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<DIV><FONT size=4>It is not a democratic form of government if votes are not
counted correctly and/or if certain electors are discouraged or otherwise
prevented from voting by officialdom.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>W..</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=ttrail@moscow.com href="mailto:ttrail@moscow.com">Tom Trail</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@mail-gw.fsr.net
href="mailto:vision2020@mail-gw.fsr.net">vision2020@mail-gw.fsr.net</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Friday, December 01, 2006 6:42 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Fwd: Article from Lester Brown</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000 size=-1><A
href="http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111806B.shtml">http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111806B.shtml</A> </FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1><B>Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections
Hacked</B><BR> By Rob
Kall<BR> OpEd News</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> Friday 17 November 2006</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1><I><B>Results skewed nationwide in favor of Republicans by 4 percent,
3 million votes.</B></I></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 color=#343f24
size=-1>Election Defense Alliance (EDA)</FONT></A><FONT face=Tahoma
color=#000000 size=-1>, a national election integrity
organization.</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> "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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> "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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> "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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> "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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> "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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> "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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> Election Defense Alliance issued the following
statement:</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> "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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> *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 cite="" type="cite">
<HR width="7%" SIZE=2>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> <B>About Election Defense
Alliance</B></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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
color=#343f24
size=-1>jonathan@electiondefensealliance.org</FONT></A></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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 color=#343f24
size=-1>bodell@electiondefensealliance.org</FONT></A></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> 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
color=#343f24 size=-1>sallyc@electiondefensealliance.org</FONT></A></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite">
<HR width="7%" SIZE=2>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1> <I>Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher
of</I></FONT> <A href="http://www.opednews.com,/"><FONT face=Tahoma
color=#343f24 size=-1><I>OpEdNews.com</I></FONT></A><FONT face=Tahoma
color=#000000 size=-1><I>, President of</I></FONT> <A
href="http://www.futurehealth.org/"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#343f24
size=-1><I>Futurehealth, Inc</I></FONT></A><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1><I>, and organizer of several conferences, including</I></FONT> <A
href="http://www.storycon.org/"><FONT face=Tahoma color=#343f24
size=-1><I>StoryCon</I></FONT></A><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000 size=-1><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
color=#343f24 size=-1><I>Winter Brain Meeting</I></FONT></A><FONT face=Tahoma
color=#000000 size=-1><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 color=#343f24 size=-1><I>here</I></FONT></A><FONT face=Tahoma
color=#000000 size=-1><I> and, older ones,</I></FONT> <A
href="http://www.opednews.com/archives%20kall.htm"><FONT face=Tahoma
color=#343f24 size=-1><I>here</I></FONT></A><FONT face=Tahoma color=#000000
size=-1><I>.</I></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE cite="" type="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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