The Orange Revolution

[bernard]

Hi Somasimplers,

Ukraine voted last Sunday for a new president. Despite the evil conditions of voting, the official candidate was announced as the winner! :shock:

Fortunately this time, USA, Canada, Europe and many other countries (except Russia) seem in concordance => Let the Democracy play!

[fapt]

What is the ''orange revoluation'' ?

[bernard]

Hi Lin,

The Orange revolution comes from the color of scarf worn by the partisans of opposition in Ukraine.

The leader was poisoned by dioxine (but still alive) and new voting is previewed for next weeks.

[Anonymous]

Hi Bernard ;

you are right , however the world is full of evil , nothing is reliable , we do not know the exact intention of the oppostation leader and his local and out suporters.

I think he wins the trust of Ukranians ,today , however i doubt any futur changes .

cheers
emad

[Diane]

I can only hope that all these observers will make their way to the next US presidential election, to help safeguard democratic process.
Diane

[emad]

Hi diane ;

please explain your last post .


cheers

Emad

[Diane]

Hi Emad,
During the election in 2000, it was widely proposed that electronic voting in the key Florida polling stations had been tampered with. Currently, in the wake of the 2004 election, an investigation is underway to determine if tampering occurred in the electronic voting booths in Ohio.

It has been shown that all the "votes" in a state all go to a central computer to be tabulated. It has the same (lack of) security features as any simple PC. Simply by shifting a few columns around in a regular Excel program beforehand it is possible to skew the outcomes. It is thought by some intrepid investigators that exactly the same thing happened in Ohio as happened in Florida, that the vote counting programs may well have been tampered with, because exit polls seriously contradicted voting outcomes. This is a glaring statistical red flag.

Plus, in ridings where voting was on paper ballots, there were the same problems with partisan scrutineers ditching boxes full of paper votes in ridings expected to go "Democrat" effectively disenfranchising thousands upon thousands of voters.

It's all still being investigated after the fact. My take is that US elections need a serious overhaul and close monitering. Where is their electoral commission that is impartial, nonpartisan, and entrusted with the power to count each and every vote? And why do they persist in stacking their elections with all those "electoral college" votes, that completely eclipse proportional representation? In Canada we still have a way to go to have true proportional representation, but we are closer to the mark than that. Many European countries are miles ahead.
Diane

[Diane]

Here is a small sample of the fight to get to the bottom of vote counting improprieties in the US, specifically in Ohio. I thought I'd bring it here, because of your question Emad, and just to show that voting is seldom perfect, especially in the disUnited States of America. I doubt we'll see any tent cities spontaneously forming in the US however..

December 27th, 2004 7:58 pm
Kerry Files Motion to Protect Ohio Vote Evidence

By William Rivers Pitt / t r u t h o u t

This afternoon, an attorney representing the Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign filed two important motions to preserve and augment evidence of alleged election fraud in the November election. The motions were filed in the matter titled Yost et al. v. Delaware County Board of Elections and J. Kenneth Blackwell (Civil Action No. C2-04-1139) with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The document is titled "Motion Of Intervenor-Defendant Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc. For A Preservation Order And For A Leave To Take Limited Expedited Discovery."

The purpose of the motions is twofold: A) To preserve all ballots and voting machines pertaining to the Yost matter for investigation and analysis; and B) To make available for sworn deposition testimony a technician for Traid Systems, the company that produced and maintained many of the voting machines used in the Ohio election. The technician has been accused of tampering with the recount process in Hocking County, Ohio, though other counties are believed to have also been involved. Any officers of Triad Systems who have information pertaining to said tampering are likewise subject to subpoena for sworn deposition testimony.

If the judge in this case allows these motions, and these individuals are served with subpoenas for deposition, the information disclosed under oath could have a major effect on the case. Likewise, judicial approval of these motions will open the door to forensic analysis of both the ballots cast and the machines they were counted on. If tampering took place, such an analysis could reveal it.

The document filed in Ohio reads as follows:

Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, Intervenor-Defendant Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc. hereby moves this Court for an order preserving materials from the 2004 presidential election and for leave to take a limited number of depositions on an expedited schedule. The depositions and preservation order sought by Intervenor- Defendant Kerry-Edwards 2004, Inc. are the same as those sought in the motion filed on December 23, 2004 by Defendants NVRI, Cobb and Badnarik. Intervenor-Defendant Kerry-Edwads 2004, Inc. hereby adopts the memorandum and proposed order filed by the Defendants in support of its own motion.

As has been previously reported on truthout, this filing for the preservation and augmentation of evidence is centered on Hocking County, Ohio. According to a sworn affidavit by Sherole Eaton, Hocking County deputy director of elections, a technician for Triad Systems entered the county elections office on December 10 and dismantled one of the vote tabulation computers.

Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, a central figure in the Yost matter, described the incident as related to him by Eaton during a hearing on the matter chaired by Rep. John Conyers. "A representative from Triad Systems came into a county board of elections office un-announced," said Cobb. "He said he was just stopping by to see if they had any questions about the upcoming recount. He then headed into the back room where the Triad supplied Tabulator (a card reader and older PC with custom software) is kept. He told them there was a problem and the system had a bad battery and had 'lost all of its data.' He then took the computer apart and started swapping parts in and out of it and another 'spare' tower type PC also in the room.

"He may have had spare parts in his coat," continued Cobb, "as one of the BOE people moved it and remarked as to how very heavy it was. He finally re-assembled everything and said it was working but to not turn it off. He then asked which precinct would be counted for the 3% recount test, and the one which had been selected as it had the right number of votes, was relayed to him. He then went back and did something else to the tabulator computer. The Triad Systems representative suggested that since the hand count had to match the machine count exactly, and since it would be hard to memorize the several numbers which would be needed to get the count to come out exactly right, that they should post this series of numbers on the wall where they would not be noticed by observers."

Responding to Eaton's allegations, Rep. Conyers dispatched a letter of complaint to Brett Rapp, President of Triad. In it, Conyers wrote, "I am concerned that your company has operated - either intentionally or negligently - in a manner which will thwart the recount law in Ohio by preventing validly cast ballots in the presidential election from being counted. You have done this by preparing 'cheat sheets' providing county election officials with information such that they would more easily be able to ignore valid ballots that were thrown out by the machines during the initial count. The purpose of the Ohio recount law is to randomly check vote counts to see if they match machine counts. By attempting to ascertain the precinct to be recounted in advance, and then informing the election officials of the number of votes they need to count by hand to make sure it matches the machine count, is an invitation to completely ignore the purpose of the recount law."

The filing by the Kerry/Edwards campaign is significant. The Yost matter deals with a recount of the votes cast in Ohio during the election. In order for a judge to consider such a motion, the plaintiff must be able to prove irreparable harm in the matter at hand, and must also be able to prove a significant chance that the case will succeed on the merits. The stumbling point for the Green Party and Libertarian Party in this matter has been the ability to prove that potential for success, because no recount would deliver an Ohio victory to them. A recount could very well deliver Ohio to Kerry, thus fulfilling the success on the merits requirement.

In the end, this filing amounts to a "Me, too" from the Kerry/Edwards campaign. This case would not exist in any form without the dedicated efforts of Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik. Though the inclusion of Kerry into this matter strengthens the case significantly, Cobb and Badnarik deserve the lion's share of credit for carrying the matter to this point.

Attorney John Bonifaz serves as general counsel for the National Voting Rights Institute, and is co-counsel for Cobb and Badnarik in this matter. Reached for comment on this Kerry filing, Bonifaz said, "We are pleased that the Kerry Edwards campaign has joined our motion to preserve all of the ballots and election machinery in the presidential election in Ohio and to investigate the potential tampering of voting machines by Triad Governmental Systems, Inc, prior to the start of the recount. We welcome the Bush Cheney campaign joining our motion as well. The integrity of this recount is at stake. All candidates ought to join together in ensuring the proper counting of every citizen's vote."
Diane

[emad]

Hi Diane :

I have read your first post .

I am trying to select parts from your second post .

Of course , i can not comment because i do not know exaclty what is happening there in USA ,but you are right ,they depend heavly on Electronic means in USA to perform elections .

I look forwrd to see the outcomes of these investigations .
But i would ask you a question which attacked my mind whlie i am writing this post .

I begin to doubt evey thing in this life and those human beings acts make me feel every thing could be falsified and tempered as you said .

Do you think this Mointoring Group /Committte formulated to invstigate those misconductions could not be go under stress to chage their results ,may be , we need anothe committe to monitor the Act of the first one and the cycle oing on a roup to investigate each one ,,, no way the human bein like to decive ,and mony besides to pwoer could do any thing .

cheers
Emad

[Diane]

I found this, and thought I'd put it here as a followup to the previous post about electoral reform in various countries. For the first time since 1877, apparently, a member of the US senate has stood up to support a member of the US congress (required to move a proposal to a next stage it seems. In the 2000 US election the same irregularities were noted by various congress members but no senator would support their assertions.). These are two brave women, duly elected, one from Ohio and one from California, standing up to entrenched electoral irregularities in the US system.

January 7th, 2005 4:01 pm
'Why I Must Object' -- Statements by Senator Barbara Boxer

Senator Boxer / t r u t h o u t

Statement on her objection to the certification of Ohio's electoral votes.

For most of us in the Senate and the House, we have spent our lives fighting for things we believe in - always fighting to make our nation better.

We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice.

Now we must add a new fight - the fight for electoral justice.

Every citizen of this country who is registered to vote should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth of their community, their vote has as much weight as the vote of any Senator, any Congressperson, any President, any cabinet member, or any CEO of any Fortune 500 Corporation.

I am sure that every one of my colleagues - Democrat, Republican, and Independent - agrees with that statement. That in the voting booth, every one is equal.

So now it seems to me that under the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees the right to vote, we must ask:

Why did voters in Ohio wait hours in the rain to vote? Why were voters at Kenyan College, for example, made to wait in line until nearly 4 a.m. to vote because there were only two machines for 1300 voters?

Why did poor and predominantly African-American communities have disproportionately long waits?

Why in Franklin County did election officials only use 2,798 machines when they said they needed 5,000? Why did they hold back 68 machines in warehouses? Why were 42 of those machines in predominantly African-American districts?

Why did, in Columbus area alone, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 voters leave polling places, out of frustration, without having voted? How many more never bothered to vote after they heard about this?

Why is it when 638 people voted at a precinct in Franklin County, a voting machine awarded 4,258 extra votes to George Bush. Thankfully, they fixed it - but how many other votes did the computers get wrong?

Why did Franklin County officials reduce the number of electronic voting machines in downtown precincts, while adding them in the suburbs? This also led to long lines.

In Cleveland, why were there thousands of provisional ballots disqualified after poll workers gave faulty instructions to voters?

Because of this, and voting irregularities in so many other places, I am joining with Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now.

Our democracy is the centerpiece of who we are as a nation. And it is the fondest hope of all Americans that we can help bring democracy to every corner of the world.

As we try to do that, and as we are shedding the blood of our military to this end, we must realize that we lose so much credibility when our own electoral system needs so much improvement.

Yet, in the past four years, this Congress has not done everything it should to give confidence to all of our people their votes matter.

After passing the Help America Vote Act, nothing more was done.

A year ago, Senators Graham, Clinton and I introduced legislation that would have required that electronic voting systems provide a paper record to verify a vote. That paper trail would be stored in a secure ballot box and invaluable in case of a recount.

There is no reason why the Senate should not have taken up and passed that bill. At the very least, a hearing should have been held. But it never happened.

Before I close, I want to thank my colleague from the House, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

Her letter to me asking for my intervention was substantive and compelling.

As I wrote to her, I was particularly moved by her point that it is virtually impossible to get official House consideration of the whole issue of election reform, including these irregularities.

The Congresswoman has tremendous respect in her state of Ohio, which is at the center of this fight.

Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones was a judge for 10 years. She was a prosecutor for 8 years. She was inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.

I am proud to stand with her in filing this objection.

Go Barbara! Go Stephanie!
Diane