The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (72 page)

Similar incidents concerning debris breaking off had occurred before, but never with major consequences. If, the CAIB determined, a proper analysis of the damage to Columbia had occurred while the craft was still in orbit, a rescue of the shuttle’s crew might have been effected, either by boarding Atlantis or undertaking an emergency spacewalk to attempt repairs to the left wing thermal protection.

As to the snaps of a purple ray hitting Columbia, the CAIB concluded that these were the result of camera wobble during a long exposure.

STOLEN ELECTIONS

It was the election that gave us the “hanging chad”.

The seventh of November 2000 was presidential election night in the US and just after 8.00 p.m. TV networks “called” the election for Democrat Al Gore when exit polls showed he had taken the key state of Florida.

A few hours later TV anchormen had to red-facedly retract the estimate. They weren’t the only ones to make retractions. At first Gore conceded the election to rival George H. W. Bush, then when Bush’s lead in Florida near disappeared, Gore withdrew his concession. Meanwhile, the votes in Florida were recounted by machine, by hand, and Republicans and Democrats alike threw court cases around like confetti. At one stage there were no less than thirty separate court cases underway concerning the Florida count.

Eventually, the US Supreme Court forced Florida to stop counting ballots and gave the state’s votes to Bush. As trial lawyer Vincent Bugliosi acidly observed, it was a “judicial coup d’etat” that allowed Bush to become the first Republican president for eight years.

Back in Florida, the air was also heavy with the smell of a political fix. Journalists and lawyers turned up dubious electoral practice after dubious electoral practice, beginning with the voting system in Palm Beach County where the punch card “butterfly ballot” was so flawed that 5,000 votes went to the unholy (and improbable) alliance of Gore and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan. Then there were the endless disputes over whether punch-card votes counted if bits of paper were left on the card – the infamous “hanging chads”. Over in Gadsen County, which had a high proportion of black and predominantly Democrat voters, there was an unfeasibly high excess of spoiled votes. There, ballot papers were read by an “Accuvote” machine which rejected any with extra marks on them. Unfortunately, the machine recording the votes made marks, meaning that around 15 per cent of Gadsen votes were discounted. In predominantly white Tallahassee, however, voters were warned about machine marks and asked to try again. The percentage of spoiled votes was 1 per cent.

Black voters were also on the dubious end of so-called “scrubbing”, as the USS Commission on Civil Rights discovered (see Document, p.510). In the run-up to the election Florida’s governor – who happened to be Jeb Bush, bro of George – and others commissioned a company called DBT to remove (“scrub”) from the electoral register convicted felons. This turned out to be a wholly flawed exercise because DBT’s computer did not include people’s middle initials, meaning there were numerous counts of mistaken identity. According to journalist Greg Palast at least 15 per cent of DBT’s scrub list was erroneous and, guess what, a disproportionate number of those were black or Hispanic. DBT’s computer might not have been sufficiently clever to record middle initials, but it could do race.

Talking of electronic errors, the voting machines in Volusia did very strange things on November 7/8. At first the Volusia machines gave Bush a 51,000 lead – the announcement of which started the “Bush victory” juggernaut – then apparently suffered a “memory error” which reduced his lead by 16,022. There were stories too of voting records hidden in the trash cans at Volusia County offices.

It was of course coincidence that the Volusia County machines were made by Diebold Inc., which just happens to be owned by Republican businessman Walden O’Dell. Diebold Direct Record Electronic machines are environmentally friendly, and leave no paper receipt. Meaning votes cannot be properly checked.

The cry of “stolen election” was heard again in 2004. Exit polls trumpeted a huge victory for Bush’s opponent, the lantern-jawed Senator Kerry. But somehow by midnight, Bush had taken the lead. This time Ohio was the state under scrutiny. From 12.20 in the morning until around 2.00 a.m., the flow of information in Ohio stopped and in that time Bush went from underdog to top dog, emerging with a 118,000-vote-plus official margin. “There is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale,” the oily
New York Times
announced.

Robert Kennedy Jr, among many others disagreed: “Officials there [Ohio] purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, short-changed Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines, and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency.”

Once again, electronic voting machines were in the main frame. Of the three private companies supplying electronic voting machines, three had close ties to the Grand Old Party (Republicans), one of them being Diebold. O’Dell had promised in an email to deliver Ohio to Bush. Ohio went to Bush. Coincidence? Or collusion.

The man in charge of vote counting in the state was J. Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell just happened to be the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney re-election committee in the state. On the night of the election, Blackwell okayed a 124 per cent (!) turnout in two Republican precincts. But he was even busier in the run-up, challenging the credentials of 35,000 newly registered voters until a federal judge stopped him. On looking into the Ohio vote, Congressman John Conyers concluded that there had been “massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio … caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell”.

The plot thickened. When a case alleging vote tampering in Ohio during the 2004 US election proceeded, one of the main witnesses, Republican IT guru Michael Connell, died in a plane crash. Connell had been involved in the setting up of a duplicate voting electronic counter for Blackwell so the latter could monitor the Ohio count in real time. The contract for the duplicate counter contained the stipulation that it must fit “a hardware VPN device [that] will allow access to a private network connecting the servers for database replication services as well as remote admin[istration]”.

Remote administration meant that the votes could be
altered
as well as watched. Some claim that Connell was about to blow the whistle on Ohio wrongdoings and that his Piper plane crash was more than coincidence, and that like
Paul Wellstone
, his craft was downed by an electromagnetic pulse that caused essential systems to fail.

Whether Connell was assassinated or not, the Florida and Ohio counts in 2000 and 2004 were better suited to a banana republic than a great democracy.

Further Reading

Vincent Bugliosi,
The Betrayal of America
, 2001

Greg Palast,
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
, 2002

DOCUMENT: REPORT FROM THE US COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS: THE 2000 VOTE AND ELECTORAL REFORM [EXTRACTS]

Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election

Chapter 1

Voting System Controls and Failures

No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live.

To ensure that every eligible citizen in Florida has an opportunity to exercise his or her right to vote, the state established a system of checks and balances that extends from the governor to the local poll worker. This system of control is codified in many of the provisions of the election laws of the state of Florida and, in part, is intended to help guarantee the rights granted to voters by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 will be protected. During the November 2000 election, a wide range of errors, including the insufficient provision of adequate resources, caused a significant breakdown in the state’s plan, which resulted in a variety of problems that permeated the election process in Florida. Large numbers of Florida voters experienced frustration and anger on Election Day as they endured excessive delays, misinformation, and confusion, which resulted in the denial of their right to vote or to have their vote counted. While some maintain that what occurred in Florida was nothing out of the ordinary, but rather was simply amplified by the closeness of the election, the overwhelming evidence provided to the Commission proves otherwise.

It is impossible to determine the total number of voters turned away from the polls or deprived of their right to vote. It is clear that the 2000 presidential election generated a large number of complaints about voting irregularities in Florida. The Florida attorney general’s office alone received more than 3,600 allegations – 2,600 complaints and 1,000 letters. In addition, both the Democratic and Republican parties received many complaints from Floridians who either could not vote or experienced difficulty when attempting to vote. These widespread complaints prompted Florida’s governor to sign an executive order creating the Select Task Force on Election Procedures, Standards and Technology. The task force was formed to examine the concerns that had been raised about Florida’s election process and to recommend reforms where necessary.

Several advocacy group representatives testified about the disproportionate number of complaints they received from their constituents in Florida. Jackson Chin, associate counsel at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City, explained that his group’s preliminary investigation revealed that certain election practices in central Florida might have led to the widespread voter disenfranchisement of up to several thousand Latino voters. D. P. Misra, former president of the Association of Indians in America, and Venghan Winnie Tang, president of the South Florida chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans, both testified that immigration and language assistance problems prevented many East Indians and Asians from being able to vote in Florida.

Other advocacy groups formed coalitions to investigate or to take action against the election problems that surfaced in Florida. For example, the NAACP filed a federal class-action lawsuit on behalf of voters in Florida who allege their right to vote in the election was unlawfully denied or abridged. The Florida Justice Institute joined with the ACLU of Florida and Florida Legal Services to develop statewide electoral reform that focuses on the concerns of Florida’s racial and language minorities and those who live in poverty, “considerations that are probably long overdue in this state.” According to JoNel Newman of the Florida Justice Institute, “[w]hen new or vulnerable voters from traditionally disenfranchised groups are wrongly prevented from going to the polls and from voting, they feel often a humiliation and a stigma or a disaffection that has the effect in many cases of causing them never to return to the voting booth.”

The complaints from those denied the right to vote during the 2000 Florida presidential election were anything but isolated or episodic. Credible evidence shows many Floridians were denied the right to vote. Analysis of the testimony and evidence gathered by the Commission show that these denials fell most squarely on persons of color.

[...]

The Commission heard from several experts regarding potential violations of the VRA during the Florida presidential election, including Professors Allan Lichtman and Darryl Paulson.

Professor Lichtman, applying the results test, said, “The key is whether a system, regardless of why it was adopted or why it was held in place, has the effect of diminishing minority voting opportunities.” Professor Lichtman explained: