This is from one of my mailing lists, copied in its entirety with permission from the author. It's also the front page story (as of 11/27/06) on
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ (Sorry! I mentioned to the person I'm quoting here that there are other organizations.....!)
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I am gathering evidence that points to the REAL reason behind the "results" of the recent elections in Texas. I have almost 30 years experience in Information Technology, with programming experience in Elections systems. I was a Poll Watcher at the Central Tabulating Station on Election Night in Hill County. Problems lasted into the early morning hours with periodic numbers pronounced as "good" that didn't add up. Early in the a.m., the Elections Administrator, worn to a frazzle, was ready to accept ANY numbers that the ES&S technician onsite blessed. I repeatedly pointed out errors in the numbers until the last set, which I was not able to see until the EA said they were final. At that time I asked if they could get those numbers to match the tapes from the DRE's, and they could not because one of the printed tapes was not legible. They could not reproduce the tape because they said the machine was still at the polling location!!! I lodged a formal complaint for vote counting irregularities based on that, and the problems experienced throughout the evening. I also later lodged a complaint with the SOS and was told someone would contact me. I have still not heard back from them.
My local candidates filed requests for Public Records, and the results tell the tale!!! Anomalies that are statistically next to impossible abound. Hill County voters used a combination of paper ballots and the No paper trail DRE's from ES&S. ALL the candidates, up and down the ticket had much better numbers on the paper ballots, and ALL the local candidates won on paper, both in early voting and on E-Day. Before you attribute it to only Democrats asking for paper ballots, you need to know that we had Precincts running out of paper ballots at 9am!!! During the school for elections workers, the EA dept told everyone to "...push the machines, because you WILL run out of paper ballots otherwise...".
ES&S has blamed their "poorly trained" technician for the problems, but he NEVER made an independent move, and ALWAYS had his cell phone stuck in his ear for instructions, as HE was running the console.
Hill County has ALWAYS been a Blue County, and the paper numbers verify it still is! Another statistical anomaly happened in the 2 contested County Commissioner races. The Republicans in both races got the same number of votes - 1179!!! When the ES&S representative (Chris Moody) was asked in Commissioners Court at the Special Canvass meeting what the odds of that happening were, he replyed, "...the Lottery...".
Rural Counties like Hill, with little technical expertise, are easy targets for this type of manipulation, but it does not stop there!!! ALL of the voting machines were deployed throughout the country pre-programmed with a formula that Karl Rove was probably talking about when he said he had "...done the math...". The logistics of pre-programming these machines meant that the formula had been done based on the "math" in early October at the latest. By the time early voting and E-Day rolled around, the mood in the country had changed considerably, but it was too late to re-program unnoticed. All across the country the voters beat the percentage or got close. Tons of money (that we can never match) was poured into races that just didn't make sense, but for only the reason to give the impression that IT made the difference. For example, one of the Republican Commissioner candidates here spent over $8000, with "...little of his own money...", and the balance coming from "donations".
A citizen WatchDog group founder told me, this was one of the best reports she had ever heard, when I told her my tale in detail.. Since ES&S has picked up the scent that we were on to something, we have now gone public. The major media outlets will be reluctant to report on this, but with pressure from the public, they shouldn't have much choice.
We owe it to the voters of Texas and the United States to insure the integrity of the vote. We owe it to all of the Democrats who worked their asses off, and got shafted by the machines, to shine some light on this and FIX it!!! If the voters don't have confidence that their vote counted, they'll quit voting, AGAIN!!! If we don't fix this, all the work you've done, and are going to do for the next election, will be for naught!!!
Please help me, by keeping this topic in the limelight. A simple review of the close races in the Texas House and Senate shows that Democrats really won control. It also looks like we really won some of the statewide races. I would urge you to look at the numbers yourself, especially the differences in Counties that had paper and machine voting, and ANYWHERE there were "glitches" with the machines.