According to an article at http://www.rawstory.com, a former McCain advisor and "leading cyber-security expert" has said that there is new evidence that Diebold tampered with the 2002 Senate and Gubernatorial races in Georgia. The full story can be found here.
People have suspected since election day 2002 that there was a problem with the Georgia races. Why?
Incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was five percentage points ahead of Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss in polls taken a week before the vote, lost 53% to 46%. Incumbent Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who led challenger Sonny Perdue in the polls by eleven points, lost 51% to 46%. However, because the Diebold machines used throughout the state provided no paper trail, it was impossible to ask for a recount in either case.
Now, new evidence has come to light. The McCain advisor, Stephen Spoonamore, has apparently had contact with a whistleblower "close to the office of Cathy Cox" who was Georgia's Secretary of State at the time of the 2002 elections. Apparently, the whistleblower (who wishes to remain anonymous) discovered a peculiar event:
The first red flag went up when the computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds. The source states that Cox was not privy to these changes until after the election and that she became particularly concerned over the patch being installed in just those two counties.
Now, it is possible that only certain voting machines had serious problems, and that a patch was needed to specifically address these problems. But it appears that wasn't the case.
The whistleblower said another flag went up when it became apparent that the patch installed by Urosevich had failed to fix a problem with the computer clock, which employees from Diebold and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office had been told the patch was designed specifically to address.
So, with those confusing circumstances in place, the whistleblower approached Spoonamore and asked him to examine the software.
Individuals close to Arnebeck's office said Spoonamore confirmed that the patch included nothing to repair a clock problem. Instead, he identified two parallel programs, both having the full software code and even the same audio instructions for the deaf. Spoonamore said he could not understand the need for a second copy of the exact same program -- and without access to the machine for which the patch was designed, he could not learn more.
So, let's get this straight: The CEO of Diebold flew to Georgia personally to install a program that supposedly fixed the clock on the voting machines, but in fact was a redundant and meaningless program, and installed it only in the voting machines in two heavily democratic counties. Boy, that doesn't sound fishy.
Now, just to be sure, I went back and checked the reported vote totals from 2002. Not having the vote totals from 1996 to compare them to, I compared them to 2004 instead. At first glance, the numbers are not startling: In 2002, Cleland won Dekalb county by 47 points and Fulton county by 17 points. Barnes had slightly better numbers, winning Dekalb by 51 points and Fulton by 28 points. In 2004, Kerry won Dekalb county also by 47 points, and Fulton county by 19 points. Those numbers appear close enough to make it a non-issue, but to me they make no sense. How did Cleland (who lost by 7 points) do worse than Kerry (who lost by 17 points) in his best counties? Cleland outperformed Kerry in the rest of the state for sure, but he should have been able to outperform Kerry significantly in Dekalb and Fulton counties as well (after all, Kerry didn't really campaign in Georgia in 2004). The fact that Kerry got slightly closer to Barnes' numbers than Cleland did should definitely raise a red flag.
So what does this mean for the immediate future?
Sources close to Spoonamore said he was very concerned that he would lose his contracts as a result of coming forward and would take a "large financial hit." These sources added that, despite his concerns, Spoonamore felt obligated to reveal what he knows to the public. "He felt he had no choice as an American citizen but to come forward, and he also knows the likely consequences of him doing so," one source said.
Yep, if this actually gets into the mainstream media, we might be looking at a pretty serious spin war. If there's any hope of a fair hearing on this topic, the netroots will have to be stronger and more vigilant than ever. The 2008 election is less than 6 months away.