The Young Turks

On the show, Amy Goodman mentioned problems some voters were having in a few States, with electronic voting machines apparently changing their votes from Obama to another candidate. She then conducted an interview with a guy called Mark Crispin Miller, who has written 2 books on Republican election fraud in the 2000 and 2004 elections. In particular, Miller talked about a guy named Stephen Spoonamore, who is a committed Republican and an expert in computer fraud having worked for major banks, foreign governments and the Secret Service. Spoonamore is convinced that the Republican party has committed election fraud in multiple elections since 2000, by manipulation of the vote numbers from electronic voting machines.

I was, like most people, already aware of the various ways by which the Bush team stole Florida and the Presidency in 2000, and also that there had been irregularities in the 2004 Ohio vote regarding the Diebold voting machines. However, I did not know many details about these voting machines and their deficiencies.

I decided to search for clips of Stephen Spoonamore on youtube and, amongst other interviews, found one (split into 10 youtube clips) from September 2008. I will post the links to this interview below, along with my summary of what Spoonamore said in the interview. One thing that Miller said about Spoonamore on "Democracy now" was:

"He knows personally the principal players in Bush-Cheney’s conspiracy to subvert our elections through electronic means since 2000, and he has named these principal players. Specifically, he has named a man named Mike Connell. Mike Connell, according to Spoonamore, is Karl Rove’s computer guru. This is the guy who has helped Bush-Cheney fix election results through computers since Florida 2000, in Ohio in 2004, also in the stolen re-election of Governor Don Siegelman in Alabama in 2002, also in the stolen re-election of Senator Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002."

However, Miller seems to have overstated the case when he said:

"Now, the scariest thing is that Connell told Spoonamore that the reason why he has helped Bush-Cheney steal these elections for the last eight years has been to save the babies. See? We have to understand that there’s a very powerful component of religious fanaticism at work in the election fraud conspiracy."

From what I could gather, Spoonamore doesn't know for certain whether Connell actually set up the machines to steal votes, although he might strongly suspect it. Connell doesn't appear to have confessed anything about election fraud to Spoonamore, although it does seem that he is a Christian pro-life fundamentalist. Apparently Connell works in some capacity on or with the McCain campaign and has just been subpoenaed in a case concerning the alleged 2004 election fraud, although he and his Republican party lawyers are trying to quash the subpoena.

Anyway, here are the youtube links and my summary of what Spoonamore said in the interview.

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=LyByZx5GEaw

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=YadsHqxid8I

Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=mbxuXC4QlMk

Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=kOHkY7sJ4ZI

Part 5 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=1--KHOo8tkM

Part 6 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=GJHmuG8d2bQ

Part 7 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=4Z7DK3LgiOA

Part 8 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=8WTe8ppEIic

Part 9 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=1lrFkRHrRDI

Part 10 http://www.youtube.com/watc h?v=s07oi2G_K4c

My Summary:

*Voting machines intrinsically can't be made secure because votes are meant to be anonymous, and for anonymity to occur the electronic information of who voted for each candidate cannot be recorded. This contrasts with (eg) bank transactions, where specific people are tied to each transaction. This makes it possible for the vote numbers for each candidate to be changed in an untraceable way.
*It is possible for many groups, including foreign governments, to hack the voting machines.
*Vote manipulation probably (usually) occurs at the stage of the process where vote numbers for each machine are tabulated.
*Whenever exit polls have disagreed with voting machine numbers over the last decade, it is virtually certain that the Republican candidate is favoured.
*The anomaly from Ohio electronic voting machines of an extremely liberal, relatively unknown, black judge way down-ticket getting more votes in her race than John Kerry did for president was statistically impossible without voter manipulation, and this was probably achieved at the tabulator level (through the tabulators transmitting the results to a private company, where numbers could be manipulated, on the way to the master tabulator at the Secretary of State's office) by changing approximately the number of Kerry votes to Bush votes in certain counties as would be required to give Bush victory in Ohio. Statistical anomalies of one tenth that extent for credit card transactions would have instantaneously triggered an investigation, as it would be clear someone was manipulating the numbers.
*Any time a functioning computer system has its hard drives stripped out in a banking investigation, the only reason is that the suspects are trying to eliminate the evidence of a crime. However, when the Green party demanded a recount in Ohio, all of a sudden a company called "Triad" came in and replaced the hard drives of some voting machine tabulators, falsely claiming that for the recount to work the tabulators needed "clean hard drives with clean programming".
*Every time Spoonamore has investigated a voting machine problem, the programmers have been fundamentalist Christians whose main political agenda is to have a Supreme Court which will overturn Roe v Wade in order to "save the babies".
*The only way to ensure this type of election fraud doesn't occur is to use paper ballots, even if it means every voter demands an absentee ballot.
*Not only have the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections been stolen, but certain other results, such as the 2002 election of Saxby Chambliss as a Senator for Georgia, were fraudulent.
*Spoonamore wouldn't be surprised to see McCain/Palin "win" by 3 electoral college votes in a shocking recovery.
 

Obviously I don't know if the Republicans could manage to manipulate the vote to such an extent and in enough States to swing the election (assuming Obama still has his current lead come election day). It is also unclear what the consequences would be if such a blatant fraud was undertaken. It is worth remembering though that it is not just the Presidential election that might come under attack, but also many House and Senate races. One thing seems sensible though, and that is to vote via paper ballot if at all possible, and to encourage other people to do likewise.