GOP's Cyber Election Hit Squad Exposed (from TomPaine.com)

[marmar]

GOP's Cyber Election Hit Squad Exposed
Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis
April 24, 2007



Bob Fitrakis is a political science professor and attorney in the King Lincoln Bronzeville civil rights lawsuit against Ken Blackwell. Fitrakis, Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are authors of What Happened in Ohio? A documentary record of theft and fraud in the 2004 election.

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on election night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004 , Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website—which gave the world the presidential election results—was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Recent revelations have documented that the Republican National Committee (RNC) ran a secret White House e-mail system for Karl Rove and dozens of White House staffers. This high-tech system used to count and report the 2004 presidential vote—from server-hosting contracts, to software-writing services, to remote-access capability, to the actual server usage logs themselves—must be added to the growing congressional investigations.

Numerous tech-savvy bloggers, starting with the online investigative consortium epluribusmedia.org and their November 2006 article cross-posted by contributor luaptifer to Dailykos , and Joseph Cannon's blog at Cannonfire.blogspot.com, outed the RNC tech network. That web-hosting firm is SMARTech Corp. of Chattanooga, TN, operating out of the basement in the old Pioneer Bank building. The firm hosts scores of Republican websites, including georgewbush.com, gop.com and rnc.org.

...(snip)...

Ohio's 2004 ballots were to be destroyed last September. However that fate was blocked by a federal judge, who ruled in the early phase of trying a Voting Rights Act lawsuit that accused Ohio officials of suppressing the minority vote in Ohio's cities. The state's new secretary of state and attorney general, both Democrats, are now holding settlement talks for that suit, suggesting its claims have merit. However, unlike Florida after the 2000 election, there still has yet to be a full accounting of Ohio's presidential vote.

What's clear, however, is the highest ranks of the Republican Party's political wing, including White House counselor Karl Rove, a handful of the party's most tech-savvy computer gurus and the former Republican Ohio secretary of state, created, owned and operated the vote-counting system that reported George W. Bush's re-election to the presidency. Moreover, it appears the votes that gave Bush his 118,775-vote margin of victory—the boost from Ohio's countryside—have yet to be confirmed as accurate. Instead, the reporting to date suggests that what happened on the ground and across Ohio's rural precincts is at odds with the vote tally released on election night.

As numerous congressional committees attempt to retrieve and examine the secret White House e-mails surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors, those panels must also probe the privatization and partisan manipulation of the 2004 presidential vote count in Ohio. The lessons from 2004 have yet to be fully understood or learned. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/24/gops_cyber_election_hit_squad_exposed.php

[Webster Green]

1. And it was totally obvious as it happened (if you were paying attention)

Mutherfuckers!

[The Count]

7. Your pic lacks the MSM description:

[L. Coyote]

10. GET REAL: Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis as "coincidence theorists"

In previous discussions, the many falsehoods conjectured in the current rehash were fully debunked.
CAREFUL is certainly an appropriate warning before reading the new Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis article, refocusing on this old issue.

FIRST, before going into all the falsehoods promulgated by the Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis article, here is where the authors ought to focus--THERE IS direct evidence of vote-switching. Why did these authers distract from that evidence in 2004, with the recount focus, and why do they continue to both ignore the evidence and focus attention elsewhere. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now. Here is the evidence they should focus on, vote-wsitching and probable ballot swapping between precincts:

The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html

I tired of correcting all the FALSEHOODS about this on many DU posts when it first surfaced.
Now, here we go again.
======================

Their article posts a question and does not even answer in the affirmative. Why, because they are WRONG!

"Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?"

"The answer appears to be yes."

SO WHAT? Appearances mean nothing. These authors are ignoring real evidence in favor of distracting from it.

Let's discus the FACTS instead.

"... on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites,

on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, ...."

WRONG: The Ohio SoS utilized a hosting service for their election night posting of results. It is not a coincidence that the GOP uses the same "hosting" service, but it is WRONG to infer that the State of Ohio was not directing the election results site w/o evidence beyond a coincidence.

WRONG: "On Election Night 2004, the Republican Party not only controlled the vote-counting process in Ohio, ..."

The vote counting/reporting was controlled by government entities at a county level as usual. The SoS only reports what is reported to that Ohio government office. In no way, shape, or form does the SoS count votes.

WRONG: "... the Republican Party ... also controlled the technology."

The vote counting technology was controlled by the State of Ohio and the counties.

WRONG: "...Privatizing elections and allowing known partisans to run a key presidential vote count ..."

The election was conducted by the county BOEs, not private, and counted by these government organizations. This rhetoric is both false and inflammatory. Why?

WRONG: "there is abundant evidence that Republicans could have used this computing network to delay announcing the winner of Ohio's 2004 election while tinkering with the results."

Now we also have "could have theorists" too!! How does that move anything forward except confusion?

WRONG: "On Election Night 2004, many of the totals reported by the Secretary of State were based on local precinct results that were impossible...."

The election night results gave Bush a substantial margin. Citing several precincts, a la Reagan's anecdotal logic, is now a tired old verse, discredited soon after the election, and proves nothing of substance even when true. A good analogy is Republicans using "voter fraud" to advance a different agenda.

WRONG: "... the facts are not in, but enough is known to warrant a serious congressional inquiry."

Not on this issue. The serious congressional inquiries underway since 2004 do not need to be misdirected by "coincidence theorists." The have real evidence to persue.

WRONG: "... for roughly 90 minutes the Ohio election results reported on the Secretary of State's website were frozen .... vote totals from these last-to-report counties ... were highly improbable and suggested vote count fraud to pad Bush's numbers."

"Improbable." "Suggested." Don't attorneys know how valueless such "proofs" are? Vote counts are always frozen on web sites, then a new result total is posted and they change. Bush was winning Florida in 2000, and the results moved Gore forward to a tie, for all practical purposes. The same fallacious logic would indicate Gore stole the last reporting counties in Florida.

WRONG: "... The most eyebrow-raising example to emerge from parsing precinct results was finding 10,500 people in three Ohio's 'Bible Belt' counties who voted to re-elect Bush and voted in favor of gay marriage, if the official results are true ... in Warren, Butler and Clermont Counties. The most plausible explanation for this anomaly ... was Kerry votes were flipped to Bush while the rest of the ballot was left alone. While we have some theories about how that might have been done by hand in a police-guarded warehouse, could full Republican control of the vote-counting software and servers also have played a role?"

This is easy to explain. These authors know of a plausible explanation and ignore it, as if part of the cover-up themselves. What happens when punch card ballots are switched between precincts with different ballot orders. Kerry votes can be switched to Bush votes while a distinct outcome may or may not result for other, down-ticket races with a different number of options. Warren and Butler Counties used punch cards, and Clermont used optical scanning, so all the ballots are still preserved.

WRONG: "Baiman compared the number of voters who signed in with the total number of votes attributed to precincts. He found hundreds of "phantom" votes, where the number of voter signatures was less than the reported vote total. That discrepancy also suggests vote count fraud."

This is a common problem when voters do not sign in, a well known problem with a well known cause. It does not suggest fraud in and of itself. This is iase argumentation.

WRONG: "... the highest ranks of the Republican Party's political wing, including White House counselor Karl Rove, a handful of the party's most tech-savvy computer gurus and the former Republican Ohio Secretary of State, created, owned and operated the vote-counting system that reported George W. Bush's re-election to the presidency."

This is just beyond ridiculous. Only those with no critical reasoning will not see the lie in this statement.

Laws of the State of Ohio created the system, the People of Ohio own it, and Boards of Election operated it. GET REAL!!

[calimary]

2. To the Greatest Page with thee!

Gotta stay on this, guys.

[The Magistrate]

3. Indeed, Ma'am: You Beat Me By A Moment

This is serious stuff....

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[calimary]

9. It's my honor to be in lockstep with you, Sir!

:thumbsup:

[EVDebs]

4. Election fraud hides a bigger scandal, the CIA/GOP money spigot

but either scandal leads directly to the WhiteHouse. And look who has the computer security system and software access, Ptech

Ptech
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptech

also at DOJ, and FAA, Air Force, White House, Jesus, they're into it all. I wonder if Ptech's 'enterprise software' is involved in election info too. It begs the question at least.

[The Count]

6. Actually, election theft (not mere fraud) is THE # 1 goal/crime. All the others

are predicated on it.
Hijacking democracy, seizing and consolidating power are the unifying thread of all the crimes revealed lately. Ah, and also greed/corruption. But election theft is primordial. THAT IS WHY IT'S SO IMPORTANT TO SHOUT IT OUT.

HEY,2004 CANDIDATES, CARE TO WEIGH IN? FEEL FREE TO JUMP IN ANY TIME

[slay]

5. K&R - It's high time (way past time) for the truth to come out in Ohio

and about the terrible, evil, horrible, corrupt GOP in general. Grrr. :mad:

[HuffleClaw]

8. i'd say its about time for a 'mysterious fire'

that will conveniently destroy all the evidence