We have two recent diaries on the Rec List, detailing the BBV hack of the Diebold optiscan machines, and an article on what may have happened to remove 16,000 votes from Al Gore in Florida.
My question is: WHERE HAS THE "REALITY BASED COMMUNITY" GONE TO?
You would think that the Self-Appointed Stalwart Defenders of Really Real Reality would be lining up to pooh-pooh the latest vote hacking results, then give each other 4's and rousing approval for being Really Really Real. But where are they?
Lets review the facts that are so rudely intruding into the Reality Based Community's Basis for Reality:
- The machines are clearly vulnerable, right now in 2005, to having vote cards "pre-loaded" with votes. This would switch votes from one candidate to another, without ever being detected. Votes would change at the precinct level, and a recount would give exactly the same answer as the precinct total.
- The machines had the same vulnerability in the 2000 election.
- Diebold knew exactly what the problem was (witness the internal emails describing exactly this problem in Jan. 2001) and the problem has not been fixed at all in the intervening FOUR YEARS. Eventually, negligence and incompetence must transition into willful participation in maintaining the vulnerability.
- The 'negative vote tally' witnessed in Volusia is evidence that this type of hack has happened in the past. Not could occur, not 'is a potential vulnerability', but ACTUALLY DID OCCUR IN A REAL ELECTION. No, it's not proof, because at the time it was brushed under the "machine error" rug, no real investigation was performed, and the evidence that could have provided proof was destroyed. The Diebold emails show that two cards must have been loaded into the machines, one of which must have altered the vote totals. At this point, this evidence is most plausibly explained by fraud.
- The most common criticism of the election rigging is that it would take thousands of people across the country to do so, and one of them would spill the beans. The Volusia County Hack renders this criticism utterly hollow. The memory cards could be delivered from Diebold to election officials with a "zero count" but could be invisibly pre-loaded with -100 Kerry votes and +100 Bush votes. Depending on how the cards are handled before the election, the number of people involved could be very small. If all cards come through a central Diebold processing station (or are "zeroed out" by machines all running the same program), a SINGLE PERSON could handle programming the machine to rig the cards for the entire country. This may well not be how things are handled, but as the Volusia hack showed, all that is needed is one person with physical access to the cards, and the deal can be done.
- Another common criticism of the election rigging hypothesis is that it would be exposed and the riggers would go to jail. Clearly, this criticism is very weak, as any mistakes that were noticed were chalked up to "machine error" and are quickly "fixed" by Diebold's technicians. No investigations are performed, nobody finds out the depth of the fraud, nobody goes to jail. This is not conjecture, this is what actually happened to the discrepancies that were discovered.
- Another common criticism of the election fraud hypothesis is that we won ballot initiatives in California and special elections elsewhere in 2005. This is not that surprising, as they would know if they rigged every single election they would be more likely to get found out. They would "keep their powder dry" to only rig the elections that really counted. I don't know if the Reform Ohio Now elections would have been considered important enough to rig, but the huge poll discrepancies are hard to understand.
- Another criticism of the election fraud hypothesis is that some states have Democratic Secretary of States or election managers. The Volusia hack demonstrates that one person in the elections office could carry off the hack without the SoS being even aware of it. As the vote totals coming off the cards are modified transparently, the SoS would be helpless to discover what happened even if they suspected fraud.
- The only place this hack would show up is in exit poll discrepancies. The numerous exit poll discrepancies, far out of statistical likelihood to happen by chance, concentrated in key swing states, all point to the conclusion that something skewed either the results or the exit polls. This hack greatly improves the parsimony of election fraud to explain the exit poll discrepancies.
- Diebold hired programmers with felony records. One of them did time for putting a back door in a bank system. The CEO is under investigation for insider trading. If they are willing to commit these types of small (?!) crimes, we should be vigilant that they are not attempting larger crimes.
- Diebold has made proactive efforts to game the certification of their machines. Running different versions during certification than are used in the elections, applying unexamined last-minute patches, 'pumped up' machines that differ from ones used on election days. Eventually, avoiding genuine certification transitions from "we're embarrassed by our shitty technology" into "we have something to hide".
- Republicans have blocked recounts, blocked mandatory paper trails, stopped efforts to instill transparency and accountability, shut down exit polling, shouted down those who wanted a real investigation, and implemented more of the same insecure electronic voting machines. Eventually, being intransigent jackasses transitions into a suspicion of complicity.
- The Mainstream Media is in the tank (witness the tenacious bulldogs during the Clinton years that turned into placid lapdogs during the Bush years). The MSM quickly and without question accepted the results of these elections and concluded the exit polls were in error. Any people that questioned the election results were mocked as "sore losers" or "tinfoil hats". I doubt the MSM was told about the hack, but they clearly have no compunctions about running with the talking points they are fed, or burying stories that do not favor their preferred team.
- The shareholder suit against Diebold will be very interesting; it appears that voting machines were not a huge profit center (otherwise the company would not have revenue shortfalls and huge restructuring charges), and yet the company has expended tremendous resources on the venture. We also know that they have spent a lot of money trying to woo elections boards to use their machines; if they are losing money on every sale, why are they trying to make it up in volume?
- Two Republicans were just convicted of election fraud in the 2002 elections. One was Bush's campaign chair for New England in 2004. The Republican National Committee had spent (as of August, and it is surely much higher now that the trial has finished) $700,000 to defend them... and these guys didn't work for the RNC. Smoke. Fire. Proximity.
One of the signs of being on the right trail in exploring a novel theory is that new facts that come to light tend to fall into place for the right theory, while retaining the old theory requires more and more extreme contortions to retain it. The election fraud hypothesis continues to have new facts come to light that support it.
But hey, we're all reality based and influenced by facts, right? I welcome any criticism and corrections of this diary (and I know, I should provide links to support every one of these bullet points, but it's very late.)