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by Jerky » Sat Nov 10, 2012 5:26 am
by kelley » Sat Nov 10, 2012 10:52 am
by seemslikeadream » Sat Nov 10, 2012 12:01 pm
FRI NOV 09, 2012 AT 11:23 AM PST
If Husted's Electoral College plan for Ohio in '16 was now in place everywhere, Mitt would have won
byMeteor BladesFollow
Ian Millhiser and Josh Israel report that Jon Husted, the secretary of state of Ohio who spent so much time trying to suppress Democratic voter turnout this year, has an Electoral College plan for 2016 that he no doubt thinks could turn the tables in favor of Republicans. In fact, if his proposal to divide Ohio's electoral votes by congressional district had been in place this year in Ohio and five other states where Obama won the popular vote, we would now be talking about President-elect Mitt Romney.
If the system he wants had been in place nationwide in the past, we would never have had a President Carter or a President Kennedy, and we would have had a President Hancock and a few others not now on the roster.
Near every presidential election, there is a flurry of talk about doing something about the Electoral College, from tweaky reform to outright abolition. A few weeks after Election Day, the talk usually goes away.
In Husted's case, that seems unlikely. His proposal, as noted by Plunderbund, would follow the general lines of the Maine/Nebraska system. The winner of each congressional district using that method is awarded the district's electoral vote. Whoever wins the statewide vote gets the remaining two electoral votes. With modifications, this method has been used in Maine since 1972 and in Nebraska since 1996. Only once has one of these two states split its electoral vote; Nebraska gave one to Barack Obama in 2008.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett sought to get that system set up in the commonwealth this year, but he failed. That isn't deterring Husted. If we've learned one thing about these guys that we should emulate, it's their relentless pursuit of their objectives.
[Husted] says we should make Ohio less important in the election by dividing up our electoral votes by Congressional district.
This is huge and should raise giant red flags. Under the current winner-take-all system, Obama won all 18 of Ohio’s electoral votes. Under Husted’s plan, 12 of those 18 electoral votes would be handed to Mitt Romney, the popular vote loser.
That alone wouldn't, of course, have given Romney the presidency. But if just five other states where Obama won the popular vote—and thus all the Electoral votes—had adopted this system, look at what the results would have been:
• Florida's 29 Electoral votes for Obama, split 17-12 in favor of Romney
• Michigan's 16 votes for Obama, split 9-7 in favor of Romney
• Ohio's 18 votes for Obama, split 12-6 in favor of Romney
• Pennsylvania's 20 votes for Obama, split 13-7 in favor of Romney
• Virginia's 13 votes for Obama, split 8-5 in favor of Romney
• Wisconsin's 10 votes for Obama, split 5-5 in favor of Romney
Romney, who only received 206 Electoral votes under the current system, would have gained another 64 votes. Total: 270. Just what he needed to step into the winner's circle. Gerrymandering by GOP-dominated legislatures had a lot to do with how those congressional districts turned out. And it will until the presidential election of 2024.
If the system Husted and Corbett and other Republicans would like had been installed for nationwide for this election, Romney would have received even more Electoral votes. Republicans won House seats in at least 233 districts, with seven not yet decided. Add in two Electoral votes from the 24 states where Romney won statewide and the total count would have been 281 to Obama's 257. Even with Democratic wins in the seven undecided districts, Obama could not have won.
In 2008, such a change wouldn't have made John McCain president. He lost by 365 to 173 in the Electoral College. Shifting to a Husted/Corbett approach nationwide would have generated 237 votes for the Arizona senator against Obama's 301.
A far better system is the proposed National Popular Vote, which won't require a constitutional amendment to get a fix. As Markos noted here, making this happen is a matter of getting an interstate compact in which states agree to cast their Electoral College votes for winner of the popular vote. To activate the compact takes agreement from states with 270 Electoral votes. So far, we're not quite halfway. Nine states with 132 Electoral votes have signed on: California, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont and Washington.
The Electoral College may have made sense once. Without it or something like it, there might never have been a Republic. But in the 21st Century, it's an anachronism, and the National Popular Vote is a means of deep-sixxing it without going down what is most likely a losing path of trying to adopt a constitutional amendment to abolish it.
by seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 12, 2012 11:04 am
Photos That Are Like the Purest Heroin Followed by the Sweetest Whiskey Chaser:
For a hit of pure, undiluted schadenfreude, you can do no better than that one up there. It's a page from the prepped-and-ready-to-go-but-now-iced Romney inauguration and transition website. Oh, man, that'll give you that warm feeling you get when you feel really good shit course through your veins or really fine whiskey go down your throat to make a fireplace in your belly. And then you read closely and you see:
Not "to serve our country" period. No, "to serve our country as a member of the Romney-Ryan administration." That's the "honor." That's the "privilege." Now, Mitt Romney gets to tell that to his Hispanic gardeners, who he can finally re-hire and who can then piss on Romney's azaleas to return the honor.
You know that feeling you get whenever you see a semi jackknife on an icy road ahead of you and you make that quick turn to avoid being smeared by the trailer? That sense of incredible relief and the intensity of being alive as you look in the rearview mirror to see the wreckage that could have been you? Yeah, that's how it feels looking at these images. (And, yeah, that was more or less the Rude Pundit's post-nor'easter commute this morning.)
Let's kick these fuckers while they're down. Let's degrade them and mock them for not understanding that voters actually give a damn about the nation, unlike the Republican Party. Let's make them feel every ache, every lump, because if we don't, they are going to attempt, again and again, to get up and gut us, like every cliched serial killer in every cheap straight-to-video bullshit flick. You don't walk away when the murderer just looks dead. You cut off his head so that you know he is.
Here's what the right is saying while sucking on its sour grapes in the wake of Barack Obama's reelection:
Bill O'Reilly: "It's a changing country, the demographics are changing. It's not a traditional America anymore. And there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things and who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it and he ran on it.
"And whereby 20 years ago President Obama would have been roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that this economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff.
"You're going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming for President Obama and women will probably break President Obama's way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?"
Cal Thomas: "Politicians bid for votes, making promises they can't keep to voters who will believe anything, as long as it appeals to greed, envy and their sense of entitlement. This undermines our culture. This fuels our massive debt, weakening our economic power and America's standing in the world."
Rush Limbaugh, after declaring "We're outnumbered": "There is no rising to responsibility. There is no accepting responsibility. There's just a demand that the gravy train continue, and we have an administration that's promising an endless gravy train. All you have to do to stay on that gravy train is vote. But it doesn't matter.
Scared, scared white men all, blaming those demographically-different (or, you know, black and Hispanic) people who want stuff, the half of America that pours gravy from the train, gravy like Medicare and the GI Bill and Pell Grants, acting as if the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't the indulgent luxuries of a fading empire that chose frivolity and fantasy over the mundane work of actually taking care of the country and its citizens. But that would require self-reflection, and it's always easier just to blame the spics for stealing your hubcaps rather than realizing they're gone because you hit the curb a while ago because you're a shitty driver.
(Side note: It always struck the Rude Pundit as odd that people attacked Barack Obama for not having a "plan" for his second term. No, he always had a plan. What he didn't have was a worthless scheme, a grand and mighty doctrine that he could attempt to shove the country into. If there is such a thing, the Obama doctrine might best be called "If shit is broken, fix it.")
11/09/2012
Karl Rove's Former Leather Slave Comments on His Ex-Master:
"Weren't they supposed to be the smart guys?" the Rude Pundit asked the thin man across from him as they sat in a Chelsea bar, looking out as the melting snow dribbled down the piles of wood and drywall. Surely, Obama's margin of victory would have been larger here if the wreckage of Sandy hadn't replaced voting as a priority for many people. "All these rich fucks, aren't they supposed to always be right? Haven't we been told that they are wise and that we should implicitly trust them just because they are rich and successful? The 'job-creators' or some such bullshit." The Rude Pundit is not ashamed to say that he made air quotes with his fingers.
The thin man nodded, and the Rude Pundit continued, "So are they gonna get off easy? Are they just gonna go on, doing whatever they do, oil, media, whatever, and we're gonna buy their shit and they're gonna get richer and fuck it all 'cause it's just money? Is nobody going to pay for how wrong the smart guys were? For how much they wasted on this fuckery of an election?"
"Karl will pay," the thin man said, wincing, getting a tic for a moment in memory. "Yeah, he will." He was talking about President George W. Bush's former political guru, the savage id of the right who now runs a money-gobbling organization trying to get rid of all vestiges of liberalism in America. It had failed and failed mightily on Tuesday.
Half a dozen years ago, the thin man was Karl Rove's leather slave, held captive in the cluttered basement of the White House, chained to the radiator between the cabinet holding Martin Van Buren's bottles of Cherokee tears and Gerald Ford's trunk of Whip Inflation Now shirts and Khmer Rouge soldiers' fingers. Over the course of most of the Bush administration, Rove had roughly fucked the leather slave in every orifice and with every implement at his disposal - golf club, Kalashnikov rifle, John Kerry for President sign post. He had loaned out the leather slave to wealthy donors, an extra bonus beyond the "Pioneer" level. Other staffers had enjoyed debasing the leather slave, and he had learned to live smelling of shit and semen and urine and blood, some of it even his own, until, finally, in 2006, he escaped and had been hiding from Rove ever since. It's just been recently that he has felt free enough to appear in public, believing that, perhaps, Rove will never have him back.
The thin man ordered another drink. Straight whiskey, which the Rude Pundit joined him in downing. "You see Karl on Fox on election night?" he asked. The Rude Pundit nodded with a smirk on his face. "Can I be honest with you?"
"Me more than most," the Rude Pundit scoffed.
He leaned in. "I masturbated while Karl was losing his mind over Ohio," he said and then smiled. "I saw him on fire there, burning, burning, writhing and yelping, rolling on the ground, until he collapsed into ashes, and I just jacked it. It felt so good." He paused and got wistful, staring into the amber liquor. "You don't wanna know what he would have done to me Tuesday if he still had me. I don't know if I could have survived it. The razors..."
"You don't--"
"It's okay." He slugged back what was left and ordered another. We drank on, the Rude Pundit and the thin man, shooting whiskey and sharing glee over Rove's desperate attempts to justify his existence and his failures, over his absurd, pathetic spin that Obama "suppressed the vote" by saying mean things about Romney and his supporters, coming up with ways that Rove would have to pay back the hundreds of millions of donated dollars - the phrase "Sheldon Adelson's dick lamprey" was used by one of us, and laughing at how degraded Rove must have felt over being called out by Megyn Kelly on the air, repeatedly. "And Bill Hemmer!" the thin man said. "That guy's so dumb, you could put a dunce cap on him and he'd thank you for making his head bigger."
The drinks done, the night now the beginning of the new day, the Rude Pundit bid farewell to the thin man, who said he had to be going to his digs in Long Island City. After "Good night," after walking a step or two, the thin man turned back. "There's one thing I know," he said. "Karl's not going away. I feel him, always. He's with us until the dirty end. Be careful. Optimism dies quickly when it meets reality. It can be fucked out of you even faster."
And we parted.
by JackRiddler » Thu Nov 15, 2012 5:13 pm
Democratic House candidates winning the popular vote, despite big GOP majority
Posted by Aaron Blake on November 9, 2012 at 11:52 am
Democratic House candidates appear to have won more of the popular vote than their Republican counterparts on Tuesday, despite what looks as though it will be a 35-seat GOP majority.
According to numbers compiled by the Post’s great Dan Keating, Democrats have won roughly 48.8 percent of the House vote, compared to 48.47 percent for Republicans.
Despite losing the popular vote, Republicans are set to have their second-biggest House majority in 60 years and their third-biggest since the Great Depression.
The numbers seem to back up what we’ve been talking about on this blog for a while: Redistricting drew such a GOP-friendly map that, in a neutral environment, Republicans have an inherent advantage.
(A recent Fair Vote study found Republicans were clearly favored in 195 House districts, compared to Democrats being favored in 166. Some of this is because Democratic voters are more concentrated in urban areas, but it’s also because the GOP drew some very favorable redistricting maps in important states like North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.)
Alas, compiling the popular vote isn’t a perfect endeavor, for a few reasons:
1. Ballots are still being counted in many states, meaning these numbers will change. But since many of those ballots are in California, it seems likely that Democrats will continue to lead the popular vote.
2. Speaking of California, there were several races in which the state’s new “top two” primary system pitted Democrats against other Democrats or independents, meaning Republicans couldn’t win votes. There were also two races between Republicans. If you exclude these races, Democrats still win 48.59 percent to 48.57 percent.
3. There were also a few dozen unopposed incumbents across the country. And while some states tally votes for that incumbent, some do not. If you exclude all the unopposed incumbents, Democrats won the popular vote by even more, 49.55 percent to 48.54 percent.
If there is any testament to the amount of progress Republicans made in redistricting, it is this. GOP-controlled states drew about four times as many districts as Democrats did, and Republicans reaped significant benefits from that on Election Day.
Without the friendly map, Democrats would have likely have gained significantly more than the seven seats it looks like they will add.
And going forward, it suggests Democrats will need to have a strong wind at their backs (bigger than Tuesday’s) to take back the chamber.
by JackRiddler » Thu Nov 15, 2012 9:41 pm
by beeline » Fri Nov 16, 2012 5:17 pm
by JackRiddler » Fri Nov 16, 2012 6:26 pm
http://wonkette.com/489966/anonymous-cl ... ore-489966
Oh cool, Anonymous (we think it is Anonymous?) says Karl Rove was gonna vote fraud all the Machines, and that’s why he was so flabbergasted and refused to believe it when Fox called Ohio for Bamz, but they stopped him from stealing all the Machines by jamming up ORCA, because it was not actually a GOTV system but a “steal the vote” system, but they stopped him, we are pretty sure that is what the following letter, which we guess is from Anonymous probably, says. Seems legit! But here is our question! If Anonymous hacked ORCA and caused it to explode miserably on Election Day, how could Anonymous ever prove that ORCA was actually a vote-thieving program? If they hacked in, couldn’t they have planted code to make it look like Rove was gonna fraud the election? (Not that we believe for a second that Rove wasn’t trying to fraud the election, we are just saying, it seems like “logic.”)
by JackRiddler » Fri Nov 16, 2012 9:48 pm
http://occupyforaccountability.org/inde ... =node/1075
Karl Rove Loses Election After Being Checkmated By Cyber Sleuths?
By CL - Posted on 15 November 2012
Last month, we offered a million dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone who rigged a federal election on November 6th. We urged computer experts to contact us with information about any election manipulation of the tabulation results.
We Received A Letter
On November 12th, we received a letter from “The Protectors,” apparently a group of white hat cyber sleuths, mentioning our reward and stating that two months ago, they began monitoring the “digital traffic of one Karl Rove, a disrespecter of the Rule of Law, knowing that he claimed to be Kingmaker while grifting vast wealth from barons who gladly handed him gold to anoint another King while looking the other way.”
“The Protectors” said that they had identified the digital structure of Rove’s operation and of ORCA, a Republican get out the vote software application. After finding open “doors” in the systems, they created a “password protected firewall” called “The Great Oz,” and installed it on servers that Rove planned to use on election night to re-route and change election results “from three states.”
The letter indicated that “ORCA Killer” was launched at 10am EST and “The Great Oz” at 8pm EST on November 6th. “The Protectors” watched as ORCA crashed and failed throughout Election Day. They watched as Rove’s computer techs tried 105 times to penetrate “The Great Oz” using different means and passwords.
Finally, they issued the following warning to Mr. Rove: don’t do it again or they would turn over the evidence to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
We are not in a position to vouch for the contents of this letter anymore than we can vouch for the video by Anonymous warning Karl Rove not to rig the election. However, we can analyze that content under the prism of Mr. Rove’s history and facts over the past few weeks. We do so in the hope that this will lead to an investigation of Mr. Rove’s entire operation ala General David Petraeus. In that spirit, we provided this information to the FBI prior to publication, and followed up after publication. For years, we have campaigned for a complete investigation of Mr. Rove. And we have provided extensive legal memos and evidence to the FBI to support such an investigation.
We urge others who have information to about election tampering or other criminal violations by Mr. Rove, including violations of campaign finance laws, to provide that evidence to the FBI. We also urge people who gave money to Mr. Rove and his organizations to contact the FBI if they were misled, promised things that did not happen, or were otherwise defrauded.
Rove’s Background And Election Night Meltdown
Karl Rove has a history of rigging elections going back several decades, including in 2004 when he orchestrated a man-in-the-middle attack to change the votes from Ohio.
In 2012, Mr. Rove’s SuperPacs raised and spent hundreds of millions on behalf of GOP candidates. He courted billionaires and promised them that his candidates would win.
Days before the 2012 election, Mr. Rove predicted a strong Romney win. His spinners lionized him in articles that portrayed him as invincible.
On election night, Mr. Rove worked the three states that held the key to the election – Ohio, Florida and Virginia. But when he tried to access the Ohio election website, he kept getting error messages.
Finally, immediately after Ohio was called for President Obama around 11:30 EST, Mr. Rove appeared on FOX News to dispute the call, saying the election there is far from settled and the call was “premature.”
Fox News’s Chris Wallace said the Romney campaign does "not believe Ohio is in the Obama camp,” noting that he got an email from a top Romney aide who said the campaign disagrees with the network’s call. He then asked Rove if he believed Ohio has been settled.
“No, I don’t,” Rove said.
“I think this is premature,” he added. “We’ve got a quarter of the vote. Now remember, here is the thing about Ohio. A third of the vote or more is cast early and is won overwhelmingly by the Democrats. It’s counted first and then you count the election day and the question is, by the time you finish counting the election day does it overcome that early advantage that Democrats have built up in early voting, particularly in Cuyahoga County.”
Rove said the network needs to be “careful about calling things when we have like 991 votes separating the two candidates and a quarter of the vote yet to count. Even if they have made it on the basis of select precincts, I’d be very cautious about intruding in this process.
The Failure Of ORCA On Election Day
The Rove/Romney coalition created Project Orca, which was supposed to enable poll watchers to record voter names on their smart phones, by listening for names as voters checked in. This would give the campaign real-time turnout data, so they could redirect GOTV resources throughout the day where it was most needed. They recruited 37,000 swing state volunteers for this.
According to various sources, however, ORCA totally failed on Election Day: PIN numbers and passwords did not work, reset tools failed, customer support was ineffective and unavailable, Comcast shut down access for fear of a DDOS attack, and the system crashed and had trouble re-booting. “At one point during Election Day, the system had malfunctioned so badly that desperate volunteers wondered if the program had been hacked.”
Anonymous Warned Rove Prior To The Election
Two weeks prior to the November 6th election, the hactivist group Anonymous posted a video warning Karl Rove not to rig the election.
They told Mr. Rove that he was being watched and that if he attempted to rig the election, he would be stopped. That video went viral in just days.
The Letter From “The Protectors”
The letter we received just days after the election ties together all the information set forth above about the digital difficulties faced by Karl Rove and the GOP on November 6th.
· Karl Rove’s digital architecture surrounding the election was identified and compromised by cyber sleuths in a way that denied him the ability to manipulate election results;
· Project Orca was not secure and had numerous flaws that were exploited to ensure failure;
· Karl Rove was focused on three states—Ohio, Virginia and Florida;
· “Orca Killer” was launched early in the day resulting in failures starting in the morning;
· “The Great Oz” was launched at 8pm, just as polls closed on the East Coast;
· The Ohio Secretary of State results were inaccessible to Mr. Rove after 8pm;
· Mr. Rove disputed the call for Ohio, and told FOX News that it was “premature” as he kept trying to access the results;
· Mr. Rove, Mitt Romney, the GOP, its billionaires, and its talking heads were all “convinced” up to the last minute that Mr. Romney would win, some even saying “by a landslide;”
· Prior to the election, Anonymous warned Mr. Rove that it had identified his digital structure and was watching for any manipulations;
· Mr. Romney and the GOP leadership were “shell shocked” when President Obama won the election.
The Upshot Of All This
Apparently, “The Protectors” were able to completely thwart Karl Rove’s attempts to manipulate this election by employing a firewall to stop man-in-the-middle tabulation attacks and improper transfers of tabulation data. Moreover, apparently, they were able to pinpoint and exploit flaws and structural weaknesses in Project Orca that caused a cascading of problems and subsequent catastrophic failure. Apparently, there was some connection between Mr. Rove and Project Orca, and they were probably both plugged into the same voter database.
Lessons Learned And Our Position
At VR, we have spent the past decade exposing flaws in the election process, especially the use of electronic voting, secret software and cyber attacks on tabulation systems. Princeton computer scientists, Argonne Laboratories experts, GOP insiders and even the CIA have shown that electronic election manipulation is both possible and occurring.
Based on our experience and the supporting evidence, we take the letter from “The Protectors” at face value. Karl Rove had the means, motive, experience and opportunity to do whatever it took to win the election for his clients. If he, in fact, intended to use improper and illegal means to digitally manipulate the election, and white hat cyber sleuths who stopped it discovered that, then that is a good thing. We hope that those cyber sleuths will provide that evidence to the FBI, post it publicly or send it to us to do so.
One thing that is not clear from the letter is the relationship between the cyber manipulation and Project Orca. Were they both part of Karl Rove’s scheme? Were they using the overlapping servers or databases? Did “The Great Oz” automatically cause problems for Project Orca? Did Mr. Rove plan to use the data from “Project Orca” to help the cyber manipulation scheme succeed? We would like to know the answers to these questions so we can more fully understand the legal and moral implications of “Orca Killer.”
As far as lessons learned, we are hopeful that those who have been skeptical and opposed to greater security in elections will now get on board in a bipartisan manner to, as President Obama said, “fix” the broken election system. We are hopeful that billionaires, SuperPacs and politicians will see, as governments in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere have seen, that a few dedicated cyber sleuths can protect democracy from corrupt power brokers by thwarting electoral crimes. We are hopeful that everyone will see Karl Rove for what he is – a scammer who can’t win without cheating and manipulating election results.
by Elvis » Sat Nov 17, 2012 1:51 am
by justdrew » Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:19 am
by JackRiddler » Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:28 am
The fabulous Time for change (12,844 posts), last of the DU Mohicans on Fri Nov 16, 2012 wrote:
Hmmm… Why Was Karl Rove So Adamant that Romney Not Concede Ohio?
When Ohio was called for Barack Obama on Election Night, thereby pushing him over the top in the Electoral College, Karl Rove didn’t take it very well, as he encouraged Mitt Romney not to concede for several hours. In fact, Romney didn’t concede until after Obama had won enough states to win the election even without Ohio. From the Washington Guardian:The prominent Republican strategist and former Bush White House guru didn’t seem able to deal with Mitt Romney’s loss on Election Night. When the network he was appearing on, Fox News, called that Ohio had voted for President Barack Obama, thereby effectively ending the election, Rove strongly pushed back.
"I think this is premature," Rove said, insisting that only part of the vote had been counted. "I don't know what the outcome is going to be, but we gotta be careful about calling things when we have like 991 votes separating the two candidates."
Rove put up so much protest, in fact, that anchor Megyn Kelly traveled back into Fox’s studio to speak with their statisticians and experts who were calling each state. Even before Rove almost had a conniption, Fox in fact had been one of the last to call Ohio for Obama.
Rove insisted that only part of the vote had been counted? As we all know, states are routinely called for one candidate or another when only part of the vote is counted – based on statistical analysis of a combination of the current vote count, exit polls, and what parts of the state have yet to be counted. So what was Karl Rove so sure he knew about the vote count – or looming vote count – that none of the network statisticians knew, even at FOX news? To consider that question, let’s go back to 2004:
Election Night 2004
In the official 2004 Ohio vote count, George W. Bush beat John Kerry by about 118 thousand votes, a margin of about 2.5%. But according to the final Ohio exit polls, John Kerry was predicted to win by a whopping 4.2% – thus producing a huge discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote count.
Prior to Election Day 2004, it was evident that Ohio was the most critical swing state in the country. Late on Election Night, it became apparent that whoever won Ohio would win the presidency. TV commentators discussed how the situation looked very bad for George W. Bush. Even the right wing political hack Robert Novak acknowledged that Bush had little chance of winning Ohio – and thus the election.
So what happened then? Stephen Spoonamore, a computer expert and close associate of Michael Connell, who was widely known as “Karl Rove’s IT guru”, provided a likely answer to that question in a sworn affidavit on October 26, 2008.During the evening and early morning on the 2004 General Election in Ohio, on my own computer I was watching the results of incoming counties and precincts. I believed there was a more than likely chance County Tabulators had been programmed to manipulate votes…. As early results showed Kerry ahead, I noticed a trend in a very few counties (I believe I noted 8 counties on election night) that at about 11 p.m. suddenly began reporting radically different ratios of Kerry to Bush votes. All in favor of Mr. Bush. This sudden rate of change… resembled a fraud technique called an Intelligent Man In the Middle, or KingPin Attack. This type of attack requires a computer to be inserted into the communications flow of an IT system…
Other experts found additional data indicating Bush's increase in votes from these counties, and Kerry's decrease in votes… When information about the SmartTech IT routing switch became public… I again stated that we now have confirmation of a KingPin, or Intelligent Man in the Middle position had been created… The SmartTech system was set up precisely as a KingPin computer used in criminal acts against banking or credit card processes and had the needed level of access to both county tabulators and Secretary of States computers to allow whoever was running SmartTech's computers to decide the output of the county tabulators under its control… The SmartTech computer would as the results of the evening proceeded be able to know how many votes Bush needed to steal from Kerry, and flip enough votes on the desired county tabulators to reverse the outcome of the election…
The aborted testimony of Michael Connell
The SmartTech system that Spoonamore referred to was operated by Michael Connell – “Karl Rove’s IT guru”. Two days after Spoonamore’s affadavit, attorneys filed a motion to compel testimony of Connell regarding his knowledge of the workings of the GOP computer systems. On October 31 a federal judge ordered Connell to submit to a deposition on possible election manipulation. Connell gave the deposition on November 4, providing as little information as possible, but eventually he was forced to admit that “he brought Triad and SmartTech into the Ohio election game”.
When it became apparent that Connell would testify in the case, Connell was warned not to fly his plane. Cliff Arnebeck, the Ohio lawyer who brought the suit and subpoenaed Connell, warned the U.S. Justice Department that Connell’s life might be in danger, and requested witness protection. Connell never did get to testify. On December 19, shortly before he was due to testify, he died in a plane crash, presumably caused by his plane running out of gas.
What happened on Election Night 2012?
If up to the point where the TV networks were discussing how hopeless Ohio looked for Mitt Romney on Election Night 2012 seems to you to be eerily similar to Election Night 2004, you’re not alone. As in 2004, Ohio was the critical swing state. As in 2004, the situation looked very bad for the Republican candidate. As in 2004, the Ohio election was being handled by a highly partisan Republican administration. As in 2004, Karl Rove seemed to be a key player. And as in 2004, SmartTech computers played a central role in tabulating the Ohio vote. As explained here two months prior to the 2012 election:In 2012 the current Ohio GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted plans to once again use SMARTech for the 2012 Ohio Presidential Election. It would be interesting to know how SOS Husted plans to utilize SMARTech and if he will admit knowledge of the use of SMARTech. Will the computer IT architecture be similar to the one created in 2004 where Stephen Spoonamore claimed the architecture was a classic Man-In-The Middle attack format for the ability to manipulate vote totals.
But there were a couple of big differences between 2004 and 2012. One is that the Republican candidate apparently was substantially further behind in Ohio in 2012 than in 2004. And the other difference is that – as we found out soon – it turned out that the Democratic candidate didn’t need Ohio to win the election. So apparently for one or both of those reasons we didn’t see a repeat of 2004 in 2008. Perhaps the decision was made to pull back when it became apparent that even if he won Ohio Romney couldn’t win the election. Perhaps the decision was made a little sooner, when the approximate magnitude the number of votes needed became apparent.
In any event, despite all the evidence to the contrary, both Karl Rove and Kenneth Blackwell (Ohio Secretary of State in charge of the Ohio election in 2004) denied any knowledge of SmartTech. Democracy Now! Producer Mike Burke summed up the situation two months prior to the 2012 election:Do you think Karl Rove and Ken Blackwell need to take lie detector tests? How can they possibly deny knowledge of SMARTech with a straight face? Will Ohio election integrity folks check into the status of the use of SMARTech in the 2004 and 2012 elections? Perhaps for the integrity of the vote totals in Ohio it would seem like a pretty good idea.
by justdrew » Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:55 am
by compared2what? » Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:44 am
justdrew wrote:the anonymous story is good to get people thinking about 2004, but I'd hate to see the loonies suddenly pointing at "proof" that their GotV operation was hacked by "pro-obama" hackers, and that's why they lost. That there's not been a peep about such a thing would seem to indicate that they DO NOT want their servers looked at in any serious investigation.
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