This is a situation seriously in need of immediate attention and public scrutiny.


Graphic: Exit Polls Compared to "Actual" Vote / paper ballot vs. black box voting



Many of us have been outraged, from the outset, that the US would allow its election to involve electronic voting machines that offer no way of validating or verifying the accuracy of their results and whose source code is "proprietary" to the companies that design and manufacture them (not even election officials can check the "insides" of the machines to detect fraud or random error).

Now there is striking evidence that the use of these machines probably not only gave George W Bush both Florida and Ohio -- and thus the electoral college majority -- but inflated the margin of his win in many states that would have gone "red" anyway (e.g., N. Carolina) and deflated Kerry's majority in other states that went "blue" (e.g., New Hampshire).

One major way this was done was via the unverifiable vote counts of the "black box" electronic voting machines in which over 30% of the nation's votes were cast. Lots of info on this is available at
blackboxvoting.org
and
gregpalast.com, but here is a very important graphic comparing exit polls to official vote counts in some states with and some without the electronic machines.

Exit Polls vs. Election "Results" With Paper Ballots Vs. "Black Box" Voting Machines
http://therandirhodesshow.com/todays_show.html



PLEASE PASS THIS INFO TO EVERYONE you know -- Democrat, Republican, or Independent -- who really cares about having a FAIR election. There is still a chance that we can DEMAND an investigation into these irregularities (plus other types of voter disenfranchisement) before it's too late for this year. The electoral college doesn't meet till December and new Senators and Representatives won't take office till January. Time is of the essence, but there is still time.

Our best weapon here is to bring this to the attention of the public and force the media to deal with it.

Bev Harris and Greg Palast, of blackboxvoting.org have been fighting to bring this issue to mainstream attention for several years, and now they are positioned to file multiple suits under the Freedom Of Information act to demand an audit of the electronic voting machines' programming and source codes.   Please support them in this effort, even if it's only $5 per person. Since the lapdog TV media are more interested in the Scott Peterson trial than with the survival of our democracy, this kind of pressure is about the only leverage we as voters have, and it's too important to just roll over again!

Even if we don't prevail for 2004, we MUST get this outrage fixed before the 2002 elections, and that means NOT letting the issue drop out of public awareness, the way Democrats did with the frauds and errors of the 2000 election.

Jeanene Pratt