank Johnson. At the end of the night she gave a passionate speech, surrounded by supporters, and in front of every major media outlet fathomable.
“Some people think by repeating something that’s not true makes it so. Just repeating a lie doesn’t make it true,” McKinney said.
“I’m the one who tells the truth. On what George Bush knew about 9/11. I put my body against the war machine, against the wheels and the levers of the machine. And I said you’ve got to stop it.”
“We believe in the power of the people over special interests every time. I have a strong and uncompromising position against the war machine. It is outrageous [US Secretary of Defense] Rumsfeld can go before Congress and say $2,500,000,000,000 [2.5 trillion dollars] was lost and our children are suffering.”
“I have said [much] about this and so much more… The Carlyle Group… The defense contracts of Haliburton. I don’t mind speaking truth to power.”
“I’m asking the people of the 4th Congressional District to stand with me now… who think America is on the wrong track and think America can do better.”
“Quite frankly, we’ve been in this place before, but you know what? It is impossible to keep a good woman down. I intend to fight the good fight. I will continue to tell the truth. I will challenge anyone who tries to destroy anything [I’ve built]. This battle is now engaged. We intend to win.”
Is it just my opinion or would it be a good idea to send a big thank you to Matthew Cardinale? If you agree with me about this, you can tell him so right now. Just click here.
This November, we must quiz our candidates (even the BEST of them like McKinney) as to whether or not their Website Managers are part of their “inner circle” and present at their team meetings AND on-staff through the month after the election.
McKinney was GREAT yesterday in keeping updates on her website (at least until around 3:30 p.m. Atlanta time) and since then — NO NEW NEWS!!!
Even the BEST of our BEST still don’t GET it. The IT they don’t get is that we are sick of relying on the MSM to tell us ANYTHING and we are looking for our news (as well as our commentary) from ONLINE sources.
I’m glad McKinney is fighting. I hope she brings a lot of the problems to light NOW, rather than us having to wait until November.
McKinney is no Busby or Hackett or Kerry — she’s going to fight!
Charlie L
Portland, OR
CLL2001@gmail.com
What gets me is that Raw Story hasn’t even picked up on the vote switching. The 3:30 report at Cyntia’s website also mentioned a number of other ways the election was being played, but nothing about it at Raw or other outlets I thought would have jumped on it.
Raw had a number of links to articles from other outlets, but nothin – nothing about the problems (fraud).
Why don’t you send them an email and ask them to cover this? I would do so myself, but since I am the one who posted the blog item, maybe it wouldn’t look right.
It might look like I was trying to publicize myself, or the blog, rather than the story.
Maybe we need 6 or 7 people sending them email.
Anybody got an address for them?
Just kidding: click here: tips@rawstory.com
Wayne Madsen had something up early yesterday about some “election engineering” that was taking place in McKinney’s district. I thought I should share that info with the Atlanta Craigslist, to at least alert some CL progressives to what was going on. The title that I used was something about election fraud, voter intimidation and vote suppression, and the reason I mention that is that I just changed it to reflect the screen shot info that I took down last night, at 8:15p and 11:15 p pacific std. time.
I added the comment that it seemed on the up and up that she didn’t get over 50%, but I should have checked the Bradblog, and I will remove that. No one responded to my post anyway. Here is what it looks like now, and the formatting of the vote tallies are a mess…you will have to use an analytical eye to figure out the columns…
———-
Screen shots of the votecount at 11:30pm, and 2:15am (Th.)
Reply to: comm-183433766@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-07-18, 2:35PM EDT
8:30 pm (pst)
U.S. Representative, District 4
Democrat
83% of precincts reporting
PR=Precincts Reporting
TP=Total Precincts
Coyne3,791 Johnson20,135 McKinney21,249
8.4% 44.6% 47.0%
County PR TP
DEKALB 114 135 2,777 17,594 19,219
GWINNETT 18 24 334 746 656
ROCKDALE 13 16 680 1,795 1,374
11:15 pm (pst)”“
U.S. Representative, District 4
Democrat
98% of precincts reporting
PR=Precincts Reporting
TP=Total Precincts
Coyne5,214 Johnson 27,075 McKinney 28,505
8.6% 44.5% 46.9%
County PR TP
DEKALB 134 135 4,009 24,042 26,093
GWINNETT 22 24 369 839 822
ROCKDALE 15 16 836 2,194 1,590
~~Haven’t checked the final tally, but with hardly any change in the percentage of the vote for each candidate, over a 3 hour period, I suppose it is probable that McKinney didn’t break 50%.
Anyone monitor this primary and notice signs of election fraud?
—————————-
original post~~
Please relay this information to Democrats and other Progressives you know who are concerned with the destruction of our democracy by the corrupt elements of the GOP!! This is from http://www.waynemadsenreport.com, and he is a very reputable source on a number of areas of BushCo’s shenanigans.
———————————————-
July 18, 2006 — Georgia’s Democratic primary is today. Already, problems with Diebold machines are being reported from Georgia’s Fourth District, where Rep. Cynthia McKinney is facing a primary challenge. This is reminiscent of 2002 when McKinney was defeated in the primary because of documented election fraud. WMR urges its readers in the Georgia Fourth to get out the vote for McKinney and document any incidents of fraud or voter intimidation, including that from police or people claiming to be “state officials.”
Diebold: Election engineers at it again today in Georgia Fourth District.
WMR has received this report from the McKinney campaign:
“At one Rockdale precinct, reportedly a single Diebold machine malfunction affected the performance of the entire sequence of machines assigned to that precinct. Additionally, one machine didn’t have a plug and sat idle. In addition, workers were not adequately trained on the use of the electronic poll books, resulting in unnecessary voter frustration. When one McKinney voter realized too late that her intended vote had been switched by the voting machine to a McKinney opponent, the polling place official’s response was “she needs to let us know next time before she casts her ballot.”
“Election engineering” has become the new method for the elites and oligarchs to remain in power under the guise of “democracy.” Election engineering occurred in Mexico, Ohio, Florida, and today, we see a repeat in Georgia. It is time for Diebold machines to be thrown into a huge pile and set ablaze.
Please, friends,
This ain’t “engineering.”
I know; it’s just a common linguistic trick.
But these events are part of an attempt to subvert the Constitution. A different label would be better.
Treason?
Or am I over-reacting?
Abacus worked on cutting-edge information systems, military and domestic, for fifty years so maybe is a bit unbalanced…But the appalling incompetence of e-voting machine design and the obvious conflicts of interest between funding regressives and making machines for citizens to vote on is sickening.
Treason. Good word. I’m getting sick of the benefit of the doubt for MSM, voter fraud, and supporting Israel in it’s war crimes. Thank you winter patriot for caring for the McKinny vote. She and Jon Conyers are my leaders. I’m glad Howard Dean is giving his support. I appreciate anybody who will stand up for our country.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I think there is a lack of coverage of “defaults” on e-vote machines. “Catch all” votes registered. There should be no defaults. What are the defaults programmed into e-vote machines for an election? Is that public knowledge, what the default votes are? Why is there even such thing as “defaults”??? That doesn’t make sense, the word “defaults” implies non-votes are registered. That isn’t right. There is really a lack of coverage on this, and maybe is has something to do with “vote flipping”. How come they just don’t trash a machine, when someone sees it flipping votes? What happens? They just say, “Well, too bad, it voted FOR you , and not what YOU wanted. Too Bad!!!” What exactly happens, in real time, if someone in the middle of voting, calls over to an official and says, “Hey, Bub, I keep voting for McKinney, and it is registering a vote for the other guy.” What exactly happens when someone calls attention to this? What do they say to the voter??? I would smash the machine, if that happened to me.
I’ve been away for a while, but I see that Raw Story now has something up about this. It looks like they posted it today just before 7:00 pm Eastern time.
Now 4 1/2 hours later it is already way down near the bottom of their page.
Anybody know if it was ever at the top of the page?
If Cynthia McKinney is being robbed by flipped votes, and there’s every reason to believe she is, the test will be the same one applied to Kerry/Bush in 2004, except it was called a “conspiracy theory” by people who chose to ignore the laws of probability.
“How many complaints of McKinney votes being flipped to her opponent are there, and how many of votes being flipped the other way?” If a machine “malfunctions,” which is the normal spin from election officials and the media, then it should malfunction without favoring one candidate or the other. If all or nearly all the complaints are by McKinney voters, it’s a slam dunk that she’s being cheated. The laws of probability aren’t waived for elections, and McKinney is bold enough and voluble enough to make the point understood.
If anyone would be interested in making their voice heard. Please sign my petition? http://www.petitiononline.com/z.../petition.html and make your comments heard. Let us not put the wrong person in the White House again.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Kristen Franks
It is almost time to vote again. Please, I beg of you if your vote doesn’t register; tell someone, call someone, email someone, write to someone. Make a difference. Let’s not repeat history, again”¦ And if these issues are not important to you, find the ones that are and make a difference”¦Just a few things that are happening or not happening:
“TIME TO CHANGE THE ‘DO-NOTHING’ CONGRESS
STEALTH BILLS, LITTLE DELIBERATION: IS THIS HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS?”
Taken directly from Centredaily.com; on October 3, 2006 4:15pm
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/...n/15602017.htm
Everyone says,” The Congress and the Senate need to do things to change what is happening in the United States,” Well, I say we all need to do something!
Open your mouth, state your mind. Sitting around the table over coffee will not get anything accomplished; unless you’re on a letter writing campaign.
Do something? Do anything? But, please just not do anything at all. Even if the intent is good and the means may not be very well thought out, make a plan and stick to your guns (not literally) and speak your mind. This nation needs serious repair. This nation has made more enemies in the last decade than in all the years we have been a nation.
We have let people speak for us; because, we feel that no-one will listen to us. Wrong? People will listen; if you just give them a chance. We can get this nation back on track by peaceful debate and demonstration. Democracy is messy. But it is better than living in a country that does not practice Democracy. Write to your Congress person, your Senator; email the news stations and the media. Send emails out to your address books, put up fliers to attest to your beliefs. http://www.congress.org/congressorg/mailapp/ is a great place to start-sign up”¦Speak your mind…
And let’s get rid of all the dead beats, criminals, and self created narcissists; in the Senate, White House, and Congress. Many of these people are only interested in feeding their own pocketbooks. They need to go. Why do the members of the Senate and Congress get raises and receive better than average medical care, when the average person in America does not receive any medical care or able to work above minimum wage?
And what is it about all the immigration? (This country was based on diversity.) Where did everyone in this country come from? Most everyone in this country comes from immigrant grand parents or great grand parents. Let’s get real here. The only natives here are Native Americans. Who has been dealt a very bad hand in every aspect? Do the government officials think we are stupid enough not to notice that they are just trying to distract us from the really important issues? (LIKE our Men and Women dying in Iraq and other countries. National health care, pension to our elderly, minimum wage, and lack of affordable educational resources”¦ I could go on”¦ And they work for us. HUH? Right? Who are they kidding? There not working for me-how about you? They are not fooling anybody? They work for their own self interest. Let’s get together and raise some peaceful hell. Because, that is all I see that is going to shake anyone up. People quibble over simple words. Let’s make it simple for them. We want a better government, because it would seems that different maybe better-because I can not see it getting worse-well you know a dictator. But without democracy that is what you have is it not? A dictatorship that controls all the power? Sounds familiar? Voting manipulations the last two elections-votes flipping for George Bush. How many states were involved in vote flipping? (Maybe due to rigged machines)Too many to count. Don’t believe me? Buy a movie called Stealing America. That should just about wake you up. http://www.stealingamerica.org/
I have no financial interest in this movie, only to get it out to the public, so people can make up their own mind on the subject. Get involved, write letters, send emails, and make phone calls, and put up fliers. Make a difference!!! Everyone has an opportunity to change the course of their life and the lives of others just by a nano-second of decision.
VOTE AND IF IT DOES NOT REGISTER”¦ TELL SOMEONE”¦ Don’t just sit passively by and let these people take our rights away and steal our votes”¦ That is all we have is a voice and a vote—USE YOUR RESOURCES”¦