Guest Blogged by John Gideon
Tonight Lou reported on the complete failure of the Maryland primary. Thousands of voters were forced to vote on ‘provisional’ ballots instead of the state’s vaunted Diebold Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines. At least those voters have a paper trail of their votes, but will they actually be counted? What a failure and it should all be laid at the feet of state Director of Elections Linda Lamone and Governor Ehrlich who both share responsibility for this failure.
The text-transcript of tonight’s segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full…
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Fifty days until the November elections, but Maryland’s primary yesterday was a debacle. The entire state was supposed to use electronic voting, Diebold touch screen machines, but the Board of Elections forgot to make sure computer access cards for the majority of the districts would arrive in the morning.
The machines could not work without them, so poll workers told voters to come back later or use paper ballots instead. Lines were long, tempers short, the courts ordered polls to stay open late. In some cases when machines crashed, there were not enough paper ballots.
SHELLEY FUDGE, TRUEVOTEMD: Sometimes the election judges ran out and made xeroxed copies. In other cases, they were using sample ballots and in some cases, they were actually recording people’s votes on scraps of paper.
PILGRIM: Maryland has long been a concern among voter activists because electronic voting machines do not have a voter-verified paper trail. The governor tried to fix that, setting aside $20 million to purchase a new system with a paper trail, but the measure was killed in the state Senate.
KEVIN ZEESE, MARYLAND SENATE CANDIDATE: You spend $100 million on machines where you can’t do an independent audit. There’s no way to know if the machine is right. And so we’ve waist wasted all this money on machines that can’t do a transparent recount. It’s pretty embarrassing.
PILGRIM: Avi Rubin is an election judge and a voter activist.
AVI RUBIN, AUTHOR, “BRAVE NEW BALLOT”: In my precinct there were some pretty serious technical problems. The electronic poll books have replaced the sign-in cards that we used and they kept crashing. In fact, we took one of them off-line and then the other two kept crashing.
PILGRIM: Diebold says problems were because of human error and because the machines were operated incorrectly. Adding, there is a learning curve on all of this.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM: Now the governor’s office said they got more than 100 phone calls from voters complaining about the problems. They called it a systemic breakdown from top to bottom.
DOBBS: Systemic my, I think that the info is right about one thing. I think when everyone was blaming this on human error, Diebold, I think you said this, said it was human error, not their vaunted machines. I think it is human error. The error of buying and purchasing those Diebold machines, certainly at least in Maryland. Thank you very much Kitty Pilgrim.
Speaking as a Canadian, this kind of massive, widespread problem blows my mind. I don’t even get how things have come this far and gotten so bad. I can’t understand why nobody in the media seems to care (except Dobbs).
I mean, when I go to vote, I’m given a paper and a pen and I make a check mark in the box. I fold the paper and put it in a locked box. Simple as that. There may or may not be a tear off receipt as well…I don’t remember. All our elections are done and counted by 10 pm and ballots must be kept, by law, for a certain number of years (i believe). It couldn’t possible get any easier.
To put a cap on this trainwreck.
It all eminates from the WHITE HOUSE NEO-CON CRIMINAL TAKEOVER PLAN. THANK YOU BUSHIT ADMINISTRATION.
YOU WON ANOTHER BATTLE.
Thank you, Rosencrantz.
The screamingly obvious solution, in my humble opinion, to the burgeoning electoral insanity in the US, is to emulate Canada and, if I’m not mistaken, Great Britain. Pen & paper and lots of observers from all parties. Simple, cheap and FREAKING OBVIOUS, it seems to me!!
By the way, I intend to email the link to that vote-rigging video demo (which was in the “Front Page” thread last time I looked) to Lou Dobbs, and I hope 6 or 7 others do the same.
I’d put the link here but I’m having trouble with my mouse.
Why not also send it to anyone running for Congress who we think might actually take it seriously? I sent it to a friend, who’s also a friend of Bradblog, who is working on one such campaign.
It’s very simple & easy to follow so I suspect even Congressmen could understand it.
Lou Dobbs contact info:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?9
The vote-rigging video:
link
I was just going to ask…is Lou Dobbs still reporting on e-vote machines?
rosencrantz: please don’t blame ALL Americans for what’s going on, I apologize for our government…
Big Dan:
I don’t blame any Americans, except maybe those loyal Bush supporters who will write off all these problems as left-wing whining.
I do blame the media for going out of their way to ignore this story. And my biggest fear is that if nothing is done quickly in the US then these machines will make their way into other countries. In fact, I may be wrong, but I think some places in Canada already have Diebold vote counting machines. I should look into that.
Damn straight, Rosencrantz. You don’t wan’t the neocons deciding who wins in Canada, too!! Your best bet is to keep the machines from even being purchased, so you better start right away.
Rosencrantz..thanks for reading bradblog and caring. Canada is trying to put in diebold voting machines. Your new prime minister is a Bush “wannabe.” He just gave bush 450 million to be used without congressional oversight to kill off what is left of the softwood lumber business in US. Mills are closing all over, woodsmen put out of business. Al Gore was villified for using the Blair house phones to raise money for the dem. party. This 450 million is a bribe and not mentioned in the so called MSM. Otherwise known as “state media.” The sad play is coming to the country nearest US. The new PM Harper only calls on friendly reporters and one of the “friendlies” asked should reporters be jailed? If the election fraud is pulled off in Mexico the new super highway will run right thru the continent with drugs and guns for everybody.
Thank you, Lou, for covering this. Everyone should post “thank you” whenever Lou covers e-vote fraud. Here’s someone on corporate TV news covering what we want, something important to us (not stingrays or Jon Bonet Ramsey).
Can’t everyone post “thank you” whenever Brad puts up an article that Lou Dobbs is covering vote fraud? It won’t cost you a thing.
9 comments on someone on CNN covering e-vote fraud? wtf?????????
You know what 9 comments about Lou covering e-vote fraud looks like? It looks like we don’t care (to me at least). Then we’ll be complaining if he stops covering it.
THERE’S LESS THAN 60 DAYS TO GO UNTIL WE GET RIPPED OFF AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!
Listen, if you don’t have the time or the $$$, do what I did. Make up a list of about 30 people’s email addresses in a distribution list, include your local newspapers and talk radio shows, and fire off links to Brad’s e-vote articles. That’s the least you can do, with only less than 60 days left until we get fucked again by DIEBOLD and ES&S…anyone who shows the least bit of interest at work, add their name to your distribution list.
COME ON! LET’S GET GOING!!!!!!
ONE email…ONE friggin’ email, that’s read over one of your local talk radio shows, for example the one about the University test implanting a virus, gets heard by thousands of people. Multiply that by however many of us send out emails around the country. DO IT!!!!
I remember that right after the ’04 election Al Franken was not at all convinced that the election was stolen. As far as I know he still takes this view. I sent the vote-rigging link to Lou Dobbs (yes, with a “thank you”!)…I’ll send it to Franken, too. And Schultz & Randi, although Randi probably is aware of it.
I’ll send it to the local paper but I doubt they’ll print a story about it.
#7 Rosencrantz. Yes machines have been used but mostly in municiple elections-so far. Diebold has bought all the the ATM machines for TD Canada Trust.
Here’s a couple of sites I read.
http://www.answers.com/topic/el...ting-in-canada
A 2000 year-end report from Global Election Systems (now owned by US company Diebold and called Diebold Election Systems) states “Global reports add-on sales of 60 AccuVote systems to the City of Ottawa and 70 to the City of Hamilton as well as first-time sales of 60 AccuVote-TS systems to the City of Barrie”.
http://papervotecanada.blogspot.com/
bigdan # 6. We don’t blame Americans, at least I don’t think most do. I blame the crooks at the top and the unthinking bushblinded. If we had had Harper as PM we’d be Iraq too and all our soldiers would likely be dead. We escaped by the skin of our teeth. I see a great awakening for all of us in this sad,sad, situation. Personally I see a side of Americans , that has come about all because of this crap, that is very strong, loyal, caring and SMART even 🙂 Together you will make it right.
Thanks again to Lou Dobbs, Kitty Pilgrim and CNN. Hugs to all of you for standing up. “Outstanding”
Sent a letter to Dobbs! Thanks for reminding me to give positive feedback.
http://www.rawstory.com/comments/19677.html
FCC orders draft of study showing media concentration hurts TV news coverage…DESTROYED!!!!!!!!
Now we know why Air America and other media outlets like the NY TIMEs are going bankrupt-the offer bankrupt news-propaganda. The people of this country are waking up to the MASSIVE fraud perpetrated by the elites to control EVERYTHING!