[E-rundbrief] Info 164 - Ukraine/ USA: Wahlprobleme, US-Computerdesaster
Matthias Reichl
mareichl at ping.at
Sa Nov 27 22:12:52 CET 2004
E-Rundbrief - Info 164 - Matthias Reichl: Ukraine und USA - zwei
fragwürdige Wahlen; Blackboxvoting/ CommonDreams (USA): Fehlerhafte
US-Wahlen, Kontrolle von Wahlergebnissen nicht abgeschlossen; gehackter
Computer-Sicherheitscode und fehlender Kontrollausdrucke; noch kein
offizielles Endergebnis; Bürgerbewegungen erheben Einspruch.
Bad Ischl, 27.11.2004
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
www.begegnungszentrum.at
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Ukraine und USA - zwei fragwürdige Wahlen
Matthias Reichl
27.11.2004
Ukraine und USA - zwei fragwürdige Wahlen
Matthias Reichl
27.11.2004
Bürgerbewegungen in der Ukraine haben - mit Unterstützung von
EU-Verhandlern - vom autoritären Staatsapparat eine Wiederholung der
Präsidentenwahl durchgesetzt. Zu offensichtlich waren die Interventionen
auf die Medien und den Apparat der Wahl, die den knappen Sieg des
Regierungskandidaten durchgesetzt hatten. Die gewaltfreien Proteste vieler
Bürger haben ihre Wirkung gezeigt. Trotzdem muss dem Nachgeben der
Herrschenden mit Vorsicht begegnet werden. Andererseits muss man dem
Drängen der Opposition nach einem Beiotritt zur NATO und zur EU mit großer
Skepsis begegnen. Allein schon die ungelösten Probleme in der
Tschernobylregion - und angrenzende Gebiete - mit ihren zerstörten
ökologischen und sozialen Strukturen, in denen illegale Bewohner zu einem
irregulären Überlebensbündnis zusammengeschlossen, ist eine unabsehbare
Belastung und Gefährdung.
Das starke Echo in den Medien des "Westens" verdrängte vollständig eine
sehr ähnliche Situation in den USA (wie wir schon im Info 147 und 157
berichteten). Die Bürgerinitiativen, die schon vor der Wahl und auch
während dieser ein Netz von Kontrollen aufgebaut hatten, sammelten nun
zehntausende Berichte über Behinderungen und Unregelmäßigkeiten.
Die Wahl fand an einem Arbeitstag statt, an dem nur in wenigen Staaten ein
kurzes Fernbleiben (2 Stunden) von der Arbeit gestattet war. Viele Wähler
mussten in Schlangen vor den zu wenigen Wahllokalen an die 4 Stunden warten
(v.a. in Gebieten mit einer demokratischen Mehrheit, mit Afro-Amerikanern usw.)
Obwohl Experten vor dem fehlerhaften Computersystem rechtzeitig warnten
(siehe unten), wurde es dennoch in einigen Bundesstaaten eingesetzt und
lieferte bedenkliche Resultate. In den meisten Medien (auch im ORF) wurde
schon früh der Sieg Bushs als selbstverständlich angenommen obwohl er nur
mit etwa 3% vor Kerry liegt - ein Vorsprung, den er bei einer Wahl nach
internationalen Standards höchstwahrscheinlich verloren hätte. Der Bericht
der OSCE-Wahlbeobachter wird erst Anfang Dezember veröffentlicht!
Am 5.10. hörte ich in Wien den US-Schriftsteller Gore Vidal, der auch dort
diese bedenkliche Machtübernahme voraussagte: "Es sind die wichtigsten
(Wahlen) in unserer Geschichte. Aber wir werden das nie so genau erfahren,
denn meine Befürchtung ist: Kerry wird gewinnen, Bush wird verlieren. Aber
dann werden seine Leute Kerry um den Sieg bringen. Es wird ein umstrittener
Wahlgang sein, wegen all dieser elektronischen Wahlmaschinen. Sie werden
einfach sagen, dass eine neue Stimmauszählung auf nationaler Ebene nicht
machbar und eine neue Wahl zu teuer ist, und dann bleibt der bisherige
Präsident einfach im Amt. Der Oberste Gerichtshof wird das zu einer
wundervollen Idee erklären - und das ist der Moment, an dem ich Truppen
schicken und den Obersten Gerichtshof vor Gericht stellen würde, was ich
schon 2000 getan hätte, als die Richter Bush illegalerweise und entgegen
der Verfassung zum Präsident machten. Wir werden wieder in der gleichen
Situation sein, dass ein nicht gewählter Präsident im Amt ist und Kriege
führt, für die er von der (US-) amerikanischen Bevölkerung nie ein Mandat
erhalten hat und die nie vom Kongress erklärt worden sind." (Ähnlich auch
in: taz Nr. 7478 v. 4.10.2004)
Karl Rove, der Chefberater von Präsident Bush, gilt als der einflußreichste
und cleverste Stratege der Republikaner. Er verstand es, die Unterstützung
durch neoliberale Wirtschaftskreise mit ihren Think-Tanks, die mit ihnen
durch straffe Strategien verknüpften Militärs und den missionarischen Eifer
christlicher Fundamentalisten zu einer schlagkräftigen politischen
Kampftruppe zu vereinen. Diese nützten auch die Oppositionszeit unter
Clinton für weitere strategische Trainings und politische Aufbauarbeit.
Rove wird sicher von Bush mit einem entsprechenden Amt belohnt werden.
Daraus sollte auch die demokratische Partei lernen und sich auf
zuverlässige Basisinitiativen stützen, anstatt sich ebenfalls von den
Neoliberalen finanziell korrumpieren zu lassen.
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Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 12:55:23 -1000
From: Tia Berger
We stand by our story......
Dr. Avi Rubin is currently Professor of Computer Science at John Hopkins
University. He "accidently"got his hands on a copy of the Diebold
software program--Diebold's source code--which runs their Diebold's source code
machines.
Dr. Rubin's students pored over 48,609 lines of code that make up this
software. One line in particular stood out over all the rest:
#defineDESKEY((des_KEY8F2654hd4"
All commercial programs have provisions to be encrypted so as to
protect them from having their contents read or changed by anyone not
having the key..The line that staggered the Hopkin's team was that the
method used to encrypt the Diebold machines was a method called Digital
Encryption Standard (DES), a code that was broken in 1997 and is NO
LONGER USED by anyone to secure prograns.F2654hd4 was the key to the
encryption. Moreover, because the KEY was IN the source code, all Diebold
machines would respond to the same key. Unlock one, you have them ALL
unlocked.
I can't believe there is a person alive who wouldn't understand the
reason this was allowed to happen. This wasen't a mistake by any stretch
of the imagination. This was a fixed election, plain and simple.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Aus: www.blackboxvoting.org, Tue, 09 Nov 2004
There are also folks across the country at the grassroots level filing
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to investigate these problems
immediately. One of the biggest driving individuals behind this effort is
a woman by the name of Bev Harris from Seattle, WA. (her site is
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/). I became familiar with Bev Harris when I
saw her on MSNBC give a demonstration to Howard Dean on how easy it was to
"hack" the central tabulator computer for these computer voting systems
and change the results. She did it in less than 2 minutes and in a way
that no one monitoring the system could tell. I later saw her demonstrate
this at a presentation here in Marin County this year. Sadly, no one
seemed to pay attention, including in the Democratic Party and now, here
we are after one of the biggest elections of our lifetime and with
problems surfacing all over the place with no answers or accountability.
Worse is that no one is covering what is perhaps the biggest story of all
- the fraud involved in this election.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2004 16:26:30 -1000
From: Stefanie
___________________________
There is a bumper sticker I saw months ago that sums up the current state
of affairs in our country regarding what is the biggest news story you'll
never see on the General Media reported. It said "IF YOUR NOT OUTRAGED,
YOUR NOT PAYING ATTENTION". On Friday I received a phone call from a good
friend who works at CBS - I've known her for years and she is a Producer
for some of the news programs, one well known one in particular. She
tipped me off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is to
be no no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2nd. She
said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year after the invasion
of Iraq, but this is far worse - far scarier. She said the majority of
their journalists at CBS and elsewhere in NYC are pretty horrified - every
one is worried about their jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse.
My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their
own time but she was pissed and her journalistic and moral integrity as
what she considers to be a gov't watchdog requires her to speak out, while
be it covert and she therefore asked me to "spread" the word...She said
that journalism and the truth is at stake. She said another friend of
hers, a producer at MSNBC, said that an anchor by the name of Keith
Olbermann had brought it up on his show on Friday eve and the axe came
down. He's at least fighting back and talking about it on his "Blog", but
she said that people there are worried that he's going to be fired by
higher ups. She said at this point the only way that the "real news" was
going to be if the people started talking about it and made a big enough
stink about it to our elected officials, the FEC, and "noise" to the
international media, that our own media won't have any choice but to cover
it. (Yes, this is really happening in the good ole' supposed "democratic"
free press of the US of A). The only place you'll see this talked about
right now is on the internet and on AirAmericaRadio.
Everyone - this is serious....I can't emphasize it any more than saying if
there was ever a time to speak up and take action it is NOW. If you are
feeling sick to your stomach (like me) about the possibility of 4 more
years under Bush and the future of our country, and yet you feel helpless,
here's your opportunity to take action. Imagine if you saw a loved one
drowning - what do you do? Well, our country's democracy is drowning and
she needs us.
Please, find 20-30 minutes today to call and/or email the following list
of people and agencies and tell them that you are outraged and concerned
about the possibility of election fraud and votes not having been counted
properly in your state and others that may have altered the outcome of the
election. Mention that you are aware of reports from counties around the
country (in particular OH and Florida) that reported the following
a) More votes recorded than there are voters in counties using electronic
voting machines
b) that not all military, provisional and absentee ballots have been
counted.
Let them know you consider this to be serious violations of your rights as
a citizen under the "HAVA - Help America Vote Act" and that you want them
to undertake an investigation.
....
In an email I sent you last night, I used the F-word - FRAUD and mentioned
to you that I felt strongly that there is a lot of mounting evidence that
this election was not clean. I say that not only out of a result of my
observations while out in the field as a poll watcher in the key
battleground state of Ohio, I say it with the knowledge and information of
reports that have been circulating around the country in various voting
precincts involving irregularities and problems with the voting machines
and numbers not matching up with the exit polls or actual numbers of
registered voters in various precincts. I've been busy researching this
issue and compiling for you below some details of these reports and where
you can get more info.
.....
Some Examples: (There are many more, but I won't list them all here - this
is to give you an idea)
- The City of Gahanna in Ohio discovered a discrepancy that gave 4,000
votes to George Bush. After media scrutiny, city officials have admitted
to an electronic "glitch" that caused the problem.
- In Broward County, FL, errors in software code caused a referendum on
gambling to be completely overturned. The error caused totals to count
backwards after reaching a ceiling of 32,500 votes. The problem existed in
the 2002 election as well however the issue was never resolved by the
manufacturer of the electronic voting machine.
- In North Carolina, a Craven County district logged 11,283 more votes
than voters and actually overturned the results of a regional race.
For more info, go to:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm
There are key people right now working behind the scenes on this...but
meanwhile, we the people at a a grassroots level need to start making the
corporate media pay attention to the "Real Story" not the "Moral Values"
headlines and stories being featured on the news currently including the
"Boy Genius - Karl Rove" Cover stories on CNN and Fox. We need to support
those that are pursuing this issue to reveal the truth and get an inquiry
going. If any of you remember Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11,
you'll remember the scene where the Black Congressional Caucus members
stood up in a joint session of Congress in 2000 and asked for a single
Senator to back them in an investigation of "Voter Fraud and
Disenfranchisement". Many who saw the film felt ashamed at that moment
and many didn't even know this had happened. Well, its happening all over
again....History has a funny way of repeating itself if we don't pay
attention and learn. Currently there are several members of Congress and
the House Judiciary Committee that have requested the GAO (General
Accounting Office) to implement an inquiry into computer voting machine
problems
(http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/gaoinvestvote2004ltr11504.pdf).
This is not the "Dems" being sore losers...this is real stuff folks.
Real problems. If this issue and fraud isn't addressed, our democracy and
our votes in the future are dead. Won't even be a point in voting.
Kerry On fellow Patriotic Americans for Democracy
Stefanie Namaste
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore
their government to its true principles.
It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and
incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt......If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at stake."
Thomas Jefferson, 1798, after the passage of the Sedition Act.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published on Saturday, November 6, 2004 by www.commondreams.org
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004),
the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from
Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher
has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but
of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these
same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so
that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a
real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened
on November 2, 2004.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of
votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen
Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available
at
<http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm>http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm,
and noticed something startling...
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to
produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely
matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from
optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus
vulnerable to hacking the results seem to contain substantial anomalies.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them
Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry
and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the
country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 9,676 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and
a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry,
but 4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where
optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats,
went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25%
for Bush.
Yet in the touch-screen counties, where investigators may have been more
vigorously looking for such anomalies, high percentages of registered
Democrats generally equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry. (I had
earlier reported that county size was a variable this turns out not to be
the case. Just the use of touch-screens versus optical scanners.) ...
(gekürzt)
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NOVEMBER 23, 2004 4:11 PM
CONTACT: Congressman Jerrold Nadler
New York: 212-367-7350, D C: 202-225-5635
Government Accountability Office to Conduct Investigation of 2004 Election
Irregularities
WASHINGTON -- November 23 -- Reps. John Conyers, Jr., Jerrold Nadler,
Robert Wexler, Robert Scott, and Rush Holt announced today that, in
response to their November 5 and 8 letters to the Government Accountability
Office (GAO), the GAO has decided to move forward with an investigation of
election irregularities in the 2004 election. The five Members issued the
following statement:
"We are pleased that the GAO has reviewed the concerns expressed in our
letters and has found them of sufficient merit to warrant further
investigation. On its own authority, the GAO will examine the security and
accuracy of voting technologies, distribution and allocation of voting
machines, and counting of provisional ballots. We are hopeful that GAO's
non-partisan and expert analysis will get to the bottom of the flaws
uncovered in the 2004 election. As part of this inquiry, we will provide
copies of specific incident reports received in our offices, including more
than 57,000 such complaints provided to the House Judiciary Committee.
"The core principle of any democracy is the consent of the governed. All
Americans, no matter how they voted, need to have confidence that when they
cast their ballot, their voice is heard."
The Members listed above were joined in requesting the non-partisan GAO
investigation by Reps. Melvin Watt, John Olver, Bob Filner, Gregory Meeks,
Barbara Lee, Tammy Baldwin, Louise Slaughter and George Miller.
http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1123-13.htm
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Matthias Reichl
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Wolfgangerstr.26
A-4820 Bad Ischl
Tel. +43-6132-24590
e-mail: mareichl at ping.at
http://www.begegnungszentrum.at
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