Bob Koehler " I'm not used to BEING the news"

Let's show this Tribune Public Editor the FULL WRATH of DU!
A Good Man has been Dissed
and I, for one, am pissed!
They won't print his original excellent piece
Just this HATCHET JOB of it!
Go tear him up, Brethren and Sisteren!

Wiley


From : Koehler, Bob <BKoehler@Tribune.com>
Sent : Thursday, April 28, 2005 8:51 AM
To : "Koehler, Bob" <BKoehler@Tribune.com>
Subject : I'm not used to BEING the news!

Thanks to everyone who contacted the Tribune about running my column "The Silent Scream of Numbers," about election 2004 irregularities. Public editor Don Wycliff responded, more or less. While Tribune readers aren't ready to read the whole unexpurgated column, they were at least given the debunked version. This is the way closed minds open!

Let us now have a moment of silence for the moral leadership of Richard Nixon.

Bob

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0504280106apr28,0,5908365.column?coll=chi-ed_opinion_publiced-utl

When winning isn't everything


Published April 28, 2005

If someone had told me 30 years ago that I would one day invoke Richard M. Nixon as a moral example, I'd have said the person was nuts. But that's what I'm about to do.

Legend has it that after the 1960 presidential election, an aide informed Nixon that there was enough evidence of irregularities in the results of the balloting in Illinois that a strong challenge to John F. Kennedy's victory here could be mounted.

To his credit, Nixon is said to have rejected a challenge as not worth putting the country through. In other words, winning wasn't the sole end of politics.

That Nixon legend came to mind this week as I opened what seemed the 1,000th e-mail in which the writer declared that the results of the 2004 presidential election are suspect and suggested that, instead of pursuing evidence of election theft and corruption, the Tribune and the rest of the "corporate media" are intent on ignoring the facts.

The most recent of this correspondence commends to the attention of the newspaper's editors a column, "The Silent Scream of Numbers," written by a fellow Tribune Co. employee, Bob Koehler.

Koehler is an editor at Tribune Media Services, the company's syndication arm, and also writes a syndicated column. He wrote "The Silent Scream of Numbers" after attending what was dubbed the National Election Reform Conference earlier this month in Nashville.

It was, he wrote, "an extraordinary pulling together of disparate voting-rights activists--30 states were represented, 15 red and 15 blue--sponsored by a Nashville group called Gathering to Save Our Democracy. It had the feel of 1775; citizen patriots taking matters into their own hands to reclaim the republic."

That's one way of looking at it. Another is as a convocation of conspiracy theorists, unable to come to terms with the fact that their guy lost and that, as in sports, it's not the pregame prognostication and expert opinions that count, but the numbers on the scoreboard after the contest has actually been played.

Koehler is sensitive to the "conspiracy nut" charge and attempted in his "silent scream" column to blunt it by avoiding the question whether the 2004 election was "stolen."

Instead, he posed questions like "why the lines were so long and the voting machines were so few in Columbus and Cleveland and inner-city and college precincts across the country"; "why so many PhD-level mathematicians and computer programmers and other numbers-savvy scientists are saying that the numbers don't make sense"; and what about "those exit polls, which in years past were extraordinarily accurate but last November went haywire, predicting Kerry by roughly the margin by which he ultimately lost to Bush."

I'm not sure that all of Koehler's questions could ever be answered. But because so many of them seem to involve the conduct of the election in Ohio, I decided to ask the most reliable authority I know: Tribune national correspondent Tim Jones.

An Ohio native, Jones spent a great deal of time in the state last year, including the last two weeks before the election. On Election Day he was in the Columbus area, visiting polling places that ranged from silk-stocking suburban to poverty-ridden inner city. At the latter, he said, "I talked to people who waited in line four hours and were determined to vote."

Jones pointed out that in Columbus and Cleveland--where Koehler says "lines were so long and the voting machines were so few"--final decisions on where to place the available voting machines belonged to local election officials, who in each case were Democrats.

It's always possible that these Democrats were secretly working for Bush's re-election, but not likely. What's more likely is that they based their decisions on placement of people and equipment on earlier elections, when turnout in inner-city and college precincts lagged that in other areas.

Jones said he has talked at length with people in Ohio whose credentials as non-partisan and unbiased are beyond question, and they, he said, "found no irregularities."

Koehler and those who have been boosting his "silent scream" column make one very powerful point: It is the duty of the news media, as watchdogs of our democracy, to study, identify and shine a spotlight on weaknesses and abuses in our most fundamental democratic activity--elections.

But if the real agenda of the election reformers is to call into question the legitimacy of the 2004 election, they would be better advised to follow the example of Richard Nixon. Winning isn't the sole end of politics.

----------

Don Wycliff is the Tribune's public editor. He listens to readers' concerns and questions about the paper's coverage and writes weekly about current issues in journalism. His e-mail address is dwycliff@tribune.com. The views expressed are his own.

that were on a truck and not delivered to any of the inner city polling places that were begging for them AND the Mighty Texas Strike Force in Columbus.

i remember reading that he filed many lawsuits in many juristictions. he just did it quietly.

of someone emoting about a legend concerning a noble turd when a smidgen of research piercing the murk that was the Nixon entourage(with us still)
will show he was very much ready to contest and in fact the papers were full of the preliminary howlings and moves. Like Kerry though the math was not pretty. Nothing was well prepared to overcome the public acceptance of the result.

What made the noble heroes of democracy back down was anything but a sense it is better to lose unfairly "for the good of the country". Only the DLC Dems are that stupid.

When Eisenhower, the truly noble, was willing to weigh in his just wrath, Nixon realized that his own little shenanigans in California for example would humiliate and alienate the Big Guy. His main weapon must be kept ignorant of Nixon's impurity. No second Checkers speech would rescue him; he would lose and be ostracized forever.

As in all these things where one person hears this from Nixon and that from another(LBJ also had many faces), cherry picking the noblest self-image is the territory of the bootlicking PR biographer- and it convenient ONLY to the RW gas machine as they pick the new American legends most suited to advancing their cause- even as they despise Nixon for "liberalism" more than we do for his treachery.

So the noble Nixon myth is spurious and harmful from two angles. One, that a proved liar demands better research of such a whopper, if you have ANY scrap of intellectual instinct. Don't judge another man's character who cares about honest elections by citing a fairy tale conceived to cover a thief. The second is close on the heels of that outrage. That is, eagerly using a story that is now stock in trade for GOP election cheats to keep us from challenges, recounts, and especially the truth is to imply the truth, the real election result does not matter. because presumably, HIS side won. It is probably just that venal.

But these wise judges of the common welfare who know what is what don't do real research, rely on their pals' sloppy and murky assurances, no longer know or understand pretty much anything connected to truth, science, the people, facts, American values, journalism, the weather, politics, the comic pages or how to give advice to the lovelorn or any other real work in their field. They constantly interpose their lazy, smug, sentimental heart in the way of anyone else having a better researched opinion. They are perfect stooges for the right wing big lie machine, and if not paid, suckers policing the rest of us enraged suckers against ever becoming conscious- much less informed.

The truth does not matter. How noble indeed.
As the High Priest Caiaphas said "It is better that one Democrat give up his victory rather than the press be bothered with a simple truth."

"They constantly interpose their lazy, smug, sentimental heart in the way of anyone else having a better researched opinion. They are perfect stooges for the right wing big lie machine...." --Patrick

You nailed 'em!

it does give voice to the issue of election fraud...to me, the nixon thing is secondary.

a wonderful post...

they can be nice... and they can be... not nice....

Or was it that little guy in the bookstore? I can never figure it out.

http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/10/nixon/index.html?sid=995322
(membership or "daypass" may be required)

The fallacy of Nixon's graceful exit

In 1960, the GOP candidate fought hard behind the scenes to make sure the election wasn't stolen from him -- just as Al Gore should do.

By Gerald Posner
- - - - - - - - - -

November 10, 2000 | One of the most oft-repeated myths in the aftermath of the current presidential election disputes is the claim that Vice President Al Gore should behave more like Richard Nixon, who is cited frequently for having graciously decided not to pursue legal remedies in response to possible voter fraud that might have cost him the 1960 election with John Kennedy. But the notion that Nixon graciously exited is just false.

---

To: dwycliff@tribune.com
Subject: Please correct the NeoFascist Fractured Fairy Tale
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 00:14:20 +0000

Those people literally need to believe these things to sleep through the night,
but I would not have imagined you in their company.

- - - - - - - - - -
The fallacy of Nixon's graceful exit
In 1960, the GOP candidate fought hard behind the scenes to make sure the
election wasn't stolen from him -- just as Al Gore should do.
By Gerald Posner

November 10, 2000 | One of the most oft-repeated myths in the aftermath of the
current presidential election disputes is the claim that Vice President Al Gore
should behave more like Richard Nixon, who is cited frequently for having
graciously decided not to pursue legal remedies in response to possible voter
fraud that might have cost him the 1960 election with John Kennedy. But the
notion that Nixon graciously exited is just false.

http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/10/nixon/index.html?sid=995322

- - - - - - - - - -

And while you're at it, maybe you could also learn a thing or two about the
Voting Rights Act?

The existence of the hours-long poll-tax-lines themselves is unlawful (and
racist). No "culprit" need be found. No blame assigned (other than to allay
one's own conscience).

The systematic disparate treatment itself makes Ohio 2004 no different than
Florida 2000, about which the US Commission on Civil Rights made a legal
finding of violation of the Voting Right Act, with attendant recommendations for
investigation and prosecution.

Regardless of the legalities, we each have to ask ourselves the simple question:

"Are hours-long poll-tax-line for poor, minority voters and none for affluent,
white voters tolerable to you, or not?"

It's just that simple
thedeanpeople

and writing right now! What an ass.

What a maroon!

I am writing my email now. :argh:

Heya Merh (waves)
I have a quick question for you, not worthy of a thread.
I'm looking for terms or phrases, that would describe someone getting caught voting more than once.
Like...
voter fraud
vote fraud
election fraud

Is there anything else that might come to mind?

I'm trying to do a little research on the frequency of incidents, and I didn't want to leave anything out.

Thanx in Advance
PS Welcome back :party:

Sorry bout the welcome back...I confused you with Faye.
I don't know why.
:think:

part of it is calling into question the 2004 results.

but the greater issue is our democracy and the privitization of vote counting, electronic voting machines with no paper trail, no way to recount, partisan private companies running our elections... these are all important issues that apply to future elections.

I think the debunking article is a kick in the face. I don't see how it opens minds, but I hope it does.

As much as I hate to say, I think we need to really focus on the electronic voting. The long lines have been discussed in the media, and they have their way of passing it off. But they have avoided the real issues with electronic voting. It seems every time something gets through in the MSM, it doesn't really focus on the core issues of electronic voting... it focuses on Ohio and long lines, and this is unfortunate.

e-voting affects everyone, not just Ohioans, not just minorities, not just the 2004 election.

I think the debunking article makes one valid point - MAYBE the long lines issue can be compared to Kennedy/Nixon.

But electronic voting takes it to another level that can not be compared to shenanigans in one particular state, and it can't be discussed in the same context.

only a few such as Cynthia McKinney even mentioned e-voting, and most of the challengers and most people in general had no clue that there were problems outside of OH. If they think it's only OH and it's only long lines,not enough machines, etc. they completely miss the point that the country has been taken over by private corps who now control congress and will soon controll the courts also if something isn't done quickly.

I think Brad said something to Conyers in an interview about problems in other states-anyone remember? How much does COnyers know? I bet he knows a lot by now.

And they wonder why no one goes to them for news anymore.

Is this guy on acid or what?

Thanks for the thread and the addy.

Oh, this guy is a jerk. Time to educate him.

Off to email...

if he's really received 1,000 emails (or close) -- all from different walks of life -- that there might be One little iota of "something to investigate" ???

:shrug:

My email to this sleaze:

Mr. Wycliff,
I find your editorial calling into question the legitimacy of Bob Koehler's article entitled, "The Silent Scream of Numbers", to be inaccurate, filled with innuendo intended to misinform and mislead your readers without any citing of facts or sources. You suggest the National conference was illegitimate, that Bo Koehler's article about same was insufficient and deceptive even though HE attended the conference and you didn't. You then offer up your own unsubstantiated, uncredentialed so-called "expert" in Tim Jones who, instead of offering results of journalistic investigative reporting into what happened in Ohio during the November 2nd election, provides a lame excuse why he hasn't investigated the problems with voting in 2004. You besmirch the National Election Reform conference, without having attended, without having examining the evidence presented, and without investigating the credentials of the presenters of that evidence nor reviewing their research. Instead you offer up an alternative hypothesis that the conference was a bunch of "conspiracy theorists" as equally plausible to Bob Koehler's eyewitness account. This is shameful editorializing and sleazy journalism that cast a pall of unprofessionalism on the Chicago Tribune and a suspicion that you are driven by ulterior motives.

I attended the conference. You mis-characterize, misinterpret and misstate my and other participants' intent, motives, and political affiliation entirely - more evidence that you are attacking Bob Koehler's work without ANY journalism or facts to back you up. Perhaps, you had best learn about that which you write before putting pen to paper - as Bob Koehler has:

Spend some time (as I have) researching the thousands of documented 2004 election incidents in the Election Incident Reporting System: https://voteprotect.org/epc/.
Read Mythbreakers: http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction/distribute-mythbreakers.asp
Review "Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies": http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky.pdf


Kip Humphrey
Houston, TX

I knew You'd come through and hit the MF hard!

We need to visit more often, Bro
Tell Carol I said, "Hi"

Everyone: Please Keep This Kicked

And Spread This Message Far and Wide

Way Beyond DU Even,

Thanks,
Wiley

from someone who, actually attended the conference:

To the Editor:
In reference to:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-05042801...

Don! you have to be kidding. Using Nixon as an icon of
morality is weak, weak, weak. I was one of the
concerned citizens at the "dubbed" National Election
Reform Conference in Nashville. I had hopes that the
stellar gathering of experts and non-partisan
gathering of researchers in civic history and current
politics would be dispassionately reported. I am one
of the concerned citizens who had hopes that the
tradition of a brave Chicago Tribune would publish Bob
Koehler's columns without gelding them.

Ah yes, I suppose it is asking for disappointment when
one appoints one's self to hope.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Barger

Please forward this letter to the LTTE at the Tribune.
Others that are responding to Mr Wycliff should also either mail their rebuttals DIRECTLY to LTTE, or forward copies.

Wycliff's ignorance and arrogance are stunning.

'Get over it'.

Um, no.

No, winning isn't the sole end of politics; representing the people and doing what's best for "We the People" is the sole end of politics.

If he can sleep at night thinking that the whole thing went swimmingly, with only a few problems caused by (and, let's note he bothered to point this out) democrats who couldn't figure out where the machines should be placed, I want some of whatever he's taking.

It's been a while since the ol' "conspiracy nuts" reared their heads, but again, I am wearing a lovely TFH at the moment.

Off to write and offer some suggestions about he can help democracy along in his unique public position instead of wasting time, ink and newsprint to blow smoke up somebody's butt and dis another journalist's piece. Don't we have media critics for that?

Isn't there anything else he could be writing about? Like the mathematical impossibilities of the polls and the eventual outcome, which he admits may never be explained -- but clearly, he's okay with that, because "winning isn't the sole end of politics." Feh!

See, really, it's all just sour grapes on our part. We all need to get over the fact that our guy "lost".

"These aren't the 'droids you're looking for..."

Thanks, Wiley!

"It is the duty of the news media, as watchdogs of our democracy, to study, identify and shine a spotlight on weaknesses and abuses in our most fundamental democratic activity--elections."

Quoting your invocation of this universally held truth, Mr Wycliff--I sincerely hope that you will follow this noble vow of media duty regarding future elections. You might be amazed at what you would learn, if you really tried. Bob Koehler is right on target about the Election of 2004. And winning IS the name of the game in politics, as you very well know.

I am a consumer fraud litigation attorney and also retired from the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association, and have with me legal assistance from a top lawyer in the state of Washington, Randy Gordon on a lawsuit we’ve brought concerning electronic voting machines and their structure which forces unaccountable and unverifiable voting processes. We’ve brought a constitutional lawsuit that we think is very strong, stating that a mere contract to purchase electronic voting machines can not eliminate the constitutional and statutory rights of the public to observe the counting of the vote in order to verify its integrity.

Electronic voting machines create vote counting secrecy without checks and balances of observation, and these machines decided the recent election. Elimination of checks and balances, whether accompanied by evidence of fraud or irregularity or not, is a serious development. Every American should be concerned about the integrity of elections (the main thing defense forces are defending), and with electronic machines an incumbent party an easily insure its permanent re-election, essentially without leaving much of any evidence if they do it just right.

In my particular county, I co-authored with Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman a 29 page scientific study showing serious irregularities in the touch screen voting machines here. The more observed “malfunctions” the more one party was favored, whether due to irregularity or tampering. The Sequoia machines used in our county were also predominant in the swing states of Nevada, New Mexico, and had a significant presence in Florida as well. This study includes abundant eyewitness testimony of votes actually changing on the screen. Put together, there is statistical evidence, circumstantial evidence, expert testimony, and EYEWITNESS evidence of problems.

What more types of evidence are there?

I litigate fraud for a living. I have no problem taking this case and proving it in trial. The only thing is, the lawsuit takes the position that the public doesn’t need to prove anything, it is the government that needs to prove that the elections it administers are free, fair, open and accurate. And it must do so from a position of public skepticism, because it has a conflict of interest when running elections because those very elections are what gives the government its power and its tax base, or takes the same away.

Integrity is more important than both winning and more important than being quiet in “defeat” (your essential suggestion). There isn’t any official attempt to change the result, all we are seeing right now (and that you are mocking) is freedom of speech concerning the integrity of the most important institution in our democracy.

I’m sure you didn’t realize that you are mocking defenders of democracy, but that’s all you are doing. And they have every right to be concerned, even if the secret vote counting machines somehow (against the structure of their very design to be unauditable) be proven to have worked perfectly.

It’s as if you personally collected your neighbor’s ballots, voted them allegedly in accordance with their intent but didn’t let them see the final product, then retired to your private home on which no one can trespass and counted the votes in secret, then announced your unverifiable results. This is precisely what happens with electronic voting, and the only claimed defense to this practice (which is clearly corrupt when done by private citizens) is that ANOTHER GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL has done some limited testing on the equipment. That is no check and balance at all, for the entire government has a conflict of interest.

The lawsuit and our 29 page scientific study shows substantial irregularities in electronic voting. See www.votersunite.org (click on Sequoia/Snohomish lawsuit link to get to lawsuit, the study, the purchase contract for the machines, an email showing the secretary of state who is supposed to be the regulator pushing for a particular company instead, and a results slip showing 30 votes but ZERO votes on the public counter, the alleged safeguard mechanism against extra votes)

Edit for LS fan club floaty hearts!:loveya:

The fact no one can prove who won IS the point... THATS why we question the results! WE are not trying to overturn the election.. but what will WE do if it's shown it was stolen... can THEY handle the truth, this editor doesnt seem to want to face that fight... WE DO!


hang on.. its gonna be a bumpy ride!

Such much excellent reasoning and so many pertinent points, it's hard to choose the best, but this paragraph struck me particularly:

"Electronic voting machines create vote counting secrecy without checks and balances of observation, and these machines decided the recent election. Elimination of checks and balances, whether accompanied by evidence of fraud or irregularity or not, is a serious development. Every American should be concerned about the integrity of elections (the main thing defense forces are defending), and with electronic machines an incumbent party an easily insure its permanent re-election, essentially without leaving much of any evidence if they do it just right." --Land Shark

--no checks and balances in the election system

--fraud or no fraud, this is extremely serious (in fact, the election was INVALID, in my view)

--what the hell are American soldiers fighting for, and what do Americans stand for, if not for legitimate, transparent election of our representatives in government? (--to corporations, it's freedom to profit off of everything and everybody, with no responsibility for our common infrastructure or environmental or social impacts, and the freedom to consume; but for the rest of us, it's the far more important freedoms to think, speak, live and worship as we will, all the responsibilities of freedom, and the right to govern what happens in this country and what is done in our name)
--and THE KEY TO IT ALL: "with electronic machines an incumbent party (can) easily insure its permanent re-election"--this is so fundamental, people often miss it!

I would only make one criticism, Land Shark. I don't think you need this sentence: "There isn’t any official attempt to change the result...". By God, I wish there was!

Dear Mr. Wycliff,

I have to say it is amazing that you work in a news organization. Never in America before could a person be labeled a loon for simply asking questions. That's right mister they are just a bunch of conspiracy theorists. Well try this one on for size you don't know what you are talking about! Hence you’re speaking from your buckeye.

How do I know this? You haven't looked, every person who does becomes instantly crazy to people who lack the reasonable ability to question anything significant. Please spare me I have heard the nut routine before it's become a ditto head mantra and it does nothing but twist and contort your ability to be reasonable. You are not being reasonable you are being dismissive and undermining an American citizens ability to ask legitimate questions.

Questions you Neanderthal lead to answers, loyalty leads to the nut routine. If you are not questioning everything about the last 5 fucked up years you are living in a bubble.

I want this to be clear, that everyday any American can find the truths about the last 5 years the information is free, it's public, and it has been the mainstream that has towed a line to make people feel crazy for looking at it. Your biggest problem is everyday people are moving farther from your framed views and closer to my open views. People don't like being told that they are not free to form their opinions and they will rebel. Its your choice in the end you can either go down via some fucked up immoral loyalty, or stand raise your hand to ask a REAL question. I have, I know where I stand, I know sir you are the crazy one because you only want to question the people who are seeking answers to their own questions.


Sincerely,

Wayne Collins


PS. I can't tell my kids the same things my parents told me about this country, and I am not crazy I am fucking livid.


http://benumbment.blogspot.com/2005/04/not-free-enough-to-ask-questions.html

That's telling 'em.

libertypirate, your beautiful, pure, patriotic rage is balm to my soul!

In all my (three) years of public relations work, successfully encouraging journalists and editors to create front-page headlines and double-page spreads out of the most important breaking stories, I have never found it useful to call anybody a Neanderthal or to use the "fuck" word - and I understand this is such a taboo over there that you are not even permitted to call it by name.

You have a strong point, that the traditional media are failing to inform and by implication that the people are finding themselves obliged to abandon the newspapers in order to conduct informed political discussion in the new mainstream media (such as DU), but I think you will find that you have greater effect if you strike a more polite tone. Colloquial is good, but I don't think it's productive to trade insults.

Best of luck,
Paddy.

Dear Mr. Wycliff:

For the past 15 years, I have served as a pollworker in my native Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Twice each year I put in a 15 to 17-hour day setting up the precinct polling room (and cleaning it up at the end), checking voters into the poll book, and demonstrating operation of the voting machine. At the end of the long day, I help to accurately record my precinct's results, and help ensure that the results are publicly posted and safely delivered to the Election Bureau in my county courthouse.

Why do I do this? For one reason -- to help preserve, at least in my own small way, our American right to vote and to have our vote counted accurately and meaningfully. That right for which Americans died on the battlefield in foreign lands and died on the streets of Selma, Alabama. That fragile, sacred right which is the voice of every citizen and the core of our Democracy.

I attended the Nashville Election Reform Conference this month. In fact I was one of the speakers; reporting on Pennsylvania (which, by the way, voted for Kerry), and how my "blue" state had as many or more voting machine problems, election "incidents", and incongruous polls as neighboring Ohio.

Something was definitely wrong on November 2. But it was not about who won or lost.

People from nine political parties and thirty states gathered in Nashville because we have seen, and we know, that November was just a symptom. Our entire electoral system is flawed and in danger.

As counties and states move forward to comply with the Help America Vote Act, decisions are being made which could permanently affect our right to vote. Do we want to turn the precious recording and counting of our votes over to private corporations and their secret software and proprietary procedures? Do we want to allow privatization and partisanship in the electoral process, or do we want open and transparent systems? Do we want to encourage or discourage certain people’s participation in the process of our democracy?

Is our right to vote "worth" putting our country -- meaning all the people -- through a genuine discussion of these issues? Or should we let those with the most money, the biggest media mouthpiece, or the "right" political beliefs decide for us?

I rejoiced when I learned that Bob Koehler had written his excellent column "The Silent Scream of Numbers" about the Nashville Election Reform Conference, and was deeply saddened when your paper and others refused to print his views. Now I am sickened to see that your piece, refuting Mr. Koehler, was run when his original column was suppressed.

Doesn't this worry you?
If you truly care about current issues in journalism, there's your story Mr. Wycliff, and it is a big one.


Marybeth Kuznik
PA

You had your moment of silence now please, go and open up a can of editorial whoop ass on this guy.

But if the real agenda of the election reformers is to call into question the legitimacy of the 2004 election, they would be better advised to follow the example of Richard Nixon. Winning isn't the sole end of politics.

So, this guy is basically saying that the activists should shut the hell up??? ... but only if we are trying to expose fraud???

Well, I think one fraud needs to be exposed, for sure, and that the fact that this guy is calling himself a journalist.

I'm writing him and everyone else I can think of now. Does anyone know the email address of his boss?

Just in case you want to contact Mr. Wycliff's boss at the tribune:

Ann Marie Lipinski
Editor, Senior Vice President, Chicago Tribune

312-222-4552 (line to her assistant, Mary Ellen)
Other numbers:
312-222-3006
312-222-3232
312-222-9100

alipinski@tribune.com
editor@tribune.com
ctc-editor@tribune.com

Bless all the quick information gatherers who make an activist's life so simple!:loveya:

I just had the displeasure of reading Mr. Wycliff's column on why your paper is refusing the examine the issue of fraud in a presidential election.
Is this what we've come to in this country?
That an issue as important as this could be waved away with accusations of being "conspiracy theorists," simply because we question why the act of voting should be free, fair and transparent?
When voting machines that cannot be accessed by the public officials who run elections, but are open only to the corporations that manufactured and maintain them, turn out results in defiance of all the exit polls, something is very seriously wrong.
For your paper to be so dismissive of legitimate citizens' concerns tells me that you have completely abdicated your role as watchdog for democracy and have opted, instead, to continue to serve as the p.r. arm of the Bush White House.
If you and your editorial staff refuse to do your job, fine. Just don't disparage average American citizens who love their country and fear for its future.
Mr. Wycliff owes all of us an apology for his smarmy, dismissive and, for the record, historically inaccurate representation.
I expected more from your paper.

Just wondering whether we shouldn't make it more explicit that if this is what we can expect from the old media, then fine, we'll just go cancel our subscriptions and go elsewhere for intelligent debate.

Can any newspaper afford to refuse to give its most intelligent and inquisitive customers coverage of the issues they want to read about? Can the professional journalists afford to neglect the issues we want to read about, maybe let their editors tell them to can it?

Or will it turn out that sales will fall off and people will lose their jobs?

I think journalists, editors and newspaper owners should be very worried that the new media might make it impossible for their papers to stay afloat if they refuse to do their job and cover the most interesting and scandalous questions of national (and global) importance fairly.

Best,
Paddy.

PS: Well done, dzika! His boss's address will come in very handy!

The response from a DU member in Illinois pointed out discrepancies possible 1960 ballot stuffing in southern Illinois. Tricky Dick probably had something to hide was why he took the high road.

NGU.

Dear Mr. Wycliff,

When winning isn't everything? Are you crazy? One of the chief investigators of Abu Ghraib lamented on NPR this morning that because the public overwhelmingly elected George Bush and more Republicans to Congress this past November, there will be nothing done about Abu Ghraib and the secret White House-directed policies condoning illegal torture and subverting the Geneva Convention.

In times like this, it matters more than ever that the true will of the people is indeed accurately represented. If this insanity is not supported by a true majority or mandate, not only the American people, but the rest of the world desperately need to know it.

This is no partisan issue, Mr. Wyclyff. It is all about morals. Moral values not of the kind Karl Rove hyped to make it appear plausible such a failed regime as Bush's was truly elected, but the real kind, like telling the truth.

As a journalist, gatekeeper of the news for your paper, you of all people should be more concerned than most with honest investigation, not dismissingly waving away questions of cheating and those who seek to know the truth.

Yours sincerely,

XXXXX

...matter. This government quite glaringly does not represent the will of the majority of Americans. In fact, it's so glaring that I would question this "election" even if we did not have a mountain of evidence of a wrong result.

You might have added in the opinion poll that shows that 63% of Americans oppose torture UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. And the raft of polls showing American disapproval of every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, in the 60% to 70% range, not to mention Bush's unprecedented low approval ratings, consistent over time before and after the election--with 49% percent approval on his Inauguration Day!

This so-called journalist is an obvious apologist for the ruling powers. He reeks of lack of integrity. So these wonderful letters will probably fall on deaf ears. But even Bush lapdog media is going to have to ask, at some point, WHO VOTED FOR THIS REGIME?

If 63% oppose torture UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and 57% oppose the Iraq invasion and occupation (now, today), and a majority don't trust Bush on Social Security, and 90% are alarmed about the deficit...I mean, WHERE ARE Bush's votes in all this? All these polls taken together say that Americans are not even giving him the benefit of the doubt--they have NO CONFIDENCE in him; the great majority of people disagree with everything he stands for. So, where is that illusory majority that supposedly ensconced him and his Cartel puppetmasters once again in our White House?

Subject: Learn First; Then Write

Dear Mr Wycliff,

"It is the duty of the news media, as watchdogs of our democracy, to study, identify and shine a spotlight on weaknesses and abuses in our most fundamental democratic activity--elections."

That is correct.

Unfortunately, you have done just the opposite in your insulting apologia for the failed national election of 2004.

If you intend to write about that election, ever again, you might first do some homework. Just for starters, know these facts:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky.pdf

http://www.votersunite.org/MB2.pdf

https://voteprotect.org/epc/

http://www.votersunite.org/info/lehtolawsuit.asp

http://www.votersunite.org/info/LehtovSequoiaVoting4-7-05.pdf

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x363681

And, you might spend some time with Mr. Koehler. He might still be willing to mentor you on the facts.

In any event, please spend much less time wasting ink and trees until you learn something about what actually happend to our democracy on 2 and 3 Nov 2004.

Thanks,


p.s. And, you also need to check your facts about Nixon. Earl Mazo (close friend of Nixon's and eventually his biographer) launched a massive media flurry over possible fraud, Republicans involved U.S. Attorneys and the FBI and grand juries and recounts and.....so, what you have also revealed in your apologia is that you have not done your homework on what was done in the days and weeks after the 1960 national election.



www.missionnotaccomplished.us (what to do about all the atrocities being committed by a regime that also stole the national elections of 2000 and 2004)

Short and to the point. The point being he has obviously not informed himself. If you don't mind, I am going to send some of the same links and say basically the same thing.

Thank you to everyone who's writing!

:kick:

www.missionnotaccomplished.us (May 2 2005 -- a day to reflect on all the atrocities being committed in the name of America by a fraudulent regime)

To destroy the very fact used to open and close the "article" is awesome!

great letter!!

after I am done writing this.

Apparently no one told Bush that winning isn't everything,did they?

This kind of writing and ignorance gets me mad enough to do more email blasting with the media blaster.(which is probably where this nimrod got all 1000 of his emails about this.)

Plenty of good responses above and I would expect nothing less after meeting the folks that I met in Nashville. Unfortunately, it will probably fall on deaf ears anyone who thinks Nixon is a role model probably won't listen to what we have to say.

e-mail will go out tonight

Dear Mr. Wycliff,

After the election disaster of 2000, it comes as a surprise that anyone who belongs to the vanguard of free speech and government accountability would presume that the 2004 election was beyond reproach, to the extent that they would dismiss a dispassionate look at the evidence to the contrary as the sole province of nut-cases.

The volumes of evidence, showing that discrepancies almost universally favored George Bush, are not the product of anyone's imagination.

The fact that the results are in many respects mathematically impossible (according to a number of esteemed academic panels) shouldn't be shrugged off by assuming that they are simply "sore losers". If someone tells you that this year, 2+2=5, that should probably raise a red flag for you as a journalist. This is true even if, and perhaps most especially if, there are those who would shout you down and call you names for speaking out.


Sincerely,

-----------

I hope to be as to the point and get the point across so well.If he would only print one of these rebuttals than at least some people will be educated about what has happened.

great detail, but the shorter responses might be the only ones he reads.

:hi:

And I hope you feel better. :hi:

That would make me feel better for sure.

:hi:

...at the Tribune and not just Wycliff... I don't trust him.

I'm not as eloquent as most of you, but who the hell cares!

(I bcc'd Lipinski @ alipinskitribune.com)

Dear Mr. Wycliff,

It's very clear to me that you have not read any of the links that have been sent to you regarding election fraud. I will once again attach a couple of links in great hope that you will take the time to inform yourself of what actually happened.

I don't understand why you are so reluctant to inform youself on what really happened. If you can study the evidence and retain your opinion that the 2004 election was valid, I would so love to hear why you believe that.

I can only assume that either you are willfully ignoring truth and facts or you have been instructed not to report the truth. Either way please know you are doing a great disservice to our country and should have a pretty clear idea of why less and less people are reading newspapers.

Sincerely,
Jen



"Myth Breakers: Facts About Electronic Elections" (2nd edition):
www.votersunite.org

Easy demo of the how insecure voting machines are:
http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htm

Rep. John Conyers Report:
Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohiostatusrept1505.pdf

RH Phillip's document on voting irregularities in OH and estimations of how many votes were affected:
http://www.freepress.org/images/departments/Vote_Count_Ohio.pdf

Election Fraud and Irregularities
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachineErrors.htm

Was Nixon Robbed?

The legend of the stolen 1960 presidential election

By David Greenberg
Posted Monday, Oct. 16, 2000
Slate

"You gotta swallow this one," says a Republican hack in Oliver Stone's Nixon, referring to the 1960 election, in which John F. Kennedy prevailed. "They stole it fair and square."

That Richard Nixon was cheated out of the presidency in 1960 has become almost an accepted fact. You've probably heard the allegations: Kennedy's operatives fixed the tallies in Texas and Illinois, giving him those states' 51 electoral votes and a majority in the Electoral College. Fearing that to question the results would harm the country, Nixon checked his pride and declined to mount a challenge.

The story is rich in irony: The much-hated Nixon, later driven from the presidency for cheating in an election, puts country before personal gain. The beloved Kennedy, waltzing through life, pulls off the political crime of the century. Nixon's defenders like the story because it diminishes Watergate. His detractors like it since it allows them to appear less than knee-jerk—magnanimously crediting Nixon with noble behavior while eluding charges of Kennedy worship.

Ironic, yes. But true?

The race was indeed close—the closest of the century. Kennedy received only 113,000 votes more than Nixon out of the 68 million ballots cast. His 303-219 electoral-vote margin obscured the fact that many states besides Texas and Illinois could have gone either way. California's 32 electoral votes, for example, originally fell into Kennedy's column, but Nixon claimed them on Nov. 17 after absentee ballots were added.

Even before Election Day, rumors circulated about fraud, especially in Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley's machine was known for delivering whopping Democratic tallies by fair means and foul. When it became clear how narrowly Nixon lost, outraged Republicans grew convinced that cheating had tipped the election and lobbied for an investigation.

Nixon always insisted that others, including President Eisenhower, encouraged him to dispute the outcome but that he refused. A challenge, he told others, would cause a "constitutional crisis," hurt America in the eyes of the world, and "tear the country apart." Besides, he added, pursuing the claims would mean "charges of 'sore loser' would follow me through history and remove any possibility of a further political career."

Classic Nixon: "Others" urge him to follow a less admirable course, but he spurns their advice for the high road. (William Safire once noted that he always used to tell Nixon to take the easy path so that Nixon could say in his speeches, "Others will say we should take the easy course, but …") Apart from the suspect neatness of this account, however, there are reasons to doubt its veracity.

First, Eisenhower quickly withdrew his support for a challenge, making it hard for Nixon to go forward. According to Nixon's friend Ralph De Toledano, a conservative journalist, Nixon knew Ike's position yet claimed anyway that he, not the president, was the one advocating restraint. "This was the first time I ever caught Nixon in a lie," Toledano recalled.

More to the point, while Nixon publicly pooh-poohed a challenge, his allies did dispute the results—aggressively. The New York Herald Tribune's Earl Mazo, a friend and biographer of Nixon's, recounted a dozen-odd fishy incidents alleged by Republicans in Illinois and Texas. Largely due to Mazo's reporting, the charges gained wide acceptance.

But it wasn't just Mazo who made a stink. The press went into a brief frenzy in the weeks after the election. Most important, the Republican Party made a veritable crusade of undoing the results. Even if they ultimately failed, party leaders figured, they could taint Kennedy's victory, claim he had no mandate for his agenda, galvanize the rank and file, and have a winning issue for upcoming elections.

Three days after the election, party Chairman Sen. Thruston Morton launched bids for recounts and investigations in 11 states—an action that Democratic Sen. Henry Jackson attacked as a "fishing expedition." Eight days later, close Nixon aides, including Bob Finch and Len Hall, sent agents to conduct "field checks" in eight of those states. Peter Flanigan, another aide, encouraged the creation of a Nixon Recount Committee in Chicago. All the while, everyone claimed that Nixon knew nothing of these efforts—an implausible assertion that could only have been designed to help Nixon dodge the dreaded "sore loser" label.

The Republicans pressed their case doggedly. They succeeded in obtaining recounts, empanelling grand juries, and involving U.S. attorneys and the FBI. Appeals were heard, claims evaluated, evidence weighed. The New York Times considered the charges in a Nov. 26 editorial. (Its bold verdict: "It is now imperative that the results in each state be definitively settled by the time the electoral college meets.")

The results of it all were meager.

New Jersey was typical. The GOP obtained court orders for recounts in five counties, but by Dec. 1 the state Republican committee conceded that the recounts had failed to uncover any significant discrepancies, and they halted the process. Kennedy was certified the state's official winner by 22,091 votes. Other states' recount bids and investigations similarly petered out.

Texas and Illinois, the two largest states under dispute, witnessed the nastiest fights. In Texas, where Kennedy won the 24 electoral votes by a margin of 46,000 ballots, the GOP took to the courts. But its suits were thrown out by a federal judge who claimed he had no jurisdiction. In Illinois, the appeal was pursued more vigorously, maybe because the electoral take was higher (27) and Kennedy's margin slimmer (9,000 votes). Charges focused on Cook County (specifically Chicago) where Kennedy had won by a suspiciously overwhelming 450,000 votes.

National GOP officials plunged in. Thruston Morton flew to Chicago to confer with Illinois Republican leaders on strategy, while party Treasurer Meade Alcorn announced Nixon would win the state. With Nixon distancing himself from the effort, the Cook County state's attorney, Benjamin Adamowski, stepped forward to lead the challenge. A Daley antagonist and potential rival for the mayoralty, Adamowski had lost his job to a Democrat by 25,000 votes. The closeness of his defeat entitled him to a recount, which began Nov. 29.

Completed Dec. 9, the recount of 863 precincts showed that the original tally had undercounted Nixon's (and Adamowski's) votes, but only by 943, far from the 4,500 needed to alter the results. In fact, in 40 percent of the rechecked precincts, Nixon's vote was overcounted. Displeased, the Republicans took the case to federal court, only to have a judge dismiss the suits. Still undeterred, they turned to the State Board of Elections, which was composed of four Republicans, including the governor, and one Democrat. Yet the state board, too, unanimously rejected the petition, citing the GOP's failure to provide even a single affidavit on its behalf. The national party finally backed off after Dec. 19, when the nation's Electoral College certified Kennedy as the new president—but even then local Republicans wouldn't accept the Illinois results.

A recount did wind up changing the winner in one state: Hawaii. On Dec. 28, a circuit court judge ruled that the state—originally called Kennedy's but awarded to Nixon after auditing errors emerged—belonged to Kennedy after all. Nixon's net gain: -3 electoral votes.

The GOP's failure to prove fraud doesn't mean, of course, that the election was clean. That question remains unsolved and unsolvable. But what's typically left out of the legend is that multiple election boards saw no reason to overturn the results. Neither did state or federal judges. Neither did an Illinois special prosecutor in 1961. And neither have academic inquiries into the Illinois case (both a 1961 study by three University of Chicago professors and more recent research by political scientist Edmund Kallina concluded that whatever fraud existed wasn't substantial enough to alter the election).

On the other hand, some fraud clearly occurred in Cook County. At least three people were sent to jail for election-related crimes, and 677 others were indicted before being acquitted by Judge John M. Karns, a Daley crony. Many of the allegations involved practices that wouldn't be detected by a recount, leading the conservative Chicago Tribune, among others, to conclude that "once an election has been stolen in Cook County, it stays stolen." What's more, according to journalist Seymour Hersh, a former Justice Department prosecutor who heard tapes of FBI wiretaps from the period believed that Illinois was rightfully Nixon's. Hersh also has written that J. Edgar Hoover believed Nixon actually won the presidency but in deciding to follow normal procedures and refer the FBI's findings to the attorney general—as of Jan. 20, 1961, Robert F. Kennedy—he effectively buried the case.

Another man, too, believed Nixon was robbed: Nixon. At a 1960 Christmas party, he was heard greeting guests, "We won but they stole it from us." Nixon nursed the grudge for years, and when he was criticized for his Watergate crimes he would cite the Kennedys' misdeeds as precedent. He may have felt JFK's supposed theft entitled him to cheat in 1972. It's an interesting hypothetical: If no pall had been cast over the 1960 election, would Watergate have happened?

http://slate.msn.com/id/91350/

I got a reply from Ms. Lipinski with an attachment. When I opened the email it said the attachment had a virus and would not be opened and to contact the sender to resend it. I had BCC'd her on my letter to Wycliff.

Good job.

Boiling it all down to long lines in Ohio is a ridiculous attempt to get to the heart of a far more complex matter, but I'll ignore the rest because if you haven't taken the time to look into the mathematical impossibilities (and not just exit polls -- vote counts and turnouts) at this point, you're not going to. But I will take on your conclusion. Yes, Democrats decide where to distribute the machines, but they were SHORTED them. More than 80. In fact there were more machines in the primary, with one party voting, than on election day with two parties voting in minority neighborhoods and college campuses. This is all well-documented and a matter of public record. The very argument you made here was offered and debunked on or around November 3rd.

For Pete's sake, get your facts straight.

This is exactly why the public now views your profession on equal ethical footing with used car salesmen. I don't happen to think you're "in the pockets" of any one party, but I think today's journalists are sloppy and, all to often, lazy. Your column, and your admitted call to a single source (who also doesn't seem to know much) is a prime example.

:yourock:

From : Carol Sterritt <cjsterritt2@yahoo.com>
Sent : Thursday, April 28, 2005 2:59 PM
To : wiley54@hotmail.com
Subject : Could you post this to Democratic Underground for me?

Hi Wiley

Thanks for the important heads up on this issue.

I wrote the following and will be faxing it off to the Tribune today.

Could you kindly post it to the Democratic Underground. For some reason, they will not let me come aboard there (something to do with their not liking my yahoo address....)

Also I understand if you can't do this due to your life being busy or whatever.

Thanks,
Carol

Re: Wycliffe and his attack on Bob Koehler
From Carol Sterritt, Staff Reporter for The Coastal Post
WARNING - This article is politically incorrect -
it uses the Word "Theft" rather than "Fraud." Tribune editors are advised to seek parental guidance

This morning I sit here at my computer, and I am REALLY REALLY angry. The last time that I was this mad, I was sitting inside the chambers of the California legislature, listening to lobbyists for the MTBE industry tell the audience that MTBE was so safe that their children brushed their teeth with it each night.

Because of Sen Mountjoy (CA-Rep), and because of tens of thousands of Californians who were willing to be labelled "conspiracy nuts" we finally got Gov Davis to take action so that MTBE would be banned.

Now as a nation, those of us in the know face the same uphill battle. This time it is not the health of ourselves and our children, this time it is the health of our democracy. The entire idea that in this age of corporate domination it is suitable for the American people to have corporate-controlled electronic voting machinery in place to count our votes is a dangerous, scary and absolutely insane idea.

When I first heard that Bob Koehler was going to have his article published in the Chicago Tribune, I was aware that the Newspaper Association of America would be meeting the following weekend. News from that convention was rather dismal for the newspaper industry as a whole. The Internet Rocks! It is taking away those who normally would be sitting inside a newsroom writing copy, and it is taking away the readers as well.

When readers go away so do subscription and ad revenues. We have seen before what a new media does. Radio rocked the print world back in the thirties - and now the Internet is kicking butt over the print, radio and television medium. Traditional media whimpers the same song that was once sung against radio - not legitimate, not real news, not properly vetted, etc.

But we the readers beg to disagree. And when the Tribune launched Koehler's article, I assumed that maybe the Tribune was starting to realize that if it granted the same freedom and independence were on its pages, maybe the Trib would have a shot at gaining back some readers and just as importantly, some credibility.

For one thing, the story of the stolen election is of more momentous import than almost any other story I can think of. And a conspiracy theory becosmes valid when there is so much observable material to serve as proof of the pudding. It is not the proverbial pony lurking hidden in the room of debris - it is the Loch Ness monster. There are so many facts and so many figures, so many stories, that to simply shut the door on the discussion can only reveal a person as being either of a moronic intelligence base, lacking any imagination, or of being bought out by a higher bidder. (There is little money and quite a bit of expense in dealing with this tale.) If you do feel that mere stories are not enough, consider the affidavits filed by thousands of voters across the country.

At least three percent of those who were registered to vote on November 2nd 2004 inside the state of Ohio were denied the ability to do so. This three percent is in addition to those whose vote was flipped from the Kerry column to the Bush column. Enough inconsistencies existed that many people shut down their own lives in order to stand with Bob Fitrakis, Susan Truit, Andy Stephenson, and thirty-four others and fight the good fight.

Number One: they attempted to record all of the illegalities, inconsistencies, and outright illegalities that occurred that day. Among these items was the salient fact that even the Ohio recount was tainted by a computer expert who came into one county and inserted programming code into the software.

Number Two: They brought about Court Actions to accent the problems of fraud. For this purpose, they were thwarted by the interwoven connections of high ranking judges who represented the Republican party and who ruled on the issue despite an
obvious conflict of interest.

Then we have the situation in Warren County, Ohio. This county's vote on election day was brought to its knees by a "lock-down" that supposedly came from Homeland Security and the FBI. The action was due to alleged "terrorist" threats even though later on it was revealed that neither the FBI or Homeland Security had issued orders regarding this, or had any knowledge of these activities.

According to Richard Phillips, who investigated the Ohio vote count, "Not all the trends were looking good for George W. Bush on Election Day, according to the unofficial numbers. Of the 142 precincts in Warren County that existed in 2000, Bush was winning a lower percentage of the vote in 37 precincts than he had four years ago, and percentage of voter turnout was lower in 20 precincts than it had been four years ago. How, then, could Bush have increased his margin of victory by 12,816 votes? The only possible answer would be a tremendous increase in voter registration during the past four years."

After Phillips carefully examines each and every factor and figure involved, he concludes that only through vote rigging was the victory possible for George W Bush.

Across the nation, at least 400,000 people reported the difficulties that they had experienced on election day. Among those complaints, a full 50,000 instances were outright malfunctions of voting machines. And in each of these 50,000 instances
the vote went to Bush. If election day machine malfunctions were random, then logic dictates at least sometimes Kerry would have to receive the benefit of the machine failure.

Right now one of the problems those who refuse to examine the question of the election day theft need to consider is this: some polls TODAY show that Bush has a 43% satisfaction rating. His inauguration was only three months ago - already we hate him? Do you really believe that people voted for this man in overwhelming proportions? Only to reject him 90 days later? What's going on here?

Anyway, my hat remains off to Bob Koehler. I don't mean my tin foil hat, Bob. Just as I watched the "big media" reject my stories on MTBE some eight years ago (and in my naivete, I never realized that they were rejected because of Big Oil's influence but that is a story for another day,) so i watch mainstream media go limp when it comes to opposing hte popwers that be and taking a stand on the voting machinery.

Eventually the truth will out. And the other thing I learned is that once the truth outs, even those who initally opposed the truth will brag about their early efforts. "Why I wanted to nominate that Koehler boy for the Pulitizer!" someone in Trib headquarters will be saying two or three years from now. "Imagine where this great nation of ours would be if that guy hadn't stood so steadily by the truth." And they will say it enough that many will believe that there was hardly ever a struggle.

I remain convinced that this day will come.

When the shit hits the fan I bet the "I was there from the beginning" claims multiply exponentially.

and puts things in such a broad context that the more people who read it, the better.

Thanks!

I'll post it in a few.

Wiley

other sites as well.

It really puts things into a bigger context, which includes our eventual
success.

:thumbsup:

Dear Mr. Wycliff,

I read your editorial with interest and a fair amount of dismay. Your perspective on election irregularities is symptomatic of a disease pandemic in the United States today. Too many American citizens are perfectly willing to accept imperfection for fear an examination of the truth would result in hard work or shake their false sense of security. To credit someone as morally superior for dismissing indications our democracy may have been subverted is astounding. Extending that moral credit to Richard Nixon is patently absurd, especially since your portrayal of the foregone challenge to the 1960 election is short a few pertinent facts.

As an employee of a news agency, you owe your readers access to facts rather than innuendo and insults. As a co-worker, you owe Bob Koehler an apology. Neither he, nor the countless individuals and organizations around the nation working hard to improve our election system, deserve your disdain. You are absolutely correct that winning is not everything, but in a democratic republic, voter confidence is. Given the verifiable instances of computer malfunction and voter suppression, statistical anomalies upheld by respected mathematicians and the absence of a verifiable paper trail in many areas, voter confidence is eroding quickly.

Perhaps you should reexamine your journalistic inclinations and join the search for the truth rather than making assumptions. I welcome you to the effort to rectify a problem rather than sweep it under the rug.

Regards,
---

...
Dear Mr. Wycliff,

Instead of your asking Tribune national correspondent Tim Jones his opinion, I would heartily suggest that you do a minimal amount of research on the issues of the November 2004 (s)election and the question will not be Nixon's morality, but BushCo's immorality.

These are the things known about prior to the 2004 election (really):

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything." - Joseph Stalin

"I think it is safe to say at this point that the election of 2002 lacks any credibility at this point. Too many "mistakes", too many malfunctions, too many missing documents, too many dirty tricks, all combine to destroy the illusion that the results to be announced have any basis other than in wishful thinking by those in control of the vote counting process. Certainly the sudden abandonment of the VNS exit polls suggests that the actual polling results are so far out of alignment with the desired results that the media predictions had to be shut down."

Votescam. This is as good a place as any to start and this is what initially sparked my interest to really dig into this story and find out more. Go to the link marked "Chapters" and read all about it.
http://www.votescam.com/frame.html

American Coup: Mid-Term Election Polls vs Actuals

Scoop's analysis shows that - according to the polls - the Republican Party experienced a pronounced last minute swing in its favour of between 4 and 16 points. Remarkably this last minute swing appears to have been concentrated in its effects in critical Senate races (Georgia and Minnesota) where it secured it's complete control of Congress.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00078.htm

How to Rig a Touch Screen Voting Machine I have been in the computer programming business for over 30 years. I have written code that runs in devices like the Touch Screen voting machines. When I decided to write this piece, I wanted to describe what it would take to rig a Touch Screen and get away with it and make it very, very, very hard to detect.
http://www.allhatnocattle.net/november92002.htm

Can we trust the vote count anywhere? In any race? In any election?

It involves going back to a simpler era. It is just this. Hand counting all ballots at the precinct level by the election workers under the watchful eyes of the community, and the posting of the results at each precinct station, plus the saving of the individual ballots so that they may be reviewed or re-counted at any time.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Penn111402/penn111402.html

Diebold - The Face Of Modern Ballot Tampering

The lack of any exit polling on November 5 has been oddly ignored by the media. Those pesky tracking polls leading up to the elections have been explained away by a `late surge to the Republicans' caused by.... hmmmm, how about sun spot activity? With no exit polls, there was no other feedback to conflict with the "official" results, this allowed the Diebold touch screen machines to change the way election fraud is carried out.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00081.htm

Voting Machines - A High Tech Ambush

Personally, I'll never vote on a machine again if I can help it. For the next election, I'll vote "absentee" (i.e., through the mail). In fact, Oregon has wisely rejected voting machines altogether and handles its entire election through the mail. The state of Washington offers that option, and Colorado is considering mandatory mail-in voting. Maybe those states see an ambush when they see one.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Landes_Ambush.htm

Vote of No Confidence Everything you need to know about stealing elections
http://www.conspire.com/vote-fraud.html

For all its apparent benefits, touch-screen voting is not a panacea, according to several nationally recognized computer experts. There are no documented cases of electronic vote-rigging occurring anywhere in the country, but only because it's nearly impossible to prove.
http://www.kioskcom.com/article_detail.php?ident=1021

The elephant in the room is vote theft on a massive scale
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Editor_sDesk/editor_sdesk.html

It is now effectively illegal for citizens in 49 states to count their own votes on election day.
http://www.votefraud.org/Intro/index.html

The Greatest Cover-Up Of All: Vote Fraud In America
http://www.votefraud.org/Archive/Write/greatest.htm

CalTech and M.I.T. Computer Experts -- Hacking the Machines
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm4.showMessage?topicID=24.topic

Why One Tech Maven Fears Computer Voting
http://www.notablesoftware.com/Press/WSJ.html

Rebecca Mercuri loves computers. But when it comes to counting votes in an election, she favors plain old paper. Computers, she says, just can't be trusted with our democracy.
http://interactive.wsj.com/public/current/articles/SB985032601926471110.htm

Voting Machine Technology - It's Not Secure. Have elections in America been rigged to slowly, but surely shift power to the right? In the secretive world of voting machines, anything is possible.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm\

Right-wing, radical political activists financed USA's largest voting machine company.
http://www.talion.com/election-systems-software.html

Who are Diebold? The corporate officers are as thick as thieves with the Republican hard right religious nut division.
http://www.diebold.com/

When it comes to elections in America...assume crooks are in control...and then act accordingly.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

Thirty-one city newspapers have documented voting errors that only add to the ballot-stuffing, dead-people-voting, hide-the-ballots-in-your-trunk, absentee-faking problems of the past.
http://www.talion.com/election-mistakes.html#reports

Computer Vote Counts are Unverifiable
http://www.votefraud.org/Archive/Write/unverifiable.htm

TESTIMONY OF A COMPUTER EXPERT: The Judge stated in his ruling that "There is no adequate and proper safeguard to prevent the computers from being programmed to distort the election results."
http://www.votefraud.org/Archive/Write/expert.htm

Why we need to know who owns voting machine companies
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html#Nebraska

Diebold Magic?
http://www.bartcop.com/111102fraud.htm

Republican Controlled Voting Machines Hand Suprise Victories to...

Guess which party?
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000051.htm

Voter News Service sitting on Election Day data
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nc/story/1902810p-1886603c.html

"Congress could force these companies to submit current source code as a pre-condition, if they wanted to. Congress could keep it secret, so the copyright and trade secret laws would not be infringed. The Senators or whatever would have to sign non-disclosure agreements... there's no valid reason this code is not checked for accurary. Which leaves only invalid reasons for not checking the code - and that would be that they do have ways to monkey with the votes."

The Real Scandal Is the Voting Machines Themselves Computerized vote-counting is a terrible system. This is only news to those who haven't been paying attention.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/121400-108.htm

Rage Against the Machine Machines don't have political beliefs. But computer programmers do.
http://www.tnr.com/120400/dugger120400.html

Voting Machine Companies owned by conservative Republican businessmen, bankers, religious nuts
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachineCompanies.htm

Repository for Voter Complaints
http://www.votewatch.us/

Republicans dominate the voting machine business:
Republican Voting Machines, Election Irregularities, and "Way-Off" Polling Results
http://www.ecotalk.org/MidtermElections2002.htm

Voting Machines - High Tech Ambush
http://www.ecotalk.org/Vote-By-Mail.htm

Elections In America - Assume Crooks Are In Control
http://www.ecotalk.org/AmericanElections.htm

The Nightmare Scenario Is Here - Computer Voting With No Paper Trail
http://www.ecotalk.org/Dr.RebeccaMercuriComputerVoting.htm

"The code behind exit poll tabulation is astoundingly simple to write. And the more simple it is, the less error prone. Why, with two years and millions (billions?) of dollars could they not get it right? When I took Oracle 8i, we were taught DB querying on the first day, and produced percentage based results the first week. This story is hole-ier than a hula-hoop."

Florida 2002: Sluggish Systems, Vanishing Votes
http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/insiderisks.html#149

Alert: Ghost Precincts, Vigilance Needed
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm4.showMessage?topicID=25.topic

Broward vote total off in reporting glitch The missing 104,000 votes raised questions about the county's $17.2 million electronic voting system http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/4460196.htm

Fraud and manipulation endemic......
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20021106&Category=APN&ArtNo=21106060 5&Ref=R

Arkansas Republicans went to court to keep votes uncounted
http://www.kark.com/karktv/news/story_tmp.asp?cmd=view&Storyid=4948

A statewide recount in Alabama's gubernatorial election demanded by Democratic Governor Siegelman gave victory to his Republican challenger:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/11/07/politics1919EST0782.DTL

Problems in Texas with touchscreen voting machinery http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID=51022&SecID=2

Kansas provisional ballots caused problems
http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/1771656/detail.html

South Carolina's voting equipment creats difficulties
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/4459621.htm

"The likely truth is that the "invalid numbers" were showing the opposite of the intended result. Better to just throw the whole notion of "asking voters who they voted for" out the window with a cheesy and unbelievable excuse, and rely on known methods such as stolen ballot boxes and outright fraudulent punch machines and the like. THOSE methods have been working for millenia, and that is why the VNS fell back on them, as opposed to
exposing the FACT the fraud starts and ends at the tippity-top. '

Nebraska's election fiasco
http://www.theindependent.com/stories/110602/new_electionglitches06.shtml

New Jersey's tally delayed by computer problems
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-nj--votingglitches1106nov06,0,808514.story?coll=ny-ap-r egionalwire

MASSIVE POLLING FRAUD IN FLORIDA
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000043.htm

Michigan ballot shortages and polling problems
http://www.tv7-4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1002309&nav=1vrjCEZ7

San Francisco ballot shortages
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1002487&nav=5D7lCElH

Proprietary software makes inspection of electronic voting systems impossible
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110602_elections.html

Republican Manufactured Voting Machines Ivolved in Election Fraud
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000048.htm

ON SCRAPPING THE EXIT POLLS

"I'm astounded that no one finds this to be of any interest. If you're going to fix an election one thing you need to worry about is an outside party monitoring that election and using well-established and accepted methods of predicting its outcome. Suppose the consortium had McBride beating Bush by 5% and yet Bush was declared the winner. Two possibilities: either the exit polling methodology was flawed or the election was stolen. Are we to believe that a consortium of the nation's most prominent news organizations is so incompetent as to have this happen to them?" www.whatreallyhappened.com

Massive voter fraud was being planned for months. The fix was in. Be warned. This exclusive interview with Greg Palast will boil your blood.
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/2002/11/04_Palast.html

FLORIDA VOTE FRAUD: High-tech voting system working fine "Go back to sleep, citizen. Nothing to see here!"
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/830822.asp

"I'll tell you right now, this election is fixed!"
http://www.drudgereport.com/vote1.htm

"Flyers were being left on cars in black neighborhoods warning that voters with outstanding tickets or warrants might be arrested when they show their ID to vote. Early voters were met by poll watchers from the Republican Party of Arkansas who demanded identification and challenged voter ballots."
http://www.pbcommercial.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2002/October/22-2390-NEWS1.TXT

Background Stories about ES&S Voting Machines
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm4.showMessage?topicID=12.topic

Chip Glitch hands victory to wrong party. Guess which party?
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000050.htm

Great Bartcop article on Voting Machine Fraud, Execs GOP contributions
http://www.bartcop.com/110702otter.htm

Fraudulent automated phone messages in Florida Bush said he was unaware of the phone call effort - even though the call says it was ``paid for by Jeb Bush for Governor Campaign'' http://election2002.tbo.com/election2002/MGARSR0D58D.html

Vote Fraud Texas style http://www.jshull.org/

There's only one reason the exit poll has been scrapped. How could they explain away a (potential) lead by the democrats and then suddenly have the GOP controlling congress. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20021105/ap_on_el_ge/eln _voter_news_service

Voting Problems In Orlando, South Florida "These folks are so crooked they have to screw their socks on in the morning"
http://news.tbo.com/news/MGACF5AHY5D.html

Voting Machines' Maker Blamed. How Florida bought easily-rigged ES&S Voting Machines
http://www.tampatrib.com/MGASSAS976D.html

Manufacturers Admit Voting Machines Unreliable How ES&S machines have modems, allowing hacking to access & alter vote tallies
http://www.rumormillnews.net/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=5172

The Nightmare Scenario Good explanation by Dr. Rebecca Mercuri on paperless computer voting & fraud http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0805-07.htm

Voting into the void Touch-screen voting machines may look spiffy, experts say they can't be trusted.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/05/voting_machines/

How VNS helped to rig Nov. 5 Election for GOP
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm61.showMessage?topicID=2.topic

Why did VNS bow out the morning of the election? Did somebody get a horse's head in their bed? http://www.bartcop.com/vns2002.htm

Voter News Service Meltdown - Washington Post article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10472-2002Nov5.html

"Voter News Service (VNS) is a top-secret private consortium owned by ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News. It's current headquarters is in Brooklyn, New York. It's been around (under different names) since 1964. It's the only company whose exit poll results are used by the news media to announce the
"projected" winners in races for the president, U.S. House and Senate, state governors, and select races. With the use of computerized vote counters and the news networks exclusive control over polling data in major elections, the gates to election fraud were wide open. Computerized voting machines have now made election fraud as easy as stealing candy from a baby... If VNS is helping to rig elections, why are they doing it? Generally speaking... I believe that the same people who can't rake in enough money, also can't get enough power. The news networks are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the richest corporations and individuals in the world. They certainly have an agenda. Their arrogance and disregard for the little guy is clear. They may think that we're not smart enough to pick the 'right' kind of leaders... right for them, that is. So they might try to do it for us. Voter News Service warrants an investigation. Its operations should be shut down regardless. It's in a perfect position to sabotage the election process. Let the counties count the vote and report it to the states. If it takes a day or two for the states to report the results... so be it. Democracy takes time."

Why did VNS bow out the morning of the election?

VNS got into a lot of trouble for correctly calling Florida for Gore after exit polls showed him winning by a comfortable margin. After that 'debacle' they were forced to completely re-design their computer hardware and software. They were my client, and ran on a large IBM mainframe with legacy software. They were forced to get off the mainframe and on to a completely different hardware and software platform. Everything had to be built from scratch. Supposedly, they didn't have time to fully test the new environment thoroughly far enough ahead of this election cycle. Therefore, they chose to use this election to test the new environment, but not publicly release the results.

Why does VNS think their "Gore wins" Florida 2000 projection was wrong? Bush guaranteed he would win Florida, even after VNS said he lost it. Why is nobody else suspicious?
http://www.bartcop.com/111102bonus.htm

More Magic: winning vote totals uncanny. County Judge Danny Scheel received 18,181 votes. Republican Carter Casteel got exactly 18,181votes. Republican state Sen. Jeff Wentworth also got 18,181 votes. http://www.mysanantonio.com/specials/elections/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=860675

VNS - CIA link? VNS, the guys who are deep sixing their exit poll data, used an outside company to develop their computer programs. It turns out that the company is..... Battelle Memorial Institute, an Ohio-based technology company that also works as a defense contractor to help build the new VNS system. A Battelle spokeswoman declined comment on Tuesday's performance. " From:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021106/ap_wo_en_po/us_election_vns_6

Battelle was also under investigation during the search for the anthrax killer.
http://www.columbusalive.com/2002/20020530/053002/05300203.html

Rothschilds are part owners of voting machines. They were also behind the whole Enron debacle. Now they will be in charge of the software that runs the voting machines. The other owners have simular NWO backgrounds as well. http://www.rense.com/general31/roth.htm

"Your vote certainly counts. On the other hand, your vote may not be counted"

Florida Touch Screen Voting System DEMONSTRATION http://www.jeb02.com/touchscreenvotingdemo.html

Origins of American Vote Fraud

Ever since Mayor Daley of Chicago "found" tens of thousands of dead people to "vote" for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election, many Americans have suspected the Democratic party's urban political machines to be awash in voter fraud. As notorious as the Democrat political machines are, the origins of vote fraud in America lie in the Party of Lincoln. The massive vote fraud that took place during the War between the States and for the ensuing twelve years of "Reconstruction" provides an abject lesson in tyranny that has ominous implications.
http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?record=554&month=26

Computerized Fraud

First of all, whether a citizen can prove vote fraud is not the question. The question is whether the Board of Elections officials can prove that they are running a verifiable election. After all, these administrators are supposed to be servants of the people but most of them act as elections are their rightful monopoly. In fact, any attempt by any American citizen to monitor elections will most likely land the person in jail.
http://www.hoffman-info.com/votefraud.html

A 'modern' democracy that can't count votes

LA Times: December 11, 2000. Special Report: What happened in Florida is the rule and not the exception. A coast-to-coast study by The Times finds a shoddy system that can only be trusted when the election isn't close. http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/11/latimes.votecount/

An electorate's worst technology nightmare came true

but what's amazing is that it didn't happen sooner. How we set ourselves up for the mayhem of the 2000 presidential election. http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.21.00/cover/election-0051.html

Miami Herald's 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning series on vote fraud

Detailing the pervasive voter fraud that subsequently overturned the mayoral election http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1999/investigative-reporting/works/

VOTE FRAUD AND THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE UNITED STATES

Since 1964, right after John F. Kennedy was assasinated, vote tabulation for national elections has been handled not by the government, but by a private company lacking any official oversight at all. This company, which changes its name on a regular basis, is currently called "Voters News Service" and is located in New York City. This company is owned by a consortium of TV networks and wire services, which are in turn controlled by the CIA through its Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The TV networks will make a great show of being "first with the election results", but in reality all of them rely on the numbers sent to them by VNS, while seldom aknowledging its existance during the election coverage. http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE3/

Opening a Can of Electronic Chad

It is astonishing that, after the Election 2000 debacle of November 7th, the Hillsborough County Election Supervisor, Pam Iorio, is seeking to replace the old punch card voting machines with touch screen devices that have no paper trail. http://www.legitgov.org/electronic_chad.html

The U.S. Voters Have Been Hoodwinked

"These machines are going to be a godsend for us," said Robert Lee, head of voter registration and a member of the committee that proposed their purchase. Lee called the machines "probably the most safe and accurate devices on the market." But some outside computer experts, whose concerns are discounted by city officials, say Philadelphia may be making a mistake. http://www.notablesoftware.com/Press/Gelles.html

July 2001 Report of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project

"Voting - What Is, What Could Be" (Mostly PDF documents) http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/index.html

ACCURACY, INTEGRITY, AND SECURITY IN COMPUTERIZED VOTE-TALLYING

Recommendations to promote accuracy, integrity, and security in computerized vote-tallying, and to respond to identified problems in software, hardware, operational procedures, and institutional changes. http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/specpubs/500-158.htm

Vote Fraud in Tennessee: Worse than Florida?

Black voters were told to get behind the white voters. They were told to remove NAACP stickers from their cars, or leave the polling place without voting. It all sounds like a promo for "Mississippi Burning," or maybe a documentary about egregious civil rights violations in some Deep South backwater fifty years ago. But it happened in November 2000. http://www.counterpunch.org/tnfraud.html

VOTE FRAUD USA?

The Tennessee Voter Empowerment Team met to discuss information they have received. http://www.nashvilleinsanity.com/evidenceinTN.html

Mail-voting fraud is not only possible, it's happening.

NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports that absentee ballot fraud is tipping elections in Dallas. One city council election was invalidated and two big civic projects squeaked through, thanks to a longstanding practice in the city's minority neighborhoods. Brokers know when absentee ballots are delivered and scoop them out of mailboxes at houses and nursing homes. Prosecutors and legislators says it's fraud that must be stopped. http://www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz/vote_fraud.htm

Preventing Vote Fraud

Vote fraud is a cancer that can destroy a free country and leave little or no trace of its spread. If we were counting money, would it be done with secret count? Never; all who touch money must sign for it. There are checks and cross checks, an audit is done and an outside auditor is called in as a check against inside corruption. Do you think for a moment that all this expensive auditing is done to find honest mistakes? No, it is done to detect and catch white collar thieves and embezzlers! Undetected, they can easily drive a company bankrupt, so it is imperative to catch this type of thief. Even so, almost daily an embezzler is uncovered; how many escape detection? http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/cc32frad.html

Vote fraud is as American as apple pie

The good voters of Ivory Coast rose up to throw out a former president who rigged his reelection. So did the voters of Serbia. Is America going the other way? http://www.quivis.com/fraud.html

"Outside experts don't need to examine Palm Beach County's new touch-screen voting machines"

says Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore. "I don't like this machine," Naulty said. "I think it should be dumped. It doesn't meet my needs and it violates my rights." http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/1583/emailtg1/msg00058.html

Voting into the void

New touch-screen voting machines may look spiffy, but some experts say they can't be trusted. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/05/voting_machines/

How Florida's Voting Machine Failed (Again)

The first fiasco in the Florida vote was over paper. The second was electronic. How hard is it to get votes right? Hanging chads are nothing compared to how untested technology can ruin an election day. http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,3959,612657,00.asp

Voting Machines And The Bamboozling Of America

The fundamental problems presented by the growing use of insecure voting machines have been ignored by the U.S. mainstream media, which minimized the widespread failures of defective voting equipment during the recent election as having been caused by "glitches" and "gremlins." http://www.rense.com/general31/machines.htm

Voter Fraud: Miami Pulp Story

The great Miami mayoral election voter fraud of 1997 not only buoyed Democratic attorney Kendall Coffey's fortunes, but netted the Miami Herald a Pulitzer Prize for a seven-part investigative series that reads like a pulp version of the casually corrupt South Florida in a Carl Hiassen or an Elmore Leonard novel. http://www.thegully.com/essays/america/001113miami_vote_fraud.html

More on voting machines that can't do math

In 1988, Roy Saltman authored the document "Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying" at the National Bureau of Standards. He painstakingly described the numerous flaws existing in punch-card systems, many of which were only revealed to the general public for the first time during the recent election crisis. Most people were shocked to hear these facts, including many members of the press, that "all votes do not count," was now finally being admitted as fact by some of the election officials and vendors involved. Roy's book also addressed serious fundamental flaws with computer precinct voting and off-site balloting. http://www.bartcopnation.com/dcforum/DCForumID1/18044.html

A Vote for Less Tech at the Polls

In the national debate over upgrading election infrastructure, Peter Neumann is an unlikely defender of the low-tech approach. As principle scientist at Stanford Research Institute's Computer Science Laboratory Neumann has spent the last 20 years studying how intrusion detection systems, cryptography and advanced software engineering can improve the reliability and security of computer systems. But get him talking about how to run an election, and Neumann becomes an outspoken advocate of the paper ballot. He's also a sharp critic of computerized touch-screen voting machines. "Some of them have lovely human interfaces, but if there's no assurance your vote goes through, it's irrelevant,"
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56370,00.html

More links to vote fraud articles
http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup

Secret Group Manipulates Vote Machines
http://www.rense.com/general32/secert.htm

Can engineers save the electorate?
http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20021107S0057

"You can't vote them out - if you never voted them in!"

"...political leaders need not trouble themselves very much with reality provided that their performances consistently generate a sense of versimilitude." -- Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death)

EDIT to acknowledge the source: http://bartcopnation.com/

(this should keep you busy for a good part of the new year)

"The concept is clear, simple, and it works. Computerized voting gives the power of selection, without fear of discovery, to whomever controls the computer," - James & Kenneth Collier, authors of VoteScam (1992)

"There are no documented cases of electronic vote-rigging occurring anywhere in the country, but only because it's nearly impossible to prove."

"Hand counting is the gold standard against which we check machine counting efficiency."

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything." - Joseph Stalin

"I think it is safe to say at this point that the election of 2002 lacks any credibility at this point. Too many "mistakes", too many malfunctions, too many missing documents, too many dirty tricks, all combine to destroy the illusion that the results to be announced have any basis other than in wishful thinking by those in control of the vote counting process. Certainly the sudden abandonment of the VNS exit polls suggests that the actual polling results are so far out of alignment with the desired results that the media predictions had to be shut down."

Votescam. This is as good a place as any to start and this is what initially sparked my interest to really dig into this story and find out more. Go to the link marked "Chapters" and read all about it.
http://www.votescam.com/frame.html

American Coup: Mid-Term Election Polls vs Actuals

Scoop's analysis shows that - according to the polls - the Republican Party experienced a pronounced last minute swing in its favour of between 4 and 16 points. Remarkably this last minute swing appears to have been concentrated in its effects in critical Senate races (Georgia and Minnesota) where it secured it's complete control of Congress.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00078.htm

How to Rig a Touch Screen Voting Machine I have been in the computer programming business for over 30 years. I have written code that runs in devices like the Touch Screen voting machines. When I decided to write this piece, I wanted to describe what it would take to rig a Touch Screen and get away with it and make it very, very, very hard to detect.
http://www.allhatnocattle.net/november92002.htm

Can we trust the vote count anywhere? In any race? In any election?

It involves going back to a simpler era. It is just this. Hand counting all ballots at the precinct level by the election workers under the watchful eyes of the community, and the posting of the results at each precinct station, plus the saving of the individual ballots so that they may be reviewed or re-counted at any time.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Penn111402/penn111402.html

Diebold - The Face Of Modern Ballot Tampering

The lack of any exit polling on November 5 has been oddly ignored by the media. Those pesky tracking polls leading up to the elections have been explained away by a `late surge to the Republicans' caused by.... hmmmm, how about sun spot activity? With no exit polls, there was no other feedback to conflict with the "official" results, this allowed the Diebold touch screen machines to change the way election fraud is carried out.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00081.htm

Voting Machines - A High Tech Ambush

Personally, I'll never vote on a machine again if I can help it. For the next election, I'll vote "absentee" (i.e., through the mail). In fact, Oregon has wisely rejected voting machines altogether and handles its entire election through the mail. The state of Washington offers that option, and Colorado is considering mandatory mail-in voting. Maybe those states see an ambush when they see one.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Landes_Ambush.htm

Vote of No Confidence Everything you need to know about stealing elections
http://www.conspire.com/vote-fraud.html

For all its apparent benefits, touch-screen voting is not a panacea, according to several nationally recognized computer experts. There are no documented cases of electronic vote-rigging occurring anywhere in the country, but only because it's nearly impossible to prove.
http://www.kioskcom.com/article_detail.php?ident=1021

The elephant in the room is vote theft on a massive scale
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Editor_sDesk/editor_sdesk.html

It is now effectively illegal for citizens in 49 states to count their own votes on election day.
http://www.votefraud.org/Intro/index.html

The Greatest Cover-Up Of All: Vote Fraud In America
http://www.votefraud.org/Archive/Write/greatest.htm

CalTech and M.I.T. Computer Experts -- Hacking the Machines
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm4.showMessage?topicID=24.topic

Why One Tech Maven Fears Computer Voting
http://www.notablesoftware.com/Press/WSJ.html

Rebecca Mercuri loves computers. But when it comes to counting votes in an election, she favors plain old paper. Computers, she says, just can't be trusted with our democracy.
http://interactive.wsj.com/public/current/articles/SB985032601926471110.htm

Voting Machine Technology - It's Not Secure. Have elections in America been rigged to slowly, but surely shift power to the right? In the secretive world of voting machines, anything is possible.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm\

Right-wing, radical political activists financed USA's largest voting machine company.
http://www.talion.com/election-systems-software.html

Who are Diebold? The corporate officers are as thick as thieves with the Republican hard right religious nut division.
http://www.diebold.com/

When it comes to elections in America...assume crooks are in control...and then act accordingly.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

Thirty-one city newspapers have documented voting errors that only add to the ballot-stuffing, dead-people-voting, hide-the-ballots-in-your-trunk, absentee-faking problems of the past.
http://www.talion.com/election-mistakes.html#reports

Computer Vote Counts are Unverifiable
http://www.votefraud.org/Archive/Write/unverifiable.htm

TESTIMONY OF A COMPUTER EXPERT: The Judge stated in his ruling that "There is no adequate and proper safeguard to prevent the computers from being programmed to distort the election results."
http://www.votefraud.org/Archive/Write/expert.htm

Why we need to know who owns voting machine companies
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html#Nebraska

Diebold Magic?
http://www.bartcop.com/111102fraud.htm

Republican Controlled Voting Machines Hand Suprise Victories to...

Guess which party?
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000051.htm

Voter News Service sitting on Election Day data
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nc/story/1902810p-1886603c.html

"Congress could force these companies to submit current source code as a pre-condition, if they wanted to. Congress could keep it secret, so the copyright and trade secret laws would not be infringed. The Senators or whatever would have to sign non-disclosure agreements... there's no valid reason this code is not checked for accurary. Which leaves only invalid reasons for not checking the code - and that would be that they do have ways to monkey with the votes."

The Real Scandal Is the Voting Machines Themselves Computerized vote-counting is a terrible system. This is only news to those who haven't been paying attention.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/121400-108.htm

Rage Against the Machine Machines don't have political beliefs. But computer programmers do.
http://www.tnr.com/120400/dugger120400.html

Voting Machine Companies owned by conservative Republican businessmen, bankers, religious nuts
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachineCompanies.htm

Repository for Voter Complaints
http://www.votewatch.us/

Republicans dominate the voting machine business:
Republican Voting Machines, Election Irregularities, and "Way-Off" Polling Results
http://www.ecotalk.org/MidtermElections2002.htm

Voting Machines - High Tech Ambush
http://www.ecotalk.org/Vote-By-Mail.htm

Elections In America - Assume Crooks Are In Control
http://www.ecotalk.org/AmericanElections.htm

The Nightmare Scenario Is Here - Computer Voting With No Paper Trail
http://www.ecotalk.org/Dr.RebeccaMercuriComputerVoting.htm

"The code behind exit poll tabulation is astoundingly simple to write. And the more simple it is, the less error prone. Why, with two years and millions (billions?) of dollars could they not get it right? When I took Oracle 8i, we were taught DB querying on the first day, and produced percentage based results the first week. This story is hole-ier than a hula-hoop."

Florida 2002: Sluggish Systems, Vanishing Votes
http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/insiderisks.html#149

Alert: Ghost Precincts, Vigilance Needed
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm4.showMessage?topicID=25.topic

Broward vote total off in reporting glitch The missing 104,000 votes raised questions about the county's $17.2 million electronic voting system http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/4460196.htm

Fraud and manipulation endemic......
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20021106&Category=APN&ArtNo=21106060 5&Ref=R

Arkansas Republicans went to court to keep votes uncounted
http://www.kark.com/karktv/news/story_tmp.asp?cmd=view&Storyid=4948

A statewide recount in Alabama's gubernatorial election demanded by Democratic Governor Siegelman gave victory to his Republican challenger:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/11/07/politics1919EST0782.DTL

Problems in Texas with touchscreen voting machinery http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID=51022&SecID=2

Kansas provisional ballots caused problems
http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/1771656/detail.html

South Carolina's voting equipment creats difficulties
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/4459621.htm

"The likely truth is that the "invalid numbers" were showing the opposite of the intended result. Better to just throw the whole notion of "asking voters who they voted for" out the window with a cheesy and unbelievable excuse, and rely on known methods such as stolen ballot boxes and outright fraudulent punch machines and the like. THOSE methods have been working for millenia, and that is why the VNS fell back on them, as opposed to
exposing the FACT the fraud starts and ends at the tippity-top. '

Nebraska's election fiasco
http://www.theindependent.com/stories/110602/new_electionglitches06.shtml

New Jersey's tally delayed by computer problems
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-nj--votingglitches1106nov06,0,808514.story?coll=ny-ap-r egionalwire

MASSIVE POLLING FRAUD IN FLORIDA
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000043.htm

Michigan ballot shortages and polling problems
http://www.tv7-4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1002309&nav=1vrjCEZ7

San Francisco ballot shortages
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1002487&nav=5D7lCElH

Proprietary software makes inspection of electronic voting systems impossible
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110602_elections.html

Republican Manufactured Voting Machines Ivolved in Election Fraud
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000048.htm

ON SCRAPPING THE EXIT POLLS

"I'm astounded that no one finds this to be of any interest. If you're going to fix an election one thing you need to worry about is an outside party monitoring that election and using well-established and accepted methods of predicting its outcome. Suppose the consortium had McBride beating Bush by 5% and yet Bush was declared the winner. Two possibilities: either the exit polling methodology was flawed or the election was stolen. Are we to believe that a consortium of the nation's most prominent news organizations is so incompetent as to have this happen to them?" www.whatreallyhappened.com

Massive voter fraud was being planned for months. The fix was in. Be warned. This exclusive interview with Greg Palast will boil your blood.
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/2002/11/04_Palast.html

FLORIDA VOTE FRAUD: High-tech voting system working fine "Go back to sleep, citizen. Nothing to see here!"
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/830822.asp

"I'll tell you right now, this election is fixed!"
http://www.drudgereport.com/vote1.htm

"Flyers were being left on cars in black neighborhoods warning that voters with outstanding tickets or warrants might be arrested when they show their ID to vote. Early voters were met by poll watchers from the Republican Party of Arkansas who demanded identification and challenged voter ballots."
http://www.pbcommercial.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2002/October/22-2390-NEWS1.TXT

Background Stories about ES&S Voting Machines
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm4.showMessage?topicID=12.topic

Chip Glitch hands victory to wrong party. Guess which party?
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000050.htm

Great Bartcop article on Voting Machine Fraud, Execs GOP contributions
http://www.bartcop.com/110702otter.htm

Fraudulent automated phone messages in Florida Bush said he was unaware of the phone call effort - even though the call says it was ``paid for by Jeb Bush for Governor Campaign'' http://election2002.tbo.com/election2002/MGARSR0D58D.html

Vote Fraud Texas style http://www.jshull.org/

There's only one reason the exit poll has been scrapped. How could they explain away a (potential) lead by the democrats and then suddenly have the GOP controlling congress. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20021105/ap_on_el_ge/eln _voter_news_service

Voting Problems In Orlando, South Florida "These folks are so crooked they have to screw their socks on in the morning"
http://news.tbo.com/news/MGACF5AHY5D.html

Voting Machines' Maker Blamed. How Florida bought easily-rigged ES&S Voting Machines
http://www.tampatrib.com/MGASSAS976D.html

Manufacturers Admit Voting Machines Unreliable How ES&S machines have modems, allowing hacking to access & alter vote tallies
http://www.rumormillnews.net/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=5172

The Nightmare Scenario Good explanation by Dr. Rebecca Mercuri on paperless computer voting & fraud http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0805-07.htm

Voting into the void Touch-screen voting machines may look spiffy, experts say they can't be trusted.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/05/voting_machines/

How VNS helped to rig Nov. 5 Election for GOP
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm61.showMessage?topicID=2.topic

Why did VNS bow out the morning of the election? Did somebody get a horse's head in their bed? http://www.bartcop.com/vns2002.htm

Voter News Service Meltdown - Washington Post article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10472-2002Nov5.html

"Voter News Service (VNS) is a top-secret private consortium owned by ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News. It's current headquarters is in Brooklyn, New York. It's been around (under different names) since 1964. It's the only company whose exit poll results are used by the news media to announce the
"projected" winners in races for the president, U.S. House and Senate, state governors, and select races. With the use of computerized vote counters and the news networks exclusive control over polling data in major elections, the gates to election fraud were wide open. Computerized voting machines have now made election fraud as easy as stealing candy from a baby... If VNS is helping to rig elections, why are they doing it? Generally speaking... I believe that the same people who can't rake in enough money, also can't get enough power. The news networks are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the richest corporations and individuals in the world. They certainly have an agenda. Their arrogance and disregard for the little guy is clear. They may think that we're not smart enough to pick the 'right' kind of leaders... right for them, that is. So they might try to do it for us. Voter News Service warrants an investigation. Its operations should be shut down regardless. It's in a perfect position to sabotage the election process. Let the counties count the vote and report it to the states. If it takes a day or two for the states to report the results... so be it. Democracy takes time."

Why did VNS bow out the morning of the election?

VNS got into a lot of trouble for correctly calling Florida for Gore after exit polls showed him winning by a comfortable margin. After that 'debacle' they were forced to completely re-design their computer hardware and software. They were my client, and ran on a large IBM mainframe with legacy software. They were forced to get off the mainframe and on to a completely different hardware and software platform. Everything had to be built from scratch. Supposedly, they didn't have time to fully test the new environment thoroughly far enough ahead of this election cycle. Therefore, they chose to use this election to test the new environment, but not publicly release the results.

Why does VNS think their "Gore wins" Florida 2000 projection was wrong? Bush guaranteed he would win Florida, even after VNS said he lost it. Why is nobody else suspicious?
http://www.bartcop.com/111102bonus.htm

More Magic: winning vote totals uncanny. County Judge Danny Scheel received 18,181 votes. Republican Carter Casteel got exactly 18,181votes. Republican state Sen. Jeff Wentworth also got 18,181 votes. http://www.mysanantonio.com/specials/elections/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=860675

VNS - CIA link? VNS, the guys who are deep sixing their exit poll data, used an outside company to develop their computer programs. It turns out that the company is..... Battelle Memorial Institute, an Ohio-based technology company that also works as a defense contractor to help build the new VNS system. A Battelle spokeswoman declined comment on Tuesday's performance. " From:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021106/ap_wo_en_po/us_election_vns_6

Battelle was also under investigation during the search for the anthrax killer.
http://www.columbusalive.com/2002/20020530/053002/05300203.html

Rothschilds are part owners of voting machines. They were also behind the whole Enron debacle. Now they will be in charge of the software that runs the voting machines. The other owners have simular NWO backgrounds as well. http://www.rense.com/general31/roth.htm

"Your vote certainly counts. On the other hand, your vote may not be counted"

Florida Touch Screen Voting System DEMONSTRATION http://www.jeb02.com/touchscreenvotingdemo.html

Origins of American Vote Fraud

Ever since Mayor Daley of Chicago "found" tens of thousands of dead people to "vote" for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election, many Americans have suspected the Democratic party's urban political machines to be awash in voter fraud. As notorious as the Democrat political machines are, the origins of vote fraud in America lie in the Party of Lincoln. The massive vote fraud that took place during the War between the States and for the ensuing twelve years of "Reconstruction" provides an abject lesson in tyranny that has ominous implications.
http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?record=554&month=26

Computerized Fraud

First of all, whether a citizen can prove vote fraud is not the question. The question is whether the Board of Elections officials can prove that they are running a verifiable election. After all, these administrators are supposed to be servants of the people but most of them act as elections are their rightful monopoly. In fact, any attempt by any American citizen to monitor elections will most likely land the person in jail.
http://www.hoffman-info.com/votefraud.html

A 'modern' democracy that can't count votes

LA Times: December 11, 2000. Special Report: What happened in Florida is the rule and not the exception. A coast-to-coast study by The Times finds a shoddy system that can only be trusted when the election isn't close. http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/11/latimes.votecount/

An electorate's worst technology nightmare came true

but what's amazing is that it didn't happen sooner. How we set ourselves up for the mayhem of the 2000 presidential election. http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.21.00/cover/election-0051.html

Miami Herald's 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning series on vote fraud

Detailing the pervasive voter fraud that subsequently overturned the mayoral election http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1999/investigative-reporting/works/

VOTE FRAUD AND THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE UNITED STATES

Since 1964, right after John F. Kennedy was assasinated, vote tabulation for national elections has been handled not by the government, but by a private company lacking any official oversight at all. This company, which changes its name on a regular basis, is currently called "Voters News Service" and is located in New York City. This company is owned by a consortium of TV networks and wire services, which are in turn controlled by the CIA through its Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The TV networks will make a great show of being "first with the election results", but in reality all of them rely on the numbers sent to them by VNS, while seldom aknowledging its existance during the election coverage. http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE3/

Opening a Can of Electronic Chad

It is astonishing that, after the Election 2000 debacle of November 7th, the Hillsborough County Election Supervisor, Pam Iorio, is seeking to replace the old punch card voting machines with touch screen devices that have no paper trail. http://www.legitgov.org/electronic_chad.html

The U.S. Voters Have Been Hoodwinked.


These are the things we know after the election:
http://shadowbox.i8.com/stolen.htm

I am providing just a single link because if you don't get it by now...you never will.

Sincerely,

Nicely done, Blue Shark! :thumbsup:

Excellent job Blue Shark

...I cut and pasted from someone elses post but I no longer have that individuals Nick to give credit where it is due...I believe that the author would be more concerned with getting the information out than glory, but I sure wish he/she was getting the credit.

I'd say," I don't believe how talented these people are?"
But, I do
'cause I've been right here with us all
since the Fraud went down.

Thank You all so much for your response.

Wiley

and hard drive!

Quite well said and laid out. Not another thing could make it better.

Mr. Wycliff:

You offer up no explanation for any of the disparate poll data, admit that some serious questions regarding the data “may never be answered”, and complain that the 1000s of e-mails you’ve received insist that “instead of pursuing evidence of election theft and corruption, the Tribune and the rest of the "corporate media" are intent on ignoring the facts.” Your column, however, seems to exist specifically to ignore the facts, making your last complaint more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than any reader or journalist could have done alone.

How much uncertainty in an election is too much? How much would sit right with you? Would it be more or less than the original forty-two vote margin in the Washington state gubernatorial race? Would it have been okay to ignore the desire for a recount in that race regardless of which party requested it? Should it all have just been left alone? What about the 537 vote margin of victory in Florida in 2000? Was that too much, or not enough, or just the right amount of uncertainty? If these two election cycles have shown us anything, it’s that nothing is more important for a true democratic election than counting the votes and making sure everyone who wants to vote is able.

Frankly, this paragraph, where you took the time and space to praise Nixon, leaves me cold: “To his credit, Nixon is said to have rejected a challenge as not worth putting the country through. In other words, winning wasn't the sole end of politics.” I don’t see this as heroic, bold, or praiseworthy. If there was a real issue, if real basis existed for a challenge, it was incumbent upon Nixon to do so. Not because winning is everything, but because the future of the country and the sanctity of the process must be maintained. The sole end of politics, Mr. Wycliff, is protecting and providing for the rights of “we the people”.

Finally, this bit of pretzel logic: “That's one way of looking at it. Another is as a convocation of conspiracy theorists, unable to come to terms with the fact that their guy lost and that, as in sports, it's not the pre-game prognostication and expert opinions that count, but the numbers on the scoreboard after the contest has actually been played.”

So, if the outcome is expected to be in line with the predictions and all factors point to the team’s victory during the game, and, at the buzzer, the referee decides that the ball was foul, even though the instant replay says fair, we should just accept that the predictions were wrong and let it go?

Please spend your time actually seeking the facts. We need no more pontification on the validity of “conspiracy nuts”, but we definitely need more pontification on the system and the meaning behind the franchise. There was a time when neither your ancestors nor mine could vote. At this point, it’s a dangerous and careless thing to brush off the means and methods of elections in this country. This column was shameful in its attempts to gloss over the real issue at hand: Did your vote count? How do you know? Did my vote count? How do you know? That’s a problem in search of a solution.


Sincerely,

I love how everyone is coming at him from all these different angles,I wish I was a fly on the wall when he was reading them.

Also good Job Blue shark giving him enough election fraud reading material for the rest of his life.

Great job.

From : Koehler, Bob <BKoehler@Tribune.com>
Sent : Thursday, April 28, 2005 3:48 PM
To : 'wiley white' <wiley54@hotmail.com>
Subject : RE: YOU"RE GENERATING A SLEW OF KICK ASS LETTERS IN THERE!


Thanks, Wiley, I've been checking in from time to time. I think Don's column
was the best thing that could have happened. It's galvanized nationwide
intelligent outrage.

Wycliff's was "Thanks," which I'm sure is sarcasm. Koehler said the note was dead-on.

Looks like we're might be making a dent...

I got a dry "thank you for writing" from Wycliff and an enthusiastic "awesome letter" from Koehler.

She needs to take Wycliff out to the shed over this!! The bastid needs to get a frikkin' pink slip!!

:argh:

Great thread!! Nominated!!

:kick::kick::kick:

Koehler and Ms. Lipinski

Dear Mr. Wycliff,

I take exception to your criticism of Mr. Koehler's article, "The Silent Scream Of Numbers". You are the epitome of the media we have come to know and abhor. You claim it's 'the duty of the news media...to shine a spotlight on weaknesses and abuses..." yet no media outlet has spared but a passing glance to the potential problems involved in the 2004 election process. I'm convinced you and your ilk are just plain lazy and don't want to make waves. You appear to write articles without seeming to conduct any kind of research at all, and believe me, there is a lot out there if you cared to learn about it.

Why do you think a National Election Reform Conference was even established? I, as an independent American, fear for our country and my/our voting rights. I don't expect the results of any kind of inquiry to change the results of the 2004 election, but your suggestion of silence flies in the face of my reality. I want my vote to count and to count honestly. If that means we need to demand paper trails, if that means we need to get rid of the new, possibly hackable voting machines, than so be it. The last two election cycles promote more questions than answers, and I for one am not satisfied with all the potential fraud that has been addressed by many. If this is not the case, than the least you could do is prove it.

If you can't be bothered to dig a little deeper, than you don't deserve to call yourself a writer or editor. Nor should you have the luxury of criticizing others.

Respectfully,
xxxxxxxxxxx

FRONT PAGE material!!! Please!!!!

I will write a letter to! Unbelievable!!!

editorial. Incredibly well-written and lots of food for thought. I hope he takes it to heart. Or if he doesn't, I hope Lipinski does.

It feels good; maybe Wycliff will issue a retraction? Nah...

You Folks built the bomb!

And packed it rather well, I must say

Blame it on my Zippo, Hippo.

Hey! Ojai Person wrote that Wycliff has already responded to our efforts.
But, she hasn't sent the link yet
Can anyone find it?

Wiley

Subject: RE: When Winning Isn't Everything?

Dear xxxx:

Did John Kerry spend all of those millions just so he could lie down and let someone steal the election from him? Why do you suppose he hasn't joined the ranks of those alleging the election was stolen?

DW

To which I replied:

Dear Mr. Wycliff,

Thank you for responding.

That is a good question, but it doesn't resolve the issue. Regardless of what John Kerry did or didn't do, the fact that these serious questions remain deserves a very earnest response.

Best,

XXXXX

bloggers and netters. How humiliating for him.

Well, maybe next time he'll do the research before the report.

I have just sent the comment below to Don Wycliff.

I rarely use this tone with a journalist, as it is vitally important to cultivate friendly working relations with ethical professionals, but I really do think he has earned it.

Hope my comments on conspiracy theories can be reused. I've got my theories and I'm proud of them!

Best,
Paddy.



When winning isn't everything

Maynooth, Ireland.
April 28


Dear Mr Wycliff

I have just read your article entitled "When winning isn´t everything" and as somebody who has no affiliation to any of the US political parties, I must say I think you have missed the point.

You respond as if you somehow knew that the hundreds of people e-mailing you were all Democrats who voted John Kerry. How do you know that? Sir, I respectfully submit, you don´t.

You accuse people of subscribing to conspiracy theories as if you thought that people did not conspire. But we know that people do conspire - as for example terrorists conspired to attack the World Trade Center on 9/11 - and from this we all know that conspiracies do occur. Similarly, the theory that Mr Yanukovych cheated in the elections in Ukraine has now been widely accepted. So conspiracy theories are not necessarily wrong; in fact, it is necessary to formulate a conspiracy theory in order to identify and investigate any crime of conspiracy.

But maybe what you don´t like is _unfounded_ theories? Fair enough.

But then, how about your own theory – the "sore loser theory" ?

You draw an analogy with sports, saying "it´s not the pregame prognostication and expert opinions that count, but the numbers on the scoreboard after the contest has actually been played." And here, referring to "pregame prognostication and expert opinions", it looks as if you are, deliberately or through ignorance, mixing up two different things: opinion polls and exit polls.

Opinion polls have been demonstrated to be unreliable, because what somebody says from the comfort of their couch doesn´t necessarily get translated into a vote on polling day. The respondent to an opinion poll might not even turn up at the polling place!

Exit polls are something else. Here, people are asked on their way out to state which candidate they have just voted for. US exit polls are usually not useful for anything at all at the end of the day, because the numbers are mixed in with the actual votes - a process of "adjustment" that eventually disappears the actual exit poll figures. Last November was different, because here true exit poll numbers were available at the end of the day, and there must be some explanation for the discrepancies between these numbers and the actual results.

When we note that these discrepancies repeatedly favoured the one candidate, and when we take them in combination with numerous "irregularities" favouring this same candidate - e.g. reports of touch screens that told people they had voted for this candidate after they had pushed the button for the other guy - then we have good grounds for a hypothesis (what you might call a conspiracy theory) that this candidate, or people working on his team, cheated.

Note that this is how the hypothesis or conspiracy theory that Mr Yanukovych cheated in the elections in Ukraine also arose.

In Ukraine, people erected tents and waved orange flags. In the United States, faced with a similar problem, people are sending thousands of e-mails instead.

Returning to a sports analogy: Have you ever thought how you would react if you discovered that your favourite athlete had been taking steroids? I think you´d be disappointed, disillusioned, embarrassed at the memories of your cheers for a fraudulent hero, maybe even ashamed or outraged at his disgraceful behaviour. And that´s how I think Republicans – in fact, all Americans – might feel right now, seeing the mounting evidence of fraud last November.

Noting Kenneth Blackwell´s resistance to calls for a recount in Ohio, I wonder who is actually the sore loser? Mr Blackwell knows there were "irregularities" - dozens of them, reported in detail in a letter from the Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee – but he will not permit a recount, probably because deep down, he knows that his team cheated. But he doesn´t want the referee and umpire to be asked to make a judgement. He doesn´t want the players to provide a urine sample, because it might show that they took steroids. Now that´s a sore loser!

Just one example from the Democrats’ letter: In Franklin County, “a computerized voting machine in ward 1B in the Gahanna precinct of Franklin County recorded a total of 4,258 votes for President Bush and 260 votes for Democratic challenger, John Kerry. However, there are only 800 registered voters in that Gahanna precinct, and only 638 people cast votes at the New Life Church polling site. It was since discovered that a computer glitch resulted in the recording of 3,893 extra votes for President George W. Bush.”

This is a disgrace not only to Republicans but to the entire United States. Your country becomes a bad joke when the world observes that you are supposedly trying to introduce democracy in Iraq, but this kind of convenient “glitch” can happen in your own country. You should be ashamed, as an American citizen, that this could happen and not lead to a full recount and a thorough investigation. And you should be ashamed as a journalist because you have not demanded these things.

Looking from the outside, as somebody who understands something of statistical methods, somebody who has to pity American voters the poverty of political choice offered by the simple Republican-Democrat divide - in contrast to the eight-party choice currently presented in the Danish parliament, for example - and certainly not somebody who is confident that Mr Kerry would have enforced policies that would have reconciled me to American foreign policy, I must say that I think you treat your most intelligent readers with arrogance and undue contempt.

Sir, in the interests of your professional integrity, I urge you to respect your readers. You should read the statistical analysis recently published by US Count Votes and make a fair assessment of its contents.

Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies:
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky.pdf

In another article, you mention "wisdom or honesty or a commitment to truth, accuracy, verification and all the other attributes that distinguish journalism from propaganda, polemics or plain old deception." Now I challenge you, as a professional, to apply all of these distinguishing attributes to a reading of the US Count Votes analysis.

Maybe you think the people who authored or endorsed that analysis - university lecturers with PhD qualifications in fields such as statistics, government and computing - are also fanatical Democrats, sore losers who have turned their backs on wisdom and honesty, abandoned their commitment to truth and their training in accuracy and verification, and conspired to stake their academic reputations on the hypothesis that there may have been something wrong with the vote tallies that gave Bush the victory?

Mr Wycliff, I find this sore loser theory of yours just a bit more nutty than the theory that maybe some of Bush´s people cheated.

Best regards,
Dr. ... ...

very well said. It is reassuring to know that we have intellectuals such as yourself on our side. I felt the same way when I attended the Nashville conference and spoke with PHD's who had gone over the numbers.
I can only hope he reads yours.

New Century, so I sincerely doubt we'll see it anywhere in the corporate media. But don't be surprise if it gets passed around the Net!

Well, I reckon it's much too long to be published in a newspaper, but in any case the Net is now the mainstream, so that would be a greater compliment.

Yeah, time we stopped using this term "MSM" and referred to "old media" or "trad. media" instead. A subtle warning to people working in corporate media that their days are numbered if they don't give us what we want.

Best,
Paddy.

Please, if anybody is interested in team-based, strategic public relations activities, don't hesitate to contact me at the following e-mail address:

bush
dot
fraud
dot
2004
at
besked
dot
com

Unfortunately, I don't have much time to participate on DU, as I am involved in strategic actions designed to take the initiative from the old media.

Best,
Paddy.

it is much more appropriate.Thanks

Thanks for jumping in the middle of something that,really,has no effect on your own Freedom.

We have real friends over there!

Wiley

Thanks for this, Wiley, but Mr Bush has plenty effect on my freedom.

Through its overwhelming influence in international bodies such as the World Trade Organization, the United States ties the hands of political leaders all over the world.

If adopted, the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) will ultimately privatise _everything_, including healthcare and education in all signatory states, and there is a clause saying that there's no going back. That means that international corporations might win the contract to teach my children or grandchildren, and they could end up going to schools sponsored by Coca-Cola - much as Michael Moore describes in Stupid White Men.

See this article on Project Censored:
(#2) New Trade Treaty Seeks to Privatize Global Social Services
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2003/2.html

So Irish political leaders of future years might want to abolish an inefficient, expensive and harmful corporate school system but find itself denied that option on pain of harsh economic sanctions.

It is only through overwhelming popular protest that the anti-globalisation movement can defend our freedom to organise our societies according to various alternatives.

There is no "over there" for our generation. We're all in the same global boat. But fortunately the internet makes it easy and cheap for us to share information and get organised. ... Just like this. :)

Best,
Paddy.

I wonder how he will respond.

...important point about the quality of intellect that is being brought to the election fraud issue.

I believe there needs to be a correction to your letter, important enough to send to the recipient, regarding the availability of exit poll data to the American public on election day.

In fact, the TV networks did change the exit poll data on the night of the election, "adjusting" that data to fit the official result. It was only by virtue of alert citizens who took screen shots of the early exit polls, and determined that an exit poll result for Bush was impossible, that election activists had early warning of the exit poll discrepancy. It was then a mighty struggle to get the real exit poll data (and I believe that had to be obtained through a leak), and the raw data has yet to be disclosed.

This falsified information--the official tally (that Bush won) being melded into the exit polls (that Kerry won) profoundly affected the reaction of the American people to the Bush result. Most people in the U.S., and most Kerry voters, don't know, to this day, that Kerry won the exit polls, and that this was major evidence of election fraud that was deliberately withheld from them.

I think it's EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for people to know what these TV networks did. They created a PERCEPTION that Bush won, when, in fact, it really cannot be proven that Bush won--given the utter non-transparency of the election system. And when you combine the non-transparency--indeed, not just non-transparency, but Republican partisan ownership--of vital components of the election system (such as the central electronic tabulators), with this strong evidence of election fraud (Kerry's win of the exit polls), with the numerous electronic voting machine "malfunctions" in Bush's favor (and only in Bush's favor), and with the obvious and visible intent to defraud, as evidenced by the massive violations of the Voting Rights Act against minority and other Democratic voters in Ohio, Florida and other states, you have a very powerful case that the 2004 election was, at the very least, invalid, and that it very likely produced the wrong result for president.

Journalists like Wycliff are part of the U.S. news monopoly establishment that doctored the exit polls, created the perception of a Bush win, failed to educate and inform Americans about the profound insecurity and hackability of our election system, and are now trying to defend themselves against a mountain of evidence of election fraud. Mostly, they defend by blackholing that evidence--and saying not a word about it. Wycliff's article indicates that they are getting just a bit prickly about their part in covering up a Kerry win, and feel they need some counterspin. Maybe that's a good indication. I truly hope so.

Here is your full paragraph. I urge you to send a correction regarding the "adjustment" of the exit poll data that occurred on election night, the TV networks failure to disclose that "adjustment" to the viewing public, their failure to disclose that Kerry won the exit polls on election day, and their continuing failure to disclose the raw exit poll data.

"Exit polls are something else. Here, people are asked on their way out to state which candidate they have just voted for. US exit polls are usually not useful for anything at all at the end of the day, because the numbers are mixed in with the actual votes - a process of "adjustment" that eventually disappears the actual exit poll figures. Last November was different, because here true exit poll numbers were available at the end of the day, and there must be some explanation for the discrepancies between these numbers and the actual results." --Paddy Maynooth

Thanks, Peace Patriot!

But I think this information is implied in my letter, and is certainly available to anybody who looks at the statistical analyses.

If people thought the exit polls showed a win for Bush, then they will be perplexed by my statement that there was a discrepancy, and hopefully that will stimulate them to keep digging.

But we are making an enormous assumption that my letter will even get published. Frankly, I think this is very unlikely, as it is very long for a letter.

Please don't let anything stop you raising this very important point with Don Wycliff, with Bob Koehler, with their editors and with any fora that may be likely to publish it. You may have much better chances of getting it published if you stick to a concise outline of this single point - much as you have already written above.

Best,
Paddy.

Mr. Wycliff,
I understand you have been getting a few articulate responses to your poorly-researched editorial.
Please take the opportunity to educate yourself before you write again on this topic. I hope you apologize to your colleague for maligning his much better-researched piece.
Since I know others have given you a lot of reading homework, I will only cite one study. It is the January 7th, 2005 National Annenberg Election Survey (page 2 - 30% of American voters were NOT “very confident that their vote had been counted accurately”. This number is up from 20% in surveys taken the month before.) http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/naes/2004_03_mindset-bush-kerry-supporters_%2001-05_pr.pdf

If there were 30% of voters who were not very confident that their vote had been counted accurately with as little information that has come out about this in the mainstream media then our country has a BIG problem that you and other journalists need to be investigating! If the media had done its job and put out the information that you are currently being sent, the numbers of confident voters would plummet profoundly. Please do your job and report the irregularities.
Sincerely,
Melissa G
Edit for sp

And thanks for posting it

Koehler has the link and the "Collected Works" can be very helpful to him.

And THANKS AGAIN TO ALL WHO HAVE WRITTEN

I ( or especially, Bob) never expected such a huge and eloquent and knowledgeable response.

We haven't won the war just yet.
But, We sure as hell have triumphed in this battle!

Wiley

He wrote back and thanked me for writing.

Subject: You Don't Know a Lot About Elections, Do You?

Dear Mr. Wycliff,

It's obvious from your criticism of Bob Koehler's work that you are willfully ignorant about how elections have been conducted in our country following the 2000 fiasco in Florida -- the first phase of a concerted effort to undermine the very foundation of our republic: free and fair elections.

Tell the truth now: You really don't know anything about the election management systems used in the 2004 election, do you? You don't know exactly how easy it is to switch names on an e-ballot and have the votes go to a different candidate in the database, contrary to voters' intent, thereby reversing the results, do you? Or how easy it is to set up a race on an e-ballot to actually control other races on that ballot, so that the votes cast for one candidate on the machine can actually switch the votes for another candidate, or cause some votes not to be counted at all, do you? And you don't know how easy it is to set this up on multiple machines in a jurisdiction, either deliberately or by accident, do you?

Do you think this is conspiracy theory? Have you ever heard of Straight Party Voting, made illegal in your state of IL a few years ago? Well just because it's illegal, doesn't mean it can't be implemented. What's to stop a partisan election official, machine vendor, or unscrupulous technician from exploiting this "feature" unbeknownst to the voters before an election -- especially when a large percentage of the work of election management has been outsourced to private companies for lack of Board of Elections' technical expertise? The answer is: there is nothing to stop it. And a man in your position is willfully ignorant for not investigating this.

Apparently you just want to trust the system, but many of us say we should trust but verify sir. Others among us are willfully ignorant however.

Tell the truth now: you really don't know how easy it has become to steal an election now, do you? I think not, because if you did, you would not be so dismissive of the work of those who are attempting to bring this to the attention of the public. They are the true patriots among us sir. People such as yourself are just willfully ignorant.

....it needs to be said -- YOU are an amazing group of citizens and your persistence, focus and intelligence are a total joy to experience. Thank you.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us (a day to reflect on the consequences of two stolen national elections: illegal war, atrocities, inhuman treatment of those most in need in our America, .............. . And a day to prepare for what each of us are going to do to halt the crimes, peacefully.)

I grew up in the Back of the Yards,and when someone would mess with you, we would say lets go get em "boty" style.You guys/gals are bringing back some memories.Kinda weird its happening in Chicago.And you guys/gals are definitely getting him "BOTY" style. Keep up the good work,Fantastic letters. NGU

But we can kick some fine ass
with good cause.

Thanks!

and a less polite email just now.

You call yourself a "journalist", yet you REFUSE to fully investigate that which you editorialize upon.

Bob Koehler has. And yet you ASSUME that he knows naught of which he writes.

Guess that makes him a REAL journalist and YOU the fraud.

Why should that surprise me?

Using your logic, we don't need to verify this election--we can just ASSUME everything is just fine, right?

Look into the matter before you embarrass yourself in public again.

Nixon as an icon of "what's right"? If Nixon didn't care about winning, what was up with Watergate?

that's why I didn't bother to send you an invite to the party.

I thought about you at the time.
just thought you'd do better this way

Love your posts, Always

wiley

in every way good

in every forum

May the Tide forever be turning our way
as it has today!

wiley

Dear Don,

Thanks for your opinion piece on the 2004 election.

Suggesting the election was tampered with seems to make a lot of people uncomfortable. That's understandable.

The right to vote is the terra-firma of democracy and it makes me uneasy to think it can be subverted.

A lot of the evidence presented by those who question the election process would not neccessarily require conspiracy or even a single person with bad intent. No. A series of errors and oversight might as well do the same. Would that be anymore acceptable?

Our nation, and the government formed by the people, has suffered worse trials than posed examining and reforming it's election management systems. This is particularly true when many Americans wonder if their vote was counted, while others know they never got to cast one.

Thanks for your attention to an issue fundamental to our freedoms.

soft-peddling may prove to be a clever strategy

Thanks for your help!

wiley

To: dwycliff@tribune.com
Subject: Voter Confidence
Sent: Fri 4/29/2005 1:41 AM

Dear Mr. Wycliff,

My position is simple: there is no basis for confidence in the results reported from U.S. federal elections.

Your position seems to be: there is no basis for questioning the results reported from U.S. federal elections.

Please read the Voter Confidence Resolution below and reconsider. If you still disagree I expect you will be prepared to explain on what basis we should maintain confidence in a system designed to make a conclusive outcome impossible. I truly look forward to your reply.

In Respect and Peace,



Voter Confidence Resolution
(v6.0, LAST UPDATED: 4/23/05 11pm)

Whereas an election is a competition for the privilege of representing the people; and

Whereas each voter is entitled to cast a single ballot to record his or her preferences for representation; and

Whereas the records of individual votes are the basis for counting and potentially re-counting a collective total and declaring a winner; and

Whereas an election's outcome is a matter of public record, based on a finite collection of immutable smaller records; and

Whereas a properly functioning election system should produce unanimous agreement about the results indicated by a fixed set of unchanging records; and

Whereas recent U.S. federal elections have been conducted under conditions that have not produced unanimous agreement about the outcome; and

Whereas future U.S. federal elections cannot possibly produce unanimous agreement as long as any condition permits an inconclusive count or re-count of votes; and

Whereas inconclusive counts and re-counts have occurred during recent U.S. federal elections due in part to electronic voting devices that do not produce a paper record of votes to be re -counted if necessary; and

Whereas inconclusive results have also been caused by election machines losing data, producing negative vote totals, showing more votes than there are registered voters, and persistently and automatically swapping a voter's vote from his or her chosen candidate to an opponent; and

Whereas inconclusive results make it impossible to measure the will of the people in their preferences for representation; and

Whereas the Declaration of Independence refers to the Consent of the Governed as the self- evident truth from which Government derives "just Power";

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

Because inconclusive results, by definition, mean that the true outcome of an election cannot be known, there is no basis for confidence in the results reported from U.S. federal elections; and

Be it also resolved:

Ensuring conclusive results is only one necessary step toward creating a new basis for voter confidence in U.S. federal elections. Additional reforms that would take further steps toward building voter confidence include:

1) voting processes owned and operated entirely in the public domain, and
2) clean money laws to keep all corporate funds out of campaign financing, and
3) a voter verifiable paper ballot for every vote cast and additional uniform standards determined by a non-partisan nationally recognized commission, and
4) declaring election day a national holiday, and
5) counting all votes publicly and locally in the presence of citizen witnesses and credentialed members of the media, and
6) equal time provisions to be observed by the media along with a measurable increase in local, public control of the airwaves, and
7) presidential debates containing a minimum of three candidates, run by a non-partisan commission comprised of representatives of publicly owned media outlets, and
8) instant runoff voting (see H.R. 5293) and proportional representation to replace the winner-take-all system for federal elections;

Be it further resolved:

When elections are conducted under conditions that prevent conclusive outcomes, the Consent of the Governed is not being sought. Absent this self-evident source of legitimacy, such Consent is not to be assumed or taken for granted.

***
The permalink for the Voter Confidence Resolution is:
http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/04/voter-confidence-resolution.html

Even Robert Pastor is admitting that electoral reform is needed immediately, and the ability to rig the machines must be squashed.

That man was even more insecure to speak up because the republicans labeled him as the same sore loser everyone keeps repeating.

With that note I've truly had it, and sent Mr. Wycliffe a piece of my mind so that maybe just maybe the mainstream media gets off its ridiculous merry go round.

Here is the letter,

Dear Tribue Editor Wycliffe,

I am a citizen of the United States and I'm just amazed at your recent op-ed piece that automatically dismissed Robert Koheler's amazing paper which he wrote after digesting all of the facts.

If anything, I would hope that you look at interviewing Robert yourself since you work together and give him his own voice in the paper so he can explain the argument. It doesn't make sense to me to tout to be informing the public, but only give his article a quick glance without even having him be a part of it. There was something horribly fishy going on November 2, which marked up and produced millions of votes to go miscounted and uncounted.

The hard proof inside the EIRS reports at http://www.votersunite.org , http://www.flcv.com/ohiosum.html , http://www.flcv.com/summary.html and the summary of numbers and statistics, say that at the very least, there should be a full inquiry into our election process. At the very most, some people need to be put in jail and pay for ruining our voting.

Yet the mainstream media continues to laugh because of the cheating, and label everyone outside the circle conspiracy theorists with too many tin foil hats on. Tell me, does this look like some conspiracy theory to you?

Clint Curtis passed lie-detector test, was ordered to create Vote Fraud software for the elections by Tom Feeney. http://www.bradblog.com

http://www.flcv.com/summary.html
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/11282281.htm

Individual State to Precinct Exit Polls:
http://tinyurl.com/8c5x7

You can argue all you want with words, but one can not argue with the cold harsh reality of numbers.

""Fourteen weeks after the Nov. 2 election and the release of unofficial totals that counted 3,893 extra votes for President Bush in Gahanna’s Precinct 1-B, officials said a computer trying to do two things at once is to blame
<snip>
After isolating the glitch to the tabulating zone, where removable voting-machine cartridges are plugged into a reader and transmitted to a laptop computer that sends data to the countywide tabulator, the company focused on those steps.

Its conclusion: The laptop computer that collects and sends data was busy completing another task at the exact moment it was receiving numbers from Gahanna 1-B. "As a result, the laptop did not receive the data as fast as it was sent . . . and consequently, data was lost," the report said."

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2005/02/12/20050212-B1-00.html

http://www.thousandreasons.org/get_article.php?article_id=13

Kerry didn't pipe up because he knew it would have resulted in thousands of accusations of being a sore loser. But that doesn't mean everyone doesn't know, because the numbers are screaming the truth.

Please understand, our right to vote is the most important right we have. If corporate privateers and tyrants override our right to vote, we'll never have anything again. We need to take back our electoral process, and have fully voter verified paper ballots and auditable recounts in order to ever trust in this system again.

Sincerely,
Concerned Voter Nick Torrin

...the Tribune didn't publish Koehler's article, yet Wycliff's column received full exposure. Readers don't know what Wycliff is talking about... At the very least, I believe the Tribune should now run Koehler's pieces and allow the people to decide.

columns on the subject--in all fairness. They would certainly have the support of many readers for that move. If they choose not to, one can only conclude that they are taking Wycliff's perspective (there are certainly 2 sides to this question)!

Challenge the Tribune editors on this--copy letters to Don Wycliff to the other editors:

Ann Marie Lipinski
Editor, Senior Vice President, Chicago Tribune

alipinski@tribune.com
editor@tribune.com
ctc-editor@tribune.com

Dear Mr. Wycliff,
It was with great dismay that I read your smear of Bob Koehler and his column “The Silent Scream of Numbers.” It is clear from your column that you have done exactly zero research on the issue of difficulties with last November’s election. You assume that the “dubbed” National Election Reform Conference was a gathering of conspiracy theorists sporting tin hats and griping about how the election was “stolen.” You weren’t there, and Bob Koehler was, yet you presume to know more about it than he. In fact the conference was a gathering of patriots concerned with the many problems that were associated with last year’s election.

Your only real rebuttal was the observation of your buddy Tim who happened to be in Columbus, Ohio on election day. He said that everything was just fine, so of course he must be right. The fact that there were hundreds of thousands of negative incidents reported by voters nationwide can’t hold a candle to good old Tim’s experience in Columbus.

It is interesting that you made an analogy with a sporting event where the final score is the only statistic that counts. You fail to mention that in a sporting event, there are many observers actually seeing the points being scored. When one is voting on a DRE machine, one must trust that the machine is in fact recording the vote as entered based on no evidence whatsoever. The machine on which the vote is (theoretically) recorded is almost certainly manufactured by a company with strong political ties to a particular party. In the case of Diebold, the CEO Wally O’Dell famously promised to do everything in his power to deliver the state of Ohio to president Bush. The software on these machines is proprietary for no reason other than they want it that way. The machines are seriously lacking in security as witnessed by countless computer technology experts. Whether or not the election was “stolen,” there is certainly enormous opportunity for fraud with these “black box” machines. You are beyond naive if you think that politicians would not take advantage of any opportunity of this kind.

Finally, you seem to believe that election fraud may be a legitimate part of any election, and that it’s somehow best to just let it go. We don’t want a constitutional crisis, so we need to just pretend that all of the votes were properly counted. Our right to transparent, open elections is among our most precious. We cannot and should not just let it go. Until we can be absolutely sure that all legitimate voters are allowed to vote and all votes are counted, we need to reform the process.

I particularly like the way you deconstructed the tired sports analogy, abbiehoff. Yes, big difference--in sports, everyone SEES the game points being scored, but nobody sees the votes being scored in an election. And the owners of one of the teams wants to keep it that way.

This is a classic example of a smokescreen argument, very effective in a time when everyone is too rushed to read carefully and certain "truths" are accepted at face value. "Yeah, it's JUST LIKE a call in sports competitions!" goes the brain. But when the brain actually stops and THINKS about it, nah...it's nothing like an open, fair and transparent sports contest. So FAR from it as to be laughable.

This is Spin at its most devious and clever. (Just like the bogus Nixon analogy...which has been torn to shreds here). Wycliff is not a journalist, he's a propagandist. The Tribune needs to answer to this. Any paper can print something in error or bad judgment--but they need to take responsibility now.

From : Koehler, Bob <BKoehler@Tribune.com>
Sent : Friday, April 29, 2005 9:48 AM
To : 'wiley white' <wiley54@hotmail.com>
Subject : RE: Has Wycliff made any public statement yet?

Hi Wiley,
The silence in today's Tribune was deafening. Nothing from Wycliff. Some
extraordinary letters were cc'd to me, which certainly filled me with hope
and gave me renewed courage. I don't know what's going to happen next or for
that matter what I'll do next. I'm thinking about it.

bob

" I hope everyone is sending copies of their letters to others...


...at the Tribune and not just Wycliff... I don't trust him."

Lets show that company what we are made of.

Mr. Wycliff,

What kind of drugs are you doing up there in the hallowed Trib tower? Your editorial 'When winning isn't everything' could not have been written by a sober man. It was a foul piece of commentary, and displayed such a gleeful ignorance of anything resembling factual research that, reading it, I could come to only one conclusion: you are not in your right mind.

What else could explain a line like: "But if the real agenda of the election reformers is to call into question the legitimacy of the 2004 election, they would be better advised to follow the example of Richard Nixon. Winning isn't the sole end of politics."

Good Lord. The mind reels.

Even now, as I stare at that quote on the page, my jaw hangs open in stunned disbelief. Is it narcotics, Don? Morphine? Is that the drug you're using to produce such a warm blanket of ignorance?

"If someone had told me 30 years ago that I would one day invoke Richard M. Nixon as a moral example, I'd have said the person was nuts. But that's what I'm about to do."

That, Mr. Wycliff, is your lead? No one with a clear head would let that first paragraph stand. I'm worried about you, Don. When you were back at school all those years ago, studying to be a great journalist, I'm sure you never could of imagined the harsh reality that you now find yourself in. Is that what's got you down, Don? The fact that your journalistic voice has essentially been squashed by the powers that be and you are now nothing more than a handy mouthpiece for corporate interests?

Christ, all I can say is cut back on that stuff, man. Don't get high on your own supply. Drugs are only a temporary solution, and ignoring reality is a coward's way out. I truly hope that, once your head clears from this latest binge, you will look back over your 'Winning isn't everything' article, see it for the useless garbage that it is, and sit down and write an apology, to Bob Koehler, to your readers, and to whatever deity you call your God.

Good luck. No need to thank me.

Sincerely,
J. Riley

relatively short and non-combatantly sweet, as well.

Hat's off to you, Phantom Shouting.
Even the deaf should read you loud and clear.

Thanks for your contribution.

wiley

:rofl:

Here is my letter to the several Tribune naysayers and to my nominee for the nation's first Columnist Laureate (Bob Koehler)
---------------

April 29, 2005

To: N. Don Wycliff, Public Editor (DWycliff@tribune.com)

cc: Ann Marie Lipinski, Editor (ctc-editor@tribune.com)
R. Bruce Dold, Editorial Page Editor (bdold@tribune.com)
James O'Shea, Managing Editor (jo'shea@tribune.com)
Bob Koehler, Editor, Tribune Media Services (bkoehler@tribune.com)

From: Bernard H. Ellis, Jr., MA, MPH, Organizer
Gathering To Save Our Democracy

Subject: What is the Chicago Tribune so afraid of? That real news might bite someone in the ass?

Like so many other Americans, I have been both irritated and more than a little frightened by the lack of journalistic competence and integrity (or even media presence) when it comes to covering the widespread election fraud in the 2004 election. For that reason, we decided to host the National Election Reform Conference here in Tennessee to allow election fraud researchers from throughout the country to convene in one place in order to make the media's job of covering this story easier. In order to encourage media attendance at the conference, we invited all media outlets nationwide to come cover this important event, with most media outlets receiving at least 50 emailed invitations apiece. Sadly, while the conference attracted a number of documentarians and videographers from around the country (including a European team), only one of our local newspapers and one of our local TV stations here in Nashville showed up. The 2004 election theft must be the most frightening (and perhaps self-incriminating) story ever faced by the American corporate media, and their continued absence confirms that we have few courageous news-people left in this country.

By now, those of us who have focused our attention on the 2004 election theft are accustomed to the dismissive attitudes of folks like yourself who have neither the courage, the stamina nor the intelligence to tackle this critically important story. Fortunately, the American people are very capable of picking up the slack left by the slacker-populated media, and the internet has allowed us to identify and communicate very effectively with each other. As a result, over three dozen election fraud researchers came to Nashville to share their research findings which document voter intimidation and suppression, election day dirty tricks and widespread election fraud activities in dozens of states. These researchers have continued to make themselves available since the conference to share their research findings with ethical and competent journalists, and, just this week, I have helped facilitate contacts between these researchers and several media outlets in this country and in Europe. This 2004 election theft story is not going away. Indeed, the coverage is growing right along with the concerns of the American people that the "consent of the governed" was violated in this last election.

Of course, the Chicago Tribune is many steps ahead of the journalistic pack, because your organization chose to send Robert Koehler to attend and cover the National Election Reform Conference. As a result, Bob had the chance to meet with and interview many of these researchers directly, as well as many of the hundreds of voting rights activists who attended the conference from 30 states. Thus, your news organization has been in an enviable position to delve deeply into this critically important story because of the groundwork that Bob accomplished in Nashville. In fact, Bob's two columns based on our conference have been among the most important journalistic statements to date on the 2004 election theft and running those columns would have elevated the Chicago Tribune in the eyes of many of its readers, in the Windy City, nationwide and around the globe.

But rather than run those columns (as papers in Tennessee, New York, Idaho and Louisiana have already done), you chose to write a dismissive, ill-informed, ignorant and defensive rebuttal piece. Instead of interviewing our three dozen experts, you chose to talk to one Tribune reporter (over a beer, perhaps?) to be reassured that nothing was amiss in the 2004 election. It is quite telling that your lone reporter didn't mention the 100+ page Conyers report on Ohio voting irregularities, the two Ohio public meetings that collected hundreds of sworn affidavits from disenfranchised voters there, the research of Dr. R.H. Phillips and others which has documented election fraud in many Ohio counties, the statements of Ohio recount volunteers who have also submitted sworn affidavits that all aspects of Ohio's recount laws were violated in that faux recount, the documented tampering with electronic voting machines prior to the recount in many Ohio counties, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Rather than feeling reassured by your conversation with a single reporter, I am left wondering why that reporter has a job with any reputable newspaper in the country. Perhaps you folks should ask that question also.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost for the Chicago Tribune. You can do two things now to regain your reputation among your readers and the journalistic profession. First, instead of dissing Bob Koehler's columns while keeping them hiddren from your readers, you could actually run the columns back-to-back as soon as possible and allow your readers the chance to weight Bob's journalistic impressions of the evidence presented at the Nashville conference themselves. And second, you can assign a competent team of investigative reporters to finally examine the mountain of evidence for the 2004 election theft and to write about it. We would be happy to help facilitate that process by putting your investigative team in touch with any of the researchers and voting rights activists who participated in the Nashville conference. I have attached a brief description of those speakers to address your preconceived notions of their credibility. As a public health epidemiologist myself with graduate training in statistics and research methods at Vanderbilt, Texas, Stanford and Berkeley; I felt very much at home with the similarly credentialed researchers who graced us in Nashville with their presence. To ignore the competent, dispassionate and well-documented research which is the basis for our collective concerns is to betray your own laziness, your lack of journalistic skills and/or your willfully partisan position in the last election.

One of our speakers at the Nashville conference, Clinton Curtis, is still a Republican; even though he has submitted sworn testimony to Congress, the FBI and other federal agencies that Republican Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) hired him to write a software program capable of tampering with electronic voting equipment. Mr. Curtis is as angry as the rest of us with the rape of our franchise, and he reminded us that for the people who have high-jacked his party, winning isn't everything – it is the only thing. When even Republicans are disgusted at the direction their party has taken in tampering with our election process and when these Republicans are willing to place themselves at risk to expose this treason, might not the Chicago Tribune give this story more than a dismissive nod?

Your readers – and this country – deserve better. I am awaiting your call.

Bernie,
I know you must have been industriously occupied elsewhere yesterday, but when Bob sent me that Hatchetry Job yesterday AM, I could not restrain myself from immediate response. And,as you can see,the troops here,upon recieving the news,were likewise,unrestrainable and ready as hell to rumble. They delivered many, many, incredibly well-researched and intelligent letters. I am overcome by the outpouring and proud as all get out of them.
Your letter, as expected, built gloriously upon their foundation and I hope those Windy City Windbags are feeling our heated breath upon the backs of their necks.You're so right. It's getting damn hard to lock this story from the light.
As you can see, I'm back in action after my too long family medical leave, just in time for the detrious to hit the air handlers.

Wiley

"In fact, Bob's two columns based on our conference have been among the most important journalistic statements to date on the 2004 election theft and running those columns would have elevated the Chicago Tribune in the eyes of many of its readers, in the Windy City, nationwide and around the globe."

--Obviously the reaction here at DU indicates how true this statement is...and we've really had it with this media game of whack-a-mole.

I just sent this to Bob. Help him out here Folks!

Bob,
One of our writers recieved the following response from Don Wycliff:

My latest reply from Wycliff...
From: AtLiberty
Date: Apr-29-05 03:12 PM

When you get John Kerry to sign on as a complainant, I'll be all ears.

DW

In my opinion, a bullheaded and intractable defense and one that is founded on the political contest, instead of the "consent of the governed" aspect. Clearly the pigheadedness of a sports fanatic.
John Kerry's reasons, as a career politician, are irrelevent when compared with the citizen's right to be assured of a clean and transparent process in choosing their own government.

But, anyway, I suspect that Wycliff is being backed into a corner of his own making and you had best be prepared to disarm him of this defense, apparently his weapon of choice.

I'm posting this note on the thread so our rhetorists may help you in disarming him. You might be interested in checking the responses later to see if they've offered up anything of use to you.

Hang in There!
We're with You Always

Wiley White

now I will combine this little twist with it.

This does not have anything to do with Kerry, he bowed out just as Don's hero Richard Nixon did . I can only assume that Kerry did this for what he sees as for the greater good of America. However, I have heard this argument and find fault with it. I believe it is for the greater good of our country to have whoever the people elected actually in office. At this time, we cannot say for sure who won until we see what programs were running the EV machines,based on the exit polls we can all make a good guess.

The election is about what the people want and the people can't prove one way or another who is actually supposed to be in office.Please tell Don Koehler I next time he goes to vote ,I will be more than happy to go in and vote who he intended to vote for, but unfortunately I won't be able to give him a receipt. He will just have to trust me.

This guy is an idiot, I am quite certain Don has never received so many emails in his career about one topic in such a short period of time. I betchya he is overwelmed with emails attacking his writing skills. Do they actually pay him for this? Where do I apply?

which we at DU have been kicking around for a long time. :boring: We are supposed to get all twisted up and frustrated about being abandoned by our fearless leader JK. I'm not buying it--and I'm not even buying that Don Wycliff believes it. If John Kerry chose to try to salvage his political career--instead of being the #1 Republican/corporate media punching bag, then history may yet show it was a sensible acquiescence. Kerry is likely well aware of just how bad the election system is, and realized (or was advised that) he had no chance of an effective legal challenge, no chance of fair recounts, no chance of ever coming out with a win, at least not anytime soon. Why beat your head against a brick wall? Our system does not DEAL with election crime.

It Is We The People now...who are leading on these issues, thankfully with some strong allies in government and elsewhere. Wycliff doesn't even acknowledge this. Instead he is defensive and still seeking to shut people up, which was his goal in the first place. If we annoy him long enough, you'll probably see all the defenses of the Professional Propagandist trotted out. He will not be open to HEARING anything.

And what's with this bogus argument about Nixon being such a good loser, and then Wycliff puts Kerry DOWN for not contesting--and in fact his whole denial of our perspective is based on the fact that Kerry did not contest. A very circular argument. :crazy:

So I completely agree, keepthemhonest--how WE the People see the election issues is what remains key. Wycliff doesn't give us an ounce of respect and never will. More importantly he deliberately hijacks and shreds the column of one of the few media writers who DOES give our views some credibility. THAT is the problem. THAT is the sleeze factor. The Tribune should print a rebuttal.

His concession is the trump card they all play, however. It is the single greatest obstacle we have faced since Nov. 3rd.

his position. Doesn't really add up, does it?

Perhaps they have been obscured.
If this is their main trump card
We need find a response that undeniably
triumphs over it

w

only committed against Kerry,it was committed against all of us.What are we chopped liver.

Kerry criticizes election outcome at MLK Day breakfast

Ken Maguire, Associated Press Writer | January 17, 2005

BOSTON -- Sen. John Kerry, in some of his most pointed public comments yet about the presidential election, invoked Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy on Monday as he criticized President Bush and decried reports of voter disenfranchisement.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/kerry/articles/2005/01/17/kerry_criticizes_election_outcome_at_mlk_day_breakfast/

It looks like the thing he wants above all else to run with this, is John Kerry to stand up and say something in public!

"Wycliff, N. Don to me
More options 8:30 am (7 hours ago)

Thanks for writing....dw "

Is something going on here nobody knows about? Is John Kerry looking at coming out of the shadows about this?

If he makes a statement, will it be without proof? He needs to show the proof before he makes such a statement regarding a stolen election.

First, it's Nixon; then, it's Kerry. Does this guy know anything?

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us (a day to reflect on what YOU are going to do to stop, peacefully, all the atrocities and lies of Bu$h and his fristian neoconster buddies)

That's harder to do because Kerry and his people work behind the scenes, they don't do things in public with the kind of crazy media we have today.

...Senator Kerry has adhered since 3 Nov 2004; and I respect it.

Thank you.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us