Friends,

A few days before the election I wrote a letter to the editor emphasizing the importance of exit polls in an era when most electronic voting machines do not have paper trails. (http://www.sfexaminer.com/article/index.cfm/i/110204op_letters). Without a paper trail, it's virtually impossible to conduct a recount.  Therefore, exit polls are one of the few ways to verify the validity of an election.

Well, the exit polls suggested Kerry would win handily, but the final count declared Bush the victor.

Dick Morris, a Republican consultant, argued "Exit polls are almost never wrong.  They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state." (http://www.hillnews.com/morris/110404.aspx)

Being a Republican, Morris surmised that the exit polls must have been manipulated by the polling companies to discourage Republicans from voting in western states.

I think it's much more likely the vote was hacked.

CONSIDER THESE FACTS

- "While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically-scanned paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's smaller counties the results from the optically-scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem tohave been reversed." - Thom Hartmann (see link to article below)

- In Gahanna, Ohio, were only 638 ballots were cast, Bush received 4,258 votes to Kerry's 260.

- In Broward County, Florida, software subtracted votes rather than added them.

- Bush received huge margins of victory in a number of Florida counties where registered
Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2-1.

- Security and tamperability in many electronic voting systems was never tested (see http://www.blackboxvoting.org)

- More than a year ago, Congressman Rush Holt introduced legislation that would require all electronic voting machines to have a paper trail.  His bill has been held up in Republican-controlled committees ever since.

TAKE ACTION

Even though John Kerry conceded, his statement is not legally binding. Reports from the state election commissions and the Electoral College vote next month are what will determine the final outcome of the election.

1)  Organize!  Let me know if you'd like to get involved.  There will be a strategy meeting in Palo Alto next Wednesday.  My email is pdrekmeier@earthlink.net.

2) Sign the MoveOn petition in support of a thorough investigation of the election - http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/

3) Call your U.S. senators and representatives and encourage them to join Representatives Conyers, Holt, Nadler, Scott, Watt, and Wexler in demanding a General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation of the tens of thousands of reported complaints regarding the 2004 election. Call 202-224-3121.

4) Encourage local media outlets to cover this story.

5) Forward this message to your friends.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked, by Thom Hartmann - http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster, by William Rivers Pitt - http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804A.shtml

MSNBC Vote Fraud Video - http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

E-Vote Glitch Inflates Bush Total - http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65609,00.html

Black Box Voting - http://www.BlackBoxVoting.ORG

Votergate Documentary - http://www.votergate.TV

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On November 9, 2003, the New York Times reported: "In mid-August, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat down at his computer to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his home in a suburb of  Columbus, Ohio. 'I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year,' wrote Mr. O'Dell, whose company is based in Canton, Ohio. That is hardly unusual for Mr. O'Dell. A longtime Republican, he is a member of President Bush's 'Rangers and Pioneers,' an elite group of loyalists who have raised at least $100,000 each for the 2004 race. But it is not the only way that Mr. O'Dell is involved in the election process. Through Diebold Election Systems, a subsidiary in McKinney, Tex., his company is among the country's biggest suppliers of paperless, touch-screen voting machines. Judging from Federal Election Commission data, at least 8 million people will cast their ballots using Diebold machines next November. ... Some people find Mr. O'Dell's pairing of interests -- as voting-machine magnate and devoted Republican fund-raiser -- troubling."