By PAUL KRUGMAN
November 24, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
You know what really had me terrified on Nov. 7? The all-too-real possibility of a highly
suspect result. What would we have done if the Republicans had held on to the House by a
narrow margin, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggested that a combination of vote
suppression and defective — or rigged — electronic voting machines made the difference?
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Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections Hacked
By Rob Kall
Results Skewed Nationwide In Favor of Republicans by 4 percent, 3 million votes
A major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in
U.S. House and Senate races across the country is indicated by an analysis of national
exit polling data, by the Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization.
These findings have led EDA to issue an urgent call for further investigation into the
2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment.
"We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions
existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape," said attorney Jonathan
Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, "so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient
for the actual circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig an election, you
want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling,
pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation.
What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7.
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by Bob Burnett | Nov 14 2006 - 5:31pm |
The elections in 2000, 2002, and 2004 featured Republican dirty tricks: extensive voter
suppression and iniquitous vote count manipulation. While 2006 saw some of the latter,
the main GOP tactic was once again voter suppression: either directly by purging valid
names from voter rolls or indirectly by harassing and misleading phone calls.
In roughly 50 key congressional races, likely Democratic voters were bombarded by
automatic phone messages, robo calls, that claimed to be from their candidate, but were
actually attack ads. GOP dirty tricks were an important factor in seven of the eleven
Congressional races whose outcome is yet to be decided.
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By Brad Friedman, Computerworld
Posted on November 13, 2006, Printed on November 15, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/44217/
ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE SLAYS NINE
Terrorizes Florida in Thrill-Kill Rampage
That headline was from a satirical column written by Andy Borowitz published last Monday,
the day before Tuesday's midterm elections. Unfortunately, given the post-election coverage
by some of the nation's leading media -- or at least their headline writers -- it seems that only
an event such as a Diebold voting machine becoming "unmoored from the floor and...trampling
everyone and everything in its path," as Borowitz wrote, would qualify as anything more than
a "glitch," "hiccup," "snag" or "snafu."
"Voting System Worked, With Some Hiccups," declared the AP headline on Wednesday.
"Polling Places Report Snags, but Not Chaos," echoed The New York Times. "Hiccups"?
"Snags"? Try telling that to the thousands of voters around the country who were unable
to simply cast a vote last Tuesday because new, untested electronic voting machines failed
to work. Monumentally. Across the entire country.
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Election Could Have Been Thrown, Says Fraud Expert
Beverly Harris considers Token Victory for Democrats
Fixed to Quell Dissent on mass Voting Fraud, liberal bloggers
begin to attack anyone who doesn't jump on the Pelosi bandwagon
WE NEED TO KEEP THE PRESSURE ON -
- TO RADICALLY CHANGE ELECTRONIC VOTING -
OR WE ARE BACK TO SQUARE ONE, IN 08' !!!
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By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on November 10, 2006, Printed on November 12, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/44122/
Don't confuse a good political outcome with a bad electoral process.
Election integrity activists face a quandary this week. After an Election Day where
new voting machines failed from coast to coast, and GOP-favoring voter suppression
tactics unfolded in state after state, this largely liberal-leaning community knows all too
well that the machinery used to slam the breaks on the dreadful Bush administration is
deeply flawed, that Tuesday night's vote counts shouldn't fully be trusted.
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Before you get too excited by the Democratic sweep of Congress and the ability of the
Dems to "balance the power" of the Executive Branch, read Paul Joseph Watson &
Alex Jones' scathing attack on the velvet gloved branch of the one corporate, imperial
party in America. Read this, then post your ideas on making sure that the feel-good,
do-nothing Democratic leadership doesn't take the wind out of the 9/11 truth movement:
"9/11 Truth Is Dying
Many in liberal, progressive, truth community pacified by sham re-arranging of the deck
chairs, desert movement, dilute focus, as Dean and Pelosi promise to protect Bush from impeachment
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by Robert Parry | Nov 9 2006 - 11:23pm
Robert Gates, George W. Bush's choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense
Secretary, is a trusted figure within the Bush Family's inner circle, but there are lingering
questions about whether Gates is a trustworthy public official.
The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists
in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence
to conform with the desires of policymakers - three key areas that relate to his future job.
Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to
be CIA director - and the current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the
congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the
end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated.
If Bush's timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates's past.
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Anatomy Of The Midterms: Bye-Bye Coke, Hello Pepsi
By Joshua Frank
10 November, 2006
Countercurrents.org
It’s going to take a little time to get used to it. The Republicans will no longer control
Congress come January. Voters on November 7 stormed the polls to denounce the Bush
administration’s scandal-laden entourage and the occupation of Iraq. One by one they
went down. Even so, the defeat of the neo-cons certainly doesn’t mean Republican values
are on the skids.
You would guess that with the massive anti-Bush uproar the Democrats would now possess
a progressive mandate to reshape the corruption that engulfs Washington. But you’d be
wrong. Many of the Republicans’ substitutes are anti-choice, pro-war, socially conservative
centrists. Of the newly elected House Democrats at least 9 will be joining the conservative
Blue Dog caucus. According to the coalition’s spokesperson Vicky Walling, the organization
had endorsed 16 new candidates this year.
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Field Of Screams - The Real Election Winners And Losers
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
09 November, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Forget political correctness. The revolution has NOT arrived! Bush is still president.
The corporate state is safe. The Upper Class has little to fear. Lobbyists will be writing
different names on checks. Winning Democrats will entertain more than they will produce
historic restorative reforms. Did Republicans deserve to lose? Of course!
However, Americans who thought their votes would bring much needed change to our
political system also lost. They just don’t know or admit it yet. As usual, the third-party
movement lost, because the two-party duopoly maintained its stranglehold on our political
system. Populists and true progressives lost. Who or what was the biggest winner? The
short-term and delusional tactic of lesser-evil voting won big.
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By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on November 6, 2006, Printed on November 7, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/43967/
In campaign stops across the country, George W. Bush is delivering a medley of his
favorite lies, half-truths and non sequiturs about Iraq and the "war on terror." Yet the
President's listeners seem to revel in the distortions, celebrating with shouts of "USA!
USA!" and responding on cue when Bush has them mock the Democrats.
Some appearances have a Lord of the Flies quality, as excited Republicans rally around
their strong man hailing his pronouncements even when they make little or no sense, or
when they celebrate the misjudgments that led to the disaster in Iraq.
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OUR RIGGED ELECTIONS
The Elephant in the Polling Booth
By Mark Crispin Miller | October 1, 2006
To say that this election could go either way is not to say that the Republicans
have any chance of winning it. As a civic entity responsive to the voters' will,
the party's over, there being no American majority that backs it, or that ever
would. Bush has left the GOP in much the same condition as Iraq, Afghanistan,
the global climate, New Orleans, the Bill of Rights, our military, our economy
and our national reputation. Thus the regime is reviled as hotly by conservatives
as by liberals, nor do any moderates support it.
Even though this election could go either way, neither way will benefit the
Democrats. Either the Republicans will steal their "re-election" on Election
Day, just as they did two years ago, or they will slime their way to "victory"
through force and fraud and strident propaganda, as they did after Election Day
2000. Whichever strategy they use, the only way to stop it is to face it, and then
shout so long and loud about it that the people finally perceive, at last, that their
suspicions are entirely just—and, this time, just say no.
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by David Swanson | Oct 26 2006 - 4:55pm
White House political head honcho Karl Rove was interviewed by National Public
Radio yesterday. He effectively announced plans to steal the coming elections. The polls
point decisively to a Democratic majority in the House, and possibly in the Senate. Yet Rove
told NPR he was certain of Republican majorities in both houses, and gave laughable reasons
for his claim. Rove had no actual evidence to point to.
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Wednesday, October 25, 2006
One bad apple...
What if I told you that it would take only one person—one highly motivated, but only
moderately skilled bad apple, with either authorized or unauthorized access to the right
company's internal computer network—to steal a statewide election? You might think I
was crazy, or alarmist, or just talking about something that's only a remote, highly
theoretical possibility. You also probably would think I was being really over-the-top if
I told you that, without sweeping and very costly changes to the American electoral process,
this scenario is almost certain to play out at some point in the future in some county or state
in America, and that after it happens not only will we not have a clue as to what has taken
place, but if we do get suspicious there will be no way to prove anything. You certainly
wouldn't want to believe me, and I don't blame you.
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The Original October Surprise
By Robert Parry
October 25, 2006
Editor’s Note: As the United States heads toward a pivotal election on Nov. 7, both
Republicans and Democrats are worried about the prospect of an “October Surprise”
that could alter the political dynamic in the next two weeks.
Though last-minute campaign surprises are probably as old as democracy itself, the
phrase in its modern usage dates back just over a quarter century to 1980 when President
Jimmy Carter was seeking the freedom of 52 American hostages in Iran. Then-vice presidential
candidate George H.W. Bush fretted publicly that a hostage release might be an “October Surprise”
that would catapult Carter to reelection.
Ironically, however, the 1980 “October Surprise” controversy came to refer to an alleged dirty
trick by Bush and other Republicans that thwarted Carter from gaining the hostages’ freedom.
Carter’s failure propelled Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. to a landslide victory.
Arguably, the “October Surprise” of 1980 ushered in the modern era of GOP dominance,
with the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations. Arguably, too, the Democrats’ failure
in December 1992 to get the truth out about the Republican chicanery set the stage for the Right’s congressional resurgence in 1994 and for today’s George W. Bush Era.
So, given the importance of the 1980 election in shaping today’s political terrain – and given
the current interest in what might happen in the days ahead – we are publishing a series about
the original October Surprise adapted from Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the
Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq:
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