(please distribute among
your membership.)
An Emergency
Call-to-Arms:
A Five-Step Battle Plan for YOUR
Future
This is a call to arms to you -- as an American and
a custodian of your nation's future. Please act as if your life depends on it --
it well might.
We have been led down a dark, perilous
road.
The journey has touched us all, from mothers and
fathers burying children in a war over nonexistent WMD, to firefighters and
policemen promised vital funds only to be cheated and asked to work for free.
Millions of Americans have been cut loose as corporations exploit foreign
workers on the cheap and CEOs gorge themselves on riches unprecedented in
history. While Americans take second and even
third jobs just feed their families, the Bush Administration has poured
America's wealth into the greedy hands of defense contractors and tax-dodging
megacorporations, notorious companies like (#1 Bush donator Kenneth Lay's) Enron
or Cheney's wartime ripoff-artists at Halliburton.
Our environment, safety, economy, national
security, labor protection and Constitutionally-guaranteed rights have all been
gutted and left to die in a worker-hostile economy.
NOW WE FIGHT
BACK.
Here's what we're facing:
This November, the Bush election machine has more
than three times the spending power of its opponenets(1)
And they are fighting dirty, just as they did in
2000, when they purged Florida voter rolls(2), rioted to stop recounts(3),
barred citizens from voting (ibid) and even threatened the Vice President and
his family on their front lawn (4).
This year, through gerrymandering, data theft from
Congressional computers, impeachments and recess judicial appointments, they are
trying to consolidate their unprecedented power. And they have a special election-season surprise in store for us as well
-- as the AFL-CIO argued before the Supreme Court last December(5), the Bushites
have MADE IT A CRIME FOR THIRD PARTIES TO CRITICIZE THE PRESIDENT OR SAY THINGS
TO INFLUENCE THE ELECTION during the election's most critical
phase:
"This blackout will become national in scope on
July 31, 30 days before the August 30-September 2 Republican National Convention
. . and it will then continue without interruption throughout the remaining 60
days until the November 2 election. Thus, from July 31, 2004 until the election,
it will be a crime for a union, corporation, or incorporated non-profit
organization to pay to broadcast any 'reference' to the President by 'name,'
'photograph,' 'drawing' or other 'unambiguous' means anywhere in the United
States." (6)
They are ruthless, and will not concede victory
without a vicious fight. Expect the outlawing of
gay marriage to "divide and conquer", marginalize opponents and consolidate
support from the religious right, a base estimated to be 30 million strong (7).
Expect the Supreme Court to halt recounts again.
Expect a "surprise" discovery of WMD even after Blix, David Kay and Iraq's
scientists saying they were all destroyed. (8) Expect the "suprise" capture or
"destruction" of Bin Laden conveniently close to the election (9). Expect lots
of scary terrorism warnings and perhaps even an attack.(10) General Tommy Franks
has even suggested a second 9-11-scale attack will lead to martial law in
America (11).
None of this should deter you; remember it was the
same group (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Baker, Bush Sr., Perle, etc.) that armed and
funded Hussein and Bin Laden in the first place. The blood of our dead is
therefore on their hands.
We must not underestimate the ruthlessness of those
willing to start an international war based on known and transparent lies --
virtually against the will of the entire planet. Make no mistake; they are
willing to throw away American lives in their quest for global dominion. And if
you rise up and oppose them, you may be bullied, harassed and threatened,
perhaps even by the FBI.(12) YOU MUST NOT LET THIS DETER YOU. WE
MUST NOT BE BULLIED INTO LETTING THEM SEIZE POWER
AGAIN!
And here we come to the deep, dark heart of the
matter:
This year 28% of the vote (and counting) will be
tallied on electronic voting machines or scanners, which have been repeatedly
hacked and can be used to fix an election -- all without a trace. Below you'll
find a link to the diagrammed, step-by-step report of how e-vote activist Bev
Harris hacked one(13). If you think this is
exaggeration, please follow the links listed below, where everything has
been well-documented and by the NY Times, the Washington Post, CNN, ABC, CBS,
the BBC, etc. (14)
Once paperless, effortlessly hackable (10) voting
machines have been installed, the situation will be PERMANENT -- we will never
know or be able to prove if an election has been stolen. And if it HAS -- those
who have stolen it CAN NEVER BE VOTED OUT. And without the fear of voter reprisal, whoever takes advantage of such a
situation could do literally anything they wanted and NEVER LOSE POWER. It will
mean the end of Democracy. And if you work for an activist group, it will
certainly mean the end of your organization.
We have less than six months to prepare to fight
the biggest power grab in human history.
Do your part.
Help save America.
There will not be a second chance.
A 5-STEP BATTLE
PLAN:
I.
LOBBYING (20 minutes
approximately)
Tell your representatives to support
Bills H.R.2239, 1986, and ESPECIALLY 2045 (14)
Penelope Bonsall, national director of the
Office of Election Administration
Office of Election
Administration
Federal Election Commission
999 E Street, NW
Washington,
DC 20463
vss@fec.gov
(202) 694-1095
(phone)
(202) 219-8500 (fax)
National Media Contacts:
Washington Post :
abramowitz@washpost.com,
colemanm@washpost.com ,
letters@washpost.com ,
hadarm@washpost.com
,
kingc@washpost.com , milbankd@washpost.com
,
New York Times:
nytnews@nytimes.com,
oped@nytimes.com,
president@nytimes.com, publisher@nytimes.com,
society@nytimes.com, washington@nytimes.com,
web-editor@nytimes.com, letters@nytimes.comUSA Today: editor@usatoday.com
Houston Chronicle: viewpoints@chron.comSan
Francisco Chronicle: letters@sfchronicle.com
Los Angeles Times: letters@latimes.com
Chicago Tribune: ctc-TribLetter@Tribune.comWashington Post: letters@washpost.com
CNN HeadLine News executives
:
cameron.baird@turner.com, dave.willis@turner.com,
bill.schneider@turner.com
,
james.broyles@turner.com, jason.evans@turner.com,
lou.dobbs@turner.com , moneyline@cnnfn.com
,
kathy.slobogin@turner.com , paul.varian@turner.com
,
judy.fortin@turner.com, bill.galvin@turner.com,
susan.jalali@turner.com, kurt.kasting@turner.com,
tim.mallon@turner.com, wade.mckinney@turner.com,
jerry.mihoch@turner.com, stephanie.minter@turner.com,
dennis.newman@turner.com, alan.schrack@turner.com,
rolando.santos@turner.com, steve.shusman@turner.com,
jennifer.c.thomas@turner.com,
USA Today :
editor@usatoday.com ,
fanklam@usatoday.com ,
jbacon@usatoday.com ,
lbranson@usatoday.com ,
dcolton@usatoday.com,
Los Angeles Times :
dean.baquet@latimes.com ,
op-ed@latimes.com
,
john.carroll@latimes.com , janet.clayton@latimes.com
,
letters@latimes.com , latmag@latimes.com ,
marjorie.miller@latimes.com, john.puerner@latimes.comjames.rainey@latimes.com, bill.stall@latimes.com
,
REUTERS :
michel.gelbart@reuters.com , eddie.evans@reuters.com
,
editor.reuters@reuters.com, daniel.grebler@reuters.com
,
stephen.jukes@reuters.com , reshma.kapadia@reuters.com
,
andrew.mitchell@reuters.com ,
dick.satran@reuters.com ,
david.schlesinger@reuters.com, eddie.evans@reuters.com ,
washington.daybook.newsroom@reuters.com,
miami.newsroom@reuters.com, michel.gelbart@reuters.com,
boston.newsroom@reuters.com, toronto.newsroom@reuters.com ,
mexicocity.newsroom@reuters.com
,
Associated Press:
info@ap.org, msilverman@ap.org,
gjohnson@ap.org , hjung@ap.orgtkorte@ap.org , sthomsen@ap.orgetompson@ap.org , ntrott@ap.orgrtanner@ap.org, mtighe@ap.org,
kathleen.carroll@ap.org,
dcrary@ap.org,
adinnocenzio@ap.org,
jaffleck@ap.org,
mfeldman@ap.org, paula.froke@ap.org,
tfuentez@ap.org, kgazlay@ap.org,
chanley@ap.org, bharpaz@ap.org,
lheinzerling@ap.org,
rherschaft@ap.org,
hitalie@ap.org, sjacobsen@ap.org,
ajesdanun@ap.org, tkent@ap.org
III. WITNESS E-VOTE
EVALUATIONS (one afternoon)
Ask your elections
board (about any e-voting purchase evaluations meetings to be held in your
district. As a member of the voting public, it is your legal right to attend as
a witness, although, out of convenience, they may try to avoid giving you the
information. Insist on your rights.
If you do attend as a witness, you may well be a
victim of intimidation tactics. Insist on voter-verified paper ballots. Bev
Harris has written comprehensive answers to arguments you will hear.
DO NOT BACK DOWN OR BE INTIMIDATED BY CIVIL SERVANTS -- they are
your EMPLOYEES, paid by YOUR TAXES:
Assertion: "Upgrading the
printer already in the (Diebold) machine costs money"
Fact: Diebold has stated in
writing that their pre-installed internal printers are sufficient to generate a
voter-verified paper trail.
Assertion: "The paper is
very expensive"
Fact: No, thermal paper is
the cheapest made. And with an estimated maximmum of 300 people voting at each
touch screen. A LARGE precinct may have seven touch screens, but many have just
two or three. It might cost $15 per precinct to print those
ballots.
Assertion: "The paper won't
last"
Fact: If the report to be
by the machine will last the required amount of time, the ballots will too, if
printed on the same paper. The printer is there to report totals at the polling
place.
Assertion: "the machines
will jam"
Fact: The printer is
similar to models used in supermarkets and WalMart. Remember: the total number
of transactions, will be about 300. Do supermarket and WalMart printers jam
every 15 sales? No; They process thousands of printouts without
jamming.
Assertion: "the ink will
run out"
Fact: There is no ink in a
thermal printer
Question: "If a paper
ballot record doesn't match a machine record, which is the legal vote?"
Fact: The voter-verified
paper must trump the machine unless a mechanical defect or fraud is shown,
because it is a physical record seen and verified by thousands of individual
voters, whereas the machine is bits and bytes that can be changed by a single
technician!
Assertion: "Paper ballot
systems have been tampered with"
Fact: Yes, and machines
have been frequently wrong as well. Do not allow sidetracking of the discussion
or assertions that you are "against electronic voting" -- no, we want them to
put paper in a printer and use it for auditing.
Assertion: "Officials won't
know what to do with paper ballots and new laws must be written."
Fact: Laws and procedures
set up for optical scans are applicable.
Assertion: "A paper trail
will only lead to demands for more complicated and stringent
auditing"
Fact: Yes, it will. We're
asking for that anyway, with optical scanning. It is still be cheap and
efficient compared to many of the changes currently being implemented to
accomodate the sales of more touchscreen machines.
Question: "Why use machines
at all if you're demanding paper ballots?"
Fact: Voting machines are
helpful for the visually impaired
Assertion: "Paper ballots
prevent the visually impaired from voting"
Facts: Wheelchair-assisted
voters can use a touch screen with the same efficiency whether or not there is a
paper printout, and the visually-impaired are can be provided with headphones
for these machines. Nor does a paper printout hinder their ability to
vote.
Alternatives to the Diebold, Sequoia and ES&S
machines (operated by heavily partisan CEOs, designed to operate WITHOUT a paper
trail, and whose code and components are not allowed to be examined) exist.
Avante Systems has a machine that shows a printout
through a glass screen. After the voter confirms it is correct, the paper ballot
is droped into a storage box so it can be checked against the machine totals and
the AccuPoll system has a scanner that can pass over the printed ballot to
verify votes.
Bev Harris has outlined a point-by-point strategy
on specifically what to look for when monitoring electronic voting machines. It
is also recommended that you either download her free e-book "Black Box Voting",
or better yet, purchase it here:
CITIZEN WATCHDOGS: What to
look for and report -- Let's get good at this before November!
Optical-scan systems and absentee ballots: We have
information that all systems recognize carbon-containing marks (soft lead
pencil). Some DO NOT recognize all inks. You may want to bring a soft lead
pencil to the polling place with you to mark your optical-scan ballots.
All Diebold counties (AccuVote and AccuTouch are
Diebold brands) -- Ask that the poll workers print a report and post a copy at
the polling place at the end of the day, whether they are required to or not.
All Diebold machines, both touch-screen and optical-scan, contain internal
printers and have the ability to print a polling place results report. This
takes 60 seconds and costs nothing, and is an important check and balance to
compare with the county results from the GEMS system, which we believe to
contain security flaws. Votes should not change from the polling place to the
county.
Report any instance of mismatched polling
place/county tabulations here. Do NOT accept the excuse that they won't match
because early votes, absentee, provisional, or challenge votes were added into
the polling place totals. That is called "co-mingling" the data and is not an
acceptable record-keeping practice. Additional categories of votes must be
accounted for as separate line items.
Sequoia touch-screens do not have an internal
printer. A printer can easily be hooked up with a serial port. If you see
printers, demand a polling place report.
Watch for any "wandering vote tallies" on election
night, especially if any votes go DOWN. (Yes, this has been known to happen).
Late poll openings: Report these immediately and
we'll try to get cameras there. This is a form of vote suppression, often
occurring in minority areas.
Late vote results: Report late incoming tallies.
These can be indicative of the county trying to resolve voting machine anomalies
before filing reports.
Observe how many cords come in and out of the
voting machines. Report any evidence of networking the machines together. Report
any time you see more than a simple power cord plugged in while the election is
in progress.
Wardrive election sites. See if you can pick up
wireless signals either during or after the election. Wireless communication is
not permitted. Also, report any use of cell phones for vote transfers, which is
also not permitted.
Election workers: Report the procedures used for
training if they seem insecure. For example, we have already had reports that in
Georgia, some poll workers were told to take voting machines home after
training; Georgia flag artwork was uploaded right before the election; and other
unwise and insecure procedures were followed.
Go visit the polling place at the end of the day
and see how secure it is. We had reports recently of machines left in the
polling place unattended.
Felony watch: In some states, IT IS A FELONY for
technicians who are not sworn elections officials to touch the vote database in
any way, shape or form after votes have been cast. In fact, if you look at
Chapter 13 of Black Box Voting, the San Luis Obispo incident was probably
illegal (Diebold tech Sophia Lee was tied to a live vote database that appeared
on the Internet five hours before the polls closed).
Watch for statistical anomalies. Look at
everything. Time is of the essence, as these analyses take some time and there
are only a few days before the election is certified.
V. LEGAL
CHALLENGES (indeterminate)
If your organization has the wherewithal to raise a
legal challenge on these (or other grounds) here are some resources
below:
Other challenges:
REFERENCES
You are encouraged to distribute this document freely
and widely.
Contact: Eric A. Smith, Hot Damn!
Design, Tokyo,
Japan ●
81-03-3959-5371
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