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<blockquote type="cite" cite>Visionaires: I had trouble
downloading this article so here is the whole</blockquote>
<div>article.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Rep. Tom Trail<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font
face="Times New Roman"> </font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font
face="Times New Roman"> </font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000">http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111806B.shtml </font
></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"><b>Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections
Hacked</b><br>
By Rob Kall<br>
OpEd News</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Friday 17 November
2006</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"><i><b>Results skewed nationwide in favor of
Republicans by 4 percent, 3 million votes.</b></i></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> A major undercount of
Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in US House and
Senate races across the country is indicated by an analysis of
national exit polling data, by the</font> <a
href="http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/"><font face="Tahoma"
size="-1" color="#343F24">Election Defense Alliance
(EDA)</font></a><font face="Tahoma" size="-1" color="#000000">, a
national election integrity organization.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> These findings have led EDA to
issue an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election
results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election
equipment.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> "We see evidence of
pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions
existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape,"
said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance,
"so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for the actual
circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig an
election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift
from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling,
demographics) the greater the risk of exposure - of provoking
investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on
November 7.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> "The findings raise
urgent questions about the electoral machinery and vote counting
systems used in the United States," according to Sally Castleman,
National Chair of EDA. "This is nothing less than a national
indictment of the vote counting process in the United
States!"</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> "The numbers tell us
there absolutely was hacking going on, just not enough to overcome the
size of the actual turnout. The tide turned so much in the last few
weeks before the election. It looks for all the world that they'd
already figured out the percentage they needed to rig, when the
programming of the vote rigging software was distributed weeks before
the election, and it wasn't enough," Castleman
commented.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Election Defense Alliance data
analysis team leader Bruce O'Dell, whose expertise is in the design of
large-scale secure computer and auditing systems for major financial
institutions, stated, "The logistics of mass software
distribution to tens or even hundreds of thousands of voting machines
in the field would demand advance planning - at least several weeks -
for anyone attempting very large-scale, systematic e-voting fraud,
particularly in those counties that allow election equipment to be
taken home by poll workers prior to the election.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> "The voting equipment
seems to be designed to support two types of vote count manipulation -
techniques accessible to those with hands-on access to the machines in
a county or jurisdiction, and wholesale vulnerabilities in the
underlying behavior of the systems which are most readily available to
the vendors themselves. Malicious insiders at any of the vendors would
be in a position to alter the behavior of literally thousands of
machines by infecting or corrupting the master copy of the software
that's cloned out to the machines in the field. And the groundwork
could be laid well in advance. For this election, it appears that such
changes would have to have been done by early October at the latest,"
O'Dell explained.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> In a reprise of his efforts on
Election Night 2004, Jonathan Simon captured the unadjusted National
Election pool (NEP) data as posted on CNN.com, before it was later
"adjusted" to match the actual vote counts. The exit poll
data that is seen now on the CNN site has been adjusted already. But
Simon points out that both adjusted and unadjusted data were
instrumental to exposing the gross miscount.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Simon, surprised that
unadjusted polling data was publicly revealed, given the concerns
after the 2004 election about the use of exit polls, downloaded as
much of the data as he could in real time. Scheduled and planned
revisions on the CNN site took place throughout the evening and by the
following morning, the unadjusted exit poll data had been replaced
with data that conformed with the reported, official vote totals. This
was the planned procedure as indicated by the NEP's
methodology.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Adjusting the exit poll data
is, by itself, not a troublesome act. Simon explained, "Their
advertised reason to do the exit polls is to enable analysis of the
results by academic researchers - they study the election dynamics and
demographics so they can understand which demographic groups voted
what ways. As an analytic tool, the exit poll is considered more
serviceable if it matches the vote count. Since the vote count is
assumed to be gospel, congruence with that count is therefore assumed
to give the most accurate picture of the behavior of the electorate
and its subgroups.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> "In 2004 they had to
weight it very heavily, to the point that the party turnout was 37%
Democrat and 37% Republican, which has never been the case - leading
to the claim that Rove turned out the Republican vote. This was
nowhere witnessed, no lines in Republican voting places were reported.
As ridiculous as that was, the distortion of actual turnout was even
greater in 2006. The adjusted poll's sample, to match the vote count,
had to consist of 49% 2004 Bush voters and only 43% 2004 Kerry voters,
more than twice the actual margin of 2.8%. This may not seem like that
much, but it translates into more than a 3,000,000 vote shift
nationwide, which, depending on targeting, was enough to have altered
the outcome of dozens of federal races.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> "It should be very clear
that weighting by a variety of carefully selected demographic
categories, which yields the pre-adjustment exit polls, presents a
truly representative electorate by every available standard except the
vote count in the present election. So you have a choice: you can
believe in an electorate composed of the correct proportions of men
and women, young and old, rural and urban, ethnic and income groups,
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents - or you can believe the
machines. Anyone who has ever wondered what is really in a hot dog
should be aware that the machines are designed, programmed, deployed,
and serviced by avowedly partisan vendors, and can easily be set up to
generate entirely false counts with no one the wiser, least of all the
voters."</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Simon concluded, "These
machines are completely and utterly black box. The idea that we have
this enormous burden of proof that they are miscounting, and there's
no burden of proof that they are counting accurately - that, first and
foremost, has to change."</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Election Defense Alliance
issued the following statement:</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> As in 2004, the exit polling
data and the reported election results don't add up. "But this
time there is an objective yardstick in the methodology which
establishes the validity of the Exit Poll and challenges the accuracy
of the election returns," said Jonathan Simon, co-founder of
Election Defense Alliance. The Exit Poll findings are detailed in a
paper published today on the EDA website.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> The 2006 Edison-Mitofsky Exit
Poll was commissioned by a consortium of major news organizations. Its
conclusions were based on the responses of a very large sample, of
over ten thousand voters nationwide*, and posted at 7:07 p.m. Election
Night, on the CNN website. That Exit Poll showed Democratic House
candidates had out-polled Republicans by 55.0 percent to 43.5 percent
- an 11.5 percent margin - in the total vote for the US House,
sometimes referred to as the "generic"
vote.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> By contrast, the election
results showed Democratic House candidates won 52.7 percent of the
vote to 45.1 percent for Republican candidates, producing a 7.6
percent margin in the total vote for the U.S. House ... 3.9 percent
less than the Edison-Mitofsky poll. This discrepancy, far beyond the
poll's +/- 1 percent margin of error, has less than a one in 10,000
likelihood of occurring by chance.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> By Wednesday afternoon the
Edison-Mitofsky poll had been adjusted, by a process known as
"forcing," to match the reported vote totals for the
election. This forcing process is done to supply data for future
demographic analysis, the main purpose of the Exit Poll. It involved
re-weighting every response so that the sum of those responses matched
the reported election results. The final result, posted at 1:00 p.m.
November 8, showed the adjusted Democratic vote at 52.6 percent and
the Republican vote at 45.0 percent, a 7.6 percent margin exactly
mirroring the reported vote totals.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> The forcing process in this
instance reveals a great deal. The Party affiliation of the
respondents in the original 7:07 p.m. election night Exit Poll closely
reflected the 2004 Bush-Kerry election margin. After the forcing
process, 49-percent of respondents reported voting for Republican
George W. Bush in 2004, while only 43-percent reported voting for
Democrat John Kerry. This 6-percent gap is more than twice the size of
the actual 2004 Bush margin of 2.8 percent, and a clear distortion of
the 2006 electorate.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> There is a significant
over-sampling of Republican voters in the adjusted 2006 Exit Poll. It
simply does not reflect the actual turnout on Election Day
2006.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> EDA's Simon says, "It
required some incredible distortions of the demographic data within
the poll to bring about the match with reported vote totals. It not
only makes the adjusted Exit Poll inaccurate, it also reveals the
corresponding inaccuracy of the reported election returns which it was
forced to equal. The Democratic margin of victory in US House races
was substantially larger than indicated by the election
returns."</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> "Many will fall into the
trap of using this adjusted poll to justify inaccurate official vote
counts, and vice versa," adds Bruce O'Dell, EDA's Data Analysis
Coordinator, "but that's just arguing in circles. The adjusted
exit poll is a statistical illusion. The weighted but unadjusted 7 pm
exit poll, which sampled the correct proportion of Kerry and Bush
voters and also indicated a much larger Democratic margin, got it
right." O'Dell and Simon's paper, detailing their analysis of the
exit polls and related data, is now posted on the EDA
website.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> The Election Defense Alliance
continues to work with other election integrity groups around the
country to analyze the results of specific House and Senate races.
That data and any evidence of election fraud, malicious attacks on
election systems, or other malfunctions that may shed more light on
the discrepancy between exit polls and election results will be
reported on EDA's website.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> This controversy comes amid
growing public concern about the security and accuracy of electronic
voting machines, used to count approximately 80 percent of the votes
cast in the 2006 election. The Princeton University Center for
Information Technology Policy, in a September 2006 study, was the
latest respected institution to expose significant flaws in the design
and software of one of the most popular electronic touch-screen voting
machines, the AccuVote-TS, manufactured by Diebold, Inc. The Princeton
report described the machine as "vulnerable to a number of
extremely serious attacks that undermine the accuracy and credibility
of the vote counts it produces." These particular machines were
used to count an estimated 10 percent of votes on Election Day
2006.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> A separate "Security
Assessment of the Diebold Optical Scan Voting Terminal," released
by the University of Connecticut VoTeR Center and Department of
Computer Science and Engineering last month, concluded that Diebold's
Accuvote-OS machines, optical scanners which tabulate votes cast on
paper ballots, are also vulnerable to "a devastating array of
attacks." Accuvote-OS machines are even more widely used than the
AccuVote-TS.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Similar vulnerabilities affect
other voting equipment manufacturers, as revealed last summer in a
study by the Brennan Center at New York University which noted all of
America's computerized voting systems "have significant security
and reliability vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the
integrity of national, state, and local
elections."</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> The most prudent response to
this controversy is a moratorium on the further implementation of
computerized voting systems. EDA's O'Dell cautioned, "It is so
abundantly clear that these machines are not secure, there's no
justification for blind confidence in the election system given such
dramatic indications of problems with the official vote tally."
And EDA's Simon summarized, "There has been a rush by some to
celebrate 2006 as a fair election, but a Democratic victory does not
equate with a fair election. It's wishful thinking at best to believe
that the danger of massive election rigging is somehow
past."</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> EDA continues to call for a
moratorium on the deployment of electronic voting machines in US
elections; passage of H.R. 6200, which would require hand-counted
paper ballots for presidential elections beginning in 2008; and
adoption of the Universal Precinct Sample (UPS) handcount sampling
protocol for verification of federal elections as long as electronic
election equipment remains in use.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> The Exit Poll analysis is a
part of Election Defense Alliance's six-point strategy to defend the
accuracy and transparency of the 2006 elections. In addition to
extensive analysis of polling data, EDA has been engaged in
independent exit polling, election monitoring, legal interventions,
and documentation of election irregularities.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> *The sample was a national
sample of all voters who voted in House races. It was drawn just like
the 2004 sample of the presidential popular vote. That is, precincts
were chosen to yield a representative (once stratified) sample of all
voters wherever they lived/voted - including early and absentee voters
and voters in districts where House candidates ran unopposed but were
listed on the ballot and therefore could receive votes. As such, the
national sample EDA worked with is exactly comparable to the total
aggregate vote for the House that we derived from reported vote totals
and from close estimates in cases of the few unopposed candidates
where 2006 figures were unavailable but prior elections could be used
as proxy. It is a very large sampling of the national total, with a
correspondingly small (+/-1%) MOE. There were four individual
districts sampled for reasons known only to
Edison/Mitofsky</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>
<hr size="2" width="7%"></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> <b>About Election Defense
Alliance</b></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> The purpose of EDA is to
develop a comprehensive national strategy for the election integrity
movement, in order to regain public control of the voting process in
the United States. Its goal is to insure that the election process is
transparent, secure, verifiable, and worthy of the public trust. EDA
fosters coordination, resource-sharing, and cohesive strategic
planning for a nationwide grassroots network of citizen election
integrity advocates.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Jonathan Simon, Co-founder,
Election Defense Alliance. He is an attorney whose prior work as a
polling analyst with Peter D. Hart Research Associates helped persuade
him of the importance of an exit poll-based election "alarm
system." 617.538.6012</font> <a
href="mailto:jonathan@electiondefensealliance.org"><font
face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#343F24">jonathan@electiondefensealliance.org</font></a></blockquote
>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Bruce O'Dell is head of the
Election Defense Alliance Data Analysis Team. His expertise is in the
design of large-scale secure computer and auditing systems for major
financial institutions. 612.309.1330</font> <a
href="mailto:bodell@electiondefensealliance.org"><font face="Tahoma"
size="-1"
color="#343F24">bodell@electiondefensealliance.org</font></a></blockquote
>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> Sally Castleman, National
Chairperson, Election Defense Alliance. She has worked to recruit and
train attorneys and scientists for election integrity roles. She has a
long career in grassroots political activism and comes to EDA from
Boston-based Coalition Against Election Fraud. 781.454.8700</font> <a
href="mailto:sallyc@electiondefensealliance.org"><font face="Tahoma"
size="-1"
color="#343F24">sallyc@electiondefensealliance.org</font></a></blockquote
>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>
<hr size="2" width="7%"></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#000000"> <i>Rob Kall is executive
editor and publisher of</i></font> <a
href="http://www.opednews.com,/"><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#343F24"><i>OpEdNews.com</i></font></a><font face="Tahoma"
size="-1" color="#000000"><i>, President of</i></font> <a
href="http://www.futurehealth.org/"><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#343F24"><i>Futurehealth, Inc</i></font></a><font
face="Tahoma" size="-1" color="#000000"><i>, and organizer of several
conferences, including</i></font> <a
href="http://www.storycon.org/"><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#343F24"><i>StoryCon</i></font></a><font face="Tahoma"
size="-1" color="#000000"><i>, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science
and Application of Story and The</i></font> <a
href="http://www.brainmeeting.com/"><font face="Tahoma" size="-1"
color="#343F24"><i>Winter Brain Meeting</i></font></a><font
face="Tahoma" size="-1" color="#000000"><i> on neurofeedback,
biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. He is a
frequent Speaker on Politics, The art, science and power of story,
heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress,
Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. See more of his
articles</i></font> <a
href="http://www.opednews.com/author/author2.html?entry=diary"><font
face="Tahoma" size="-1" color="#343F24"><i>here</i></font></a><font
face="Tahoma" size="-1" color="#000000"><i> and, older
ones,</i></font> <a
href="http://www.opednews.com/archives%20kall.htm"><font
face="Tahoma" size="-1" color="#343F24"><i>here</i></font></a><font
face="Tahoma" size="-1" color="#000000"><i>.</i></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font
face="Times New Roman"> </font></blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>Dr. Tom Trail<br>
International Trails<br>
1375 Mt. View Rd.<br>
Moscow, Id. 83843<br>
Tel: (208) 882-6077<br>
Fax: (208) 882-0896<br>
e mail ttrail@moscow.com</div>
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