New Statesman - Michael Meacher - Did Dubbya rig the election?

Did Dubbya rig the election?
Michael Meacher
Monday 29th November 2004

Michael Meacher smells something fishy in Bush's return to office. The evidence of fraud is not yet conclusive but, given the Republicans' record, it is all too plausible

The great mystery of the US presidential election was that the exit polls, which had been reliable guides in all previous elections, did not tally with the final results. Tony Blair, it is said, went to sleep on 2 November thinking John Kerry had won, but woke in the morning to find that George W Bush was the victor. Many Britons and Americans had the same experience. Nobody has advanced a satisfactory explanation. Now allegations are surfacing that the use of electronic voting systems and optical scanning devices may have had a significant influence on the result. Computer security experts insist that such sys- tems are not secure and not tamper-proof, yet they were used to count a third of the votes across 37 states. Though the Democrats remain strangely coy about the whole subject, academics and political analysts are now drawing comparisons between areas that used paper ballots and areas that used electronic systems. Is it possible that results in the latter were rigged?

An analysis of the poll by different states points up inconsistencies that cannot be explained by random variation. In Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Iowa, New Mexico, Maine, Nevada, Arkansas and Missouri, where a variety of different voting systems were used, including paper ballots in many cases, the four companies carrying out exit polls were almost exactly right and their results were certainly within the margin of error. In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire and North Carolina, however, where electronic or optical scanning machines were used (though not exclusively), the tracking polls were seriously discrepant from the published result.

Two aspects of this are immediately striking. One is the large size of the variance, and the other is that in every case it favoured Bush. In Wisconsin and Ohio, the discrepancy favoured Bush by 4 per cent, in Pennsylvania by 5 per cent, in Florida and Minnesota by 7 per cent, in North Carolina by 9 per cent and in New Hampshire by an astonishing 15 per cent.

Moreover, extensive voting irregularities have been reported across the US - including intimidation, exclusion of black voters from electoral rolls, touchscreens that consistently registered support for Bush when the name Kerry was touched, and a large number of county precincts (including in Ohio) where the number of votes cast exceeded the total number of registered voters, sometimes by large margins. In Florida, for example, the number of votes reported for all the candidates exceeded the maximum possible voter turnout by 237,522, so that a minimum of 3.1 per cent of the votes must be fraudulent, and possibly considerably more. Florida uses electronic voting machines in 15 counties, and these account for a majority of the state's residents.

None of this is conclusive evidence of fraud. But an independent inquiry is surely needed to expose what really happened in Florida and several other states. Some Americans are already demanding such an inquiry. Court hearings, held in public in Columbus, Ohio, will very likely lead to at least a partial recount in that state. Ralph Nader, the Green candidate, may have secured a recount in New Hampshire, and is demanding recounts also in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. And a survey by the University of Berkeley, California, has shown that irregularities in Florida associated with electronic voting machines seem to have awarded 130,000 to 260,000 or more excess votes to Bush.

One's immediate reaction is that such large-scale fraud is implausible. But look at the history of the Republican Party, and its willingness to go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the popular vote, and the idea seems all too likely.

The best-known example was the Watergate break-in of 1972, designed to get illicit access to Democrat plans for a presidential election that Richard Nixon feared he would lose. At the previous election in 1968, Nixon's aides were charged with persuading the South Vietnamese to delay their participation in peace talks to deny possible advantage to the Democrats, then in office.

But that was only a precursor for 1980. In that year, when Ronald Reagan was the Republican candidate trying to stop the re-election of President Jimmy Carter, a potentially treasonable plot was hatched, which came to be known as the "October surprise". To stop Carter getting the credit for securing the release of the 52 US embassy hostages seized after the Iranian revolution, members of the Reagan campaign flew to Paris to meet Iranian and Israeli representatives in October, less than a month before the election on 4 November. Several sources, including the New York Times (15 April 1991), confirm that not only did William Casey, the CIA director, attend those meetings, but so did the vice-presidential candidate George Bush (father of George W).

It was agreed with the Iranians that the hostages would not be released before the election. In return, the Reagan-Bush team promised to supply $40m of military equipment if elected. Military equipment started to flow to Iran from Israel on 21 October, the proffered release of the hostages was withdrawn, and Carter was defeated. The hostages were finally released on 21 January 1981, minutes after Reagan was sworn in as president.

The Iran-Contra affair followed in 1986-87. After the US Congress had passed the Boland Amendment in 1982 forbidding direct military aid to the Contras in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration again ferried arms secretly to Iran (then subject to a US arms embargo), and then used the proceeds to fund weaponry for the Contras. Even when this deal, illegal at both ends, was later exposed, the administration's web of deceit managed to shield Reagan and Bush from the consequences of their conspiracy.

Once elected, Bush junior used his authority to keep this material hidden for ever. In November 2001, he signed an executive order that limited freedom of information by allowing either a past or sitting president to block access to White House papers. He then vetoed access to Reagan's papers, which would otherwise have been opened to public scrutiny in January 2002. Under this order, Bush's personal papers, detailing the decision-making process in the war on terrorism, could remain secret in perpetuity.

The most recent example of Republican manipulation is notorious. After the Bush-Gore race for the presidency in 2000, it later emerged that, under the governorship of George W's brother Jeb in Florida, around 30,000 black voters (overwhelmingly Democratic) had been illegally excluded from the voting rolls. When a stop was put to the recounts in the state, Bush was declared the winner by fewer than 540 votes.

So can we really be sure that this year's result was an accurate reflection of the popular will? It has emerged that the Diebold Gems software and optical scan voting machines used in counting a high proportion of the votes may not be tamper-proof from hacking, particularly via remote modems. Two US computer security experts, in their recently published book Black Box Voting, argue that "by entering a two-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created; and this set of votes can be changed in a matter of seconds, so that it no longer matches the correct votes". After the Florida fiasco four years earlier, the US Congress voted $3.9bn to improve the quality of voting systems. Perhaps the latest revelations about what happened where electronic systems were used may become known as the "November surprise".

Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton

"A top aide to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat has dropped a new clue about the original 'October Surprise' mystery of 1980: the name of the Republican operative who sought the Palestine Liberation Organization’s help to block President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 Americans then being held hostage in Iran. Longtime Arafat confidant Bassam Abu Sharif said that in mid-1980, he met in Paris with John Shaheen, a friend to both Ronald Reagan and Reagan’s campaign chief, William J. Casey. Abu Sharif told me that Shaheen, a former U.S. intelligence officer of Lebanese origin, extended a Republican offer of improved U.S. relations with the PLO if the Arafat-led organization would assist in persuading the Iranians to delay the hostage release until after the November 1980 elections. Shaheen, who died in 1985, has long been a central figure in the so-called 'October Surprise' case, allegations that Republicans sabotaged Carter’s hostage negotiations as a way to ensure the 1980 election of Reagan as president and George H.W. Bush as vice president. Though Abu Sharif and Arafat have previously discussed the Republican overture, they had refused to identify the Republican intermediary until now. The alleged secret deal between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Iranians popularized the idea of an 'October Surprise,' a last-minute event that might alter the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. The phrase was coined by then-vice presidential candidate Bush in the context that Carter’s success in freeing the hostages might be his 'October Surprise,' though it later came to refer to the alleged Republican scheming to derail Carter’s hostage talks. Republican leaders have long denied that any deal with the Iranians was struck, although more than two dozen witnesses – including Iranian officials, European intelligence officers and international arms dealers – have described aspects of the 1980 Republican-Iranian contacts carried out behind President Carter’s back. In 1992-93, a House Task Force conducted a half-hearted investigation of the controversy and judged the allegations of a Republican-Iranian deal to be false. But it was later discovered that the Task Force had concealed evidence that pointed in the opposite direction, including a classified report from the Russian government stating that Bush, Casey and CIA officers had met with Iranians in Europe in 1980 to strike a deal. [For details, see Robert Parry’s new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]"
Arafat & the Original 'October Surprise'
Consortium News, 2 November 2004

"Today the University of California's Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team released a statistical study - the sole method available to monitor the accuracy of e-voting - reporting irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods - what the team says can be deemed a 'smoke alarm.' Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance - the probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team formally disclosed results of the study at a press conference today at the UC Berkeley Survey Research Center, where they called on Florida voting officials to investigate.... The research team is comprised of doctoral students and faculty in the UC Berkeley sociology department, and led by Sociology Professor Michael Hout, a nationally-known expert on statistical methods and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the UC Berkeley Survey Research Center.... 'No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained,' said Hout. 'The study shows, that a county's use of electronic voting resulted in a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. There is just a trivial probability of evidence like this appearing in a population where the true difference is zero - less than once in a thousand chances."
UC Berkeley Research Team Sounds 'Smoke Alarm' for Florida E-Vote Count
University of California Berkeley, Press Release 18 November 2004

"National pollster John Zogby, with a mixed record of predicting past elections, Tuesday afternoon went out on a limb and projected that Sen. John Kerry would defeat President Bush in the 2004 election. Zogby released his Election Day polling results shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday showing Kerry with 311 electoral votes to Bush's 213. Two-hundred seventy electoral votes are necessary to win the presidency. Zogby said Nevada and Colorado were too close to call. Republican operatives at Bush's planned victory party in Washington dismissed the numbers as inflated in Kerry's favor. Zogby had Kerry winning nearly all of the battleground states, including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Massachusetts senator had big leads in Iowa and Wisconsin, according to Zogby's polls. Earlier in the day, RealClearPolitics.com issued its average of various polls and showed that Bush was leading Kerry in the Electoral College vote, 227 to 203, with seven states too close to call. Those seven states were Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and New Mexico".
CNSNews, 2 November 2004
(Saved text - article web link no longer traceable)

"The conventional wisdom going into the election was that three critical states would likely determine who would win the Presidential election - Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.... The odds against all three [exit poll/tallied vote shifts] occuring are 250 million to one."
The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy
University of Pennsylvania, 14 November 2004

"Congress' investigative agency, responding to complaints from around the country, has begun to look into the Nov. 2 vote count, including the handling of provisional ballots and malfunctions of voting machines. The presidential results won't change, but the studies could lead to changes. The Government Accountability Office usually begins investigations in response to specific requests from Congress, but the agency's head, Comptroller General David Walker, said the GAO acted on its own because of the many comments it received about ballot counting. GAO officials said the investigation was not triggered by a request from several House Democrats, who wrote the agency this month seeking an investigation. The effort, led by senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers of Michigan, was not joined by any Republicans. Walker said in a statement that some of the election work is under way. The probe will cover voter registration, voting machine problems and handling of provisional ballots, which were given to voters who said they were eligible to cast votes although their names were not on the rolls. He cautioned that the GAO cannot enforce the law if voting irregularities are found, noting that state officials regulate elections and the Justice Department prosecutes voting rights violations and election fraud. Conyers said in an interview Wednesday that several House Democrats 'want the widest, most impartial investigation that can be had. Whether they (GAO investigators) want to go as far as we want to go, we're not certain. We're at first base. Where do we go from here?'. The congressman said he plans to meet with Walker and key Republicans to see whether Congress should take action to improve election systems. He said he would like the investigation to include allegations that insufficient numbers of voting machines were sent to some Democratic areas..... Meanwhile, election officials in two Ohio counties have discovered possible cases of people voting twice in the presidential election, and a third county found about 2,600 ballots were double-counted. Groups checking election results have overwhelmed Ohio county boards of election with requests for information, and a statewide recount of the presidential vote appears inevitable after a pair of third-party candidates collected enough money to demand one. Other examples of problems cited by Conyers and other House Democrats:

"The Rev. Jesse Jackson will come to Columbus Sunday for a rally and will seek an investigation of election irregularities in Ohio. The rally will be at 3:30 p.m. at Mount Hermon Baptist Church, 2283 Sunbury Road. Jackson, a former Democratic presidential candidate and founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, pledged to join a lawsuit contesting the Nov. 2 election. He also is calling for the recusal of Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Jackson spokesman said. Jackson believes blacks were disenfranchished by the shortage of election machines in Franklin and other counties and doesn't trust Blackwell, who was associate Ohio chairman of President Bush's campaign, to remain neutral. Carlo LoParo, a spokes man for Blackwell, said Ohio's election results cannot be certified by December 6 if Blackwell recuses himself. A lawsuit contesting the election is expected to be filed next week in the Ohio Supreme Court by Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE) and the Alliance for Democracy. Jackson said he hopes to attend a Columbus rally next Saturday planned by CASE/Ohio. Jackson aims to draw attention to a formal recount requested in Ohio by third-party presidential candidates and the more than 155,000 provisional ballots still being counted. Bush leads Sen. John Kerry by an unofficial margin of 136,000 votes in Ohio."
Jesse Jackson Coming to Columbus to Seek Election Investigation
The Columbus Dispatch, 26 November 2004

"A floodtide of evidence of questionable practices in the 2004 election is mounting fast against Ohio Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and Republican Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE) Director Matt Damschroder. New transcriptions of sworn voter testimony, presented below for the first time, confirm growing suspicions of widespread use of rigged machines. Voters experienced hostility from poll workers, refusal of Republican election officials to follow the law, and discriminatory manipulation of voting machine placement, driving significant numbers of Democrats away from the polls. The Columbus Dispatch, central Ohio's dominant conservative daily newspaper, which endorsed Bush for the presidency, says Damschroder 'has faced criticism locally and across the country from groups that contend an already short supply of voting machines were shifted from Democratic precincts in Columbus to Republican areas outside the city.'”
New Ohio voter transcripts feed floodtide of doubt about Republican election manipulation
The Free Press, Columbus Ohio, 25 November 2004

"Concern over electronic voting technology was not assuaged Tuesday as glitches, confusion and human error raised a welter of problems across the country, even while e-vote watchdogs prepared to file suits challenging the results derived from the controversial machines.....Nearly one in three voters, including about half of those in Florida, were expected to cast ballots using ATM-style voting machines that computer scientists have criticized for their potential for software glitches, hacking and malfunctioning.... Many of the problems with electronic voting — whether accidental or intentional — may not be known until well after Tuesday, if at all. Most of the ATM-style machines, including all of Florida's, lack paper records that could be used to verify the electronic results in a recount. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's VerifiedVoting.org, which has been monitoring the implementation of e-voting machines in the U.S., warned on Monday that over 20 percent of the machines tested by observers around the country failed to record votes properly. The organization recommended that voters choosing to use touchscreen voting methods be sure to double-check the summary screen to confirm that their votes had been properly registered. BlackBoxVoting.org, the site organized by e-voting activist Bev Harris, announced early Wednesday that it plans to conduct what the site describes as the largest Freedom of Information Act request in history, requesting internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships using electronic voting machines".
E-voting irregularities raise eyebrows, blood pressure
USA Today, 3 November 2004

"Dr Stephen F. Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania calculated that the odds of just three of the major swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania all swinging as far as they did against their respective exit polls were 250 milllion to 1. 'When presented in this way the data - both the 4pm data and the 12pm data used in the Freeman analysis (see below) - shows a remarkable conclusion, three of the four biggest vote 'red shifts' occurred in the three battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio..... Dr Freeman ends his report saying: 'Systematic fraud or mistabulation is a premature conclusion, but the election's unexplained exit poll discrepancies make it an unavoidable hypothesis, one that is the responsibility of the media, academia, polling agencies, and the public to investigate.'"
2004 Exit Poll 'Red Shift' As Seen In Vote Numbers
Scoop Media, 20 November 2004

The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy
In The 2004 US Presidential Election
By Professor Steven F. Freeman
University of Pennsylvania, 14 November 2004
Click here to read the pdf file

US Presidential Election 2004
TABULAR DATA
COMPARING
DECLARED RESULTS WITH EXIT POLL DATA
Click Here

"Western complaints about [Ukrainian] allot-rigging in favour of Viktor Yanukovych are based on the reports of more than 500 international observers and on the wide gap between exit poll results and the 'official' three-point victory for Mr Yanukovych announced on Wednesday."
Practice Makes Perfect
London Times, 26 November 2004

"The solution is expensive and less glamorous than a revolution. It is to re-run the election."
Practice Makes Perfect
London Times, 26 November 2004