Just decided to scan Black Box Voting's forums...

[bcreps85]

Like the first five things on reports from the front lines involve people not getting their Ron Paul votes counted in some way or other...

While I doubt he pulled any first place wins on Super Tuesday, all of the reports of this kind of thing I'm reading is making me highly skeptical of the results we saw. And these are just the ones that are registered on BBV or these forums...how many people have we converted that don't become active online and wouldn't know who to report something like this to? How many would assume it was an isolated event and figure that one vote doesn't matter?

 

[karenflower]

This is worrying. .

 

[praxisseizure]

BBV is good, but...

I just don't think it would make a difference. We all see the results of the NH recount. (I saw early figures, so I might be incorrect) They were barely off, if at all. Conspiracy, sure, but there's still no proof. There's only harassed election officials in the end.

I just don't think fraud is really apparent / significant. Think about it. What a task, to fudge that many votes without getting called out from the inside.

 

[bucfish]

The vote fraud is rampant. We should make sure Blackbox and others are aware. Hopefully soon and I feel WI is the place a smoking gun will occur

 

[m72mc]

The vote fraud is rampant. We should make sure Blackbox and others are aware. Hopefully soon and I feel WI is the place a smoking gun will occur

If the voters do something about it, it will be stopped, otherwise it won´t.

 

[Ex Post Facto]

I want an online database you can register to. And sign an affidavit online certifying when you voted, the district, and who you voted for. These can be double check against votes at campaign HQ to see any possible misreporting.

 

[bcreps85]

As someone else said, look at NH. There were large errors on the Democratic side, and the Republican side so far has had few errors...but they also had 22 days in which the ballots were not secured to mess with the votes.

Voter fraud and voter disenfranchisement IS occurring, and from everything I've read on the Republican side it is occurring only against us. On the Dem side it has has been against everyone, for Hillary.

To what extent these things are happening, there is no way to be sure. The only thing that we can be sure of is that there will be anomalies and reports that show us that it did happen, but no way to prove on what scale it actually happened...and recounts are pointless when the people controlling the recount are the same ones who did the rigging in the first place.

The only thing I can say is that we need to fight to alter our election system in a way that will make it harder to tamper with and transparent so that every step can be verified.

 

[linusPAULing]

I just don't think fraud is really apparent / significant. Think about it. What a task, to fudge that many votes without getting called out from the inside.

"Fudging that many votes" has been happening on larger scales for some time.

There are numerous academic reports detailing how the 2004 presidential election was likely stolen. Much but not all of this research is based on exit polling, which has only failed to predict the winner of the Presidential race the last two elections.

Steven Freeman, an MIT trained PhD, now at U. of Pennsylvania, has written a series of papers on the 04 election. You can find these papers at

http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/

by going to "Direct link to Election Research" link at the bottom.

For instance, in the conclusion of this paper
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/Documents/AAPOR060519.pdf

Steven Freeman states,

"The rest of us cannot know for certain what the withheld data might prove, but the public record indicates clearly that had the votes been counted as cast on
November 2, 2004 John Kerry would have won the victory that was initially reported on Election Day."


Steven Freeman has caught some heat for his work on this subject, but he's sticking to his guns. In this 63 page dossier he concludes
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/Do...04 US Pres Election Exit Poll Discrepancy.pdf

"But while the media and the public dismisses allegations of "conspiracy theorists", the conspiracy has already transpired from right under our noses."


An academic report from UC Berkeley entitiled,
"The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections" by Michael Hout, Laura Mangels, Jennifer Carlson, and Rachel Best, the conclusions are


* Irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 excess votes or more to President George W. Bush in Florida.

* Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population.

* In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes.

* We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance.


I can't find this paper on the web (now at 2:46 am), but I believe I have a pdf on another computer if anyone is interested.

 

[nightlight]

I just don't think it would make a difference. We all see the results of the NH recount. (I saw early figures, so I might be incorrect) They were barely off, if at all. Conspiracy, sure, but there's still no proof. There's only harassed election officials in the end.

I just don't think fraud is really apparent / significant. Think about it. What a task, to fudge that many votes without getting called out from the inside.

If you read the the threads on the chain of custody of NH ballots, you will find plenty of gross loopholes and subsequent dubious behaviors from the officials indicating something fishy went on there.

There are also various proposals from posters there for parallel grassroots vote count verification system that would at least discourage fraud if not entirely preclude it. I think this kind of system is vital, whether there is a large scale fraud or only a perception of fraud among the supporters.

Namely, even a suspicion is morale sapping -- what's the point of supporting the campaign financially, canvassing or even just voting if you suspect it will make no difference due to Diebold rigging and ballot stuffing. That's no different than a person hearing a picturesque rumor about the staff hygiene in some restaurant. Whether the rumor is true or false, he will lose the appetite for the place.

You have seen threads here of people wondering how come Boston had only 710 Ron Paul votes and doubts about the figure expressed by the posters. Without a systematic well thought out parallel verification system that assures us that someone on our side is watching in most polling places, doubts will remain and, valid or not, will undermine morale. Rationalizations and assurances by optimists in those threads won't do much.

And that is not the end of the damage to the campaign since the long presidential race is a scale model which tests the suitability of candidates for the office. It shows to the public how well they can anticipate the threats and problems and how effective are they in solving them.

If you return to the restaurant staff hygiene analogy, consider now the scenario in which the restaurant owner also owns a kids amusement park in the town. Having doubts about his judgment in hiring his cooks and waiters, you may not wish to send your kids to his amusement park either. Applying the analogy to the elections, one can then wonder how will the same people deal with much more serious threats and problems of the country if they can botch the comparatively much simpler problems of running a little campaign.

 

[nightlight]

I want an online database you can register to. And sign an affidavit online certifying when you voted, the district, and who you voted for. These can be double check against votes at campaign HQ to see any possible misreporting.

Online is better than nothing, but it won't cover many potential voters. In addition to online verification, monitoring teams could be set up on randomly selected voting sites, not known in advance to anyone. The team could set up a boot outside with signs inviting Ron Paul supporters to have their vote counted by our people. It could also poll or count others to check the totals, so that those are harder to rig.

Note that it doesn't matter so much whether one could use such results later in the court. The mere possibility will discourage potential schemers and the effort will assure suporters that their team is anticipating well, thinking of everything, that smart, capable people are in charge and on their side.

The campaign is a toy model testing how well a particular candidate can deal with much larger problems of running the government. If they can't run the little campaign properly, they surely better not get in charge of the whole country.

 

[SteveMartin]

There was blatant DOCUMENTED vote fraud in NY and NJ where ballot workers told the voters that they could not vote for RP because he had pulled out of the race. Even voter cards had his name CROSSED OFF when people went to some polling locations.

Pull your head out of the sand, if you think this stuff isn't happening!

http://ronpaul.meetup.com/boards/thread/4172968

 

[syborius]

I just don't think it would make a difference. We all see the results of the NH recount. (I saw early figures, so I might be incorrect) They were barely off, if at all. Conspiracy, sure, but there's still no proof. There's only harassed election officials in the end.

I just don't think fraud is really apparent / significant. Think about it. What a task, to fudge that many votes without getting called out from the inside.

Would be easy as pie, or the majority of it at least, as long as you control the tabulating computer that feeds in from the diebold touch screen for instance. Get a grip.

 

[syborius]

Online is better than nothing, but it won't cover many potential voters. In addition to online verification, monitoring teams could be set up on randomly selected voting sites, not known in advance to anyone. The team could set up a boot outside with signs inviting Ron Paul supporters to have their vote counted by our people. It could also poll or count others to check the totals, so that those are harder to rig.

Note that it doesn't matter so much whether one could use such results later in the court. The mere possibility will discourage potential schemers and the effort will assure suporters that their team is anticipating well, thinking of everything, that smart, capable people are in charge and on their side.

The campaign is a toy model testing how well a particular candidate can deal with much larger problems of running the government. If they can't run the little campaign properly, they surely better not get in charge of the whole country.

I had a thread here regarding that before Super Tuesday but had morons shoot me down. It would have helped, by state, and by district, for people to be able and certify it online, at least that way we might get a better indicator in some cases. IF and only IF this was organized from th ebeginning and each RP voter knew ahead of time they needed to certify their vote online. It would have helped, but we lacked the time/organization to really put something like that together.

 

[nightlight]

I had a thread here regarding that before Super Tuesday but had morons shoot me down. It would have helped, by state, and by district, for people to be able and certify it online, at least that way we might get a better indicator in some cases. IF and only IF this was organized from the beginning and each RP voter knew ahead of time they needed to certify their vote online. It would have helped, but we lacked the time/organization to really put something like that together.

That advance notification of all supporters would be needed only for the online method. But for the random probe monitoring, all that was needed is an organized small group willing to work out the method, prepare the data collection computers, on site props and then spend a day at the selected locations. Since the bad guys wouldn't know where the monitors would observe, or may have not even known there would be any such a thing, they could have been caught red handed.

All that, unfortunately needs planning and organizing well in advance. Maybe we will learn before it is too late.

 

[limequat]

I still have a problem with NH. I've done projections based on donation totals, # of donations, etc, and NH is always incongruous.

I have my suspicions about GA as well.

 

[SteveMartin]

Photos of voter cards in NY with Ron Paul's name scratched off BEFORE voters arrived:

http://ronpaul.meetup.com/boards/thread/4177876/#14989138