Home

By Bob Fitrakis

As partisan forces in Ohio clash over the reliability of e-voting machines and whether the state can afford to replace them, we should keep in mind that the use of computer software for central tabulation and the computerized voting machines have been long distrusted.

That distrust is directly related to the Bush family dynasty and its convenient ties to the CIA.

Take the following quote from the Manchester Union Leader from the 1980 Iowa caucus: “The Bush operation has all the smell of a CIA covert operation . . . strange aspects of the Iowa operation [include] a long, slow count and then the computers broke down at a very convenient point, with Bush having a six percent bulge over Reagan.”

In 1984, President Reagan signed National Security Directive Decision NSDD245. A year later, the New York Times explained the details of Reagan’s secret directive: “A branch of the National Security Agency is investigating whether a computer program that counted more than one-third of all the votes cast in the United States in 1984 is vulnerable to fraudulent manipulation.”

It goes on to say: “Mike Levin, a public information official for the agency’s National Computer Security Center, said the investigation was initiated under the authority of a recent presidential directive ordering the center to improve the security of major computer systems used by the nonmilitary agencies . . . .”

The article goes on to note that: “In 1984, the company’s program [Computer Election System of Berkeley, Calif.] and related equipment was used in more than 1,000 county and local jurisdictions to collect and count 34.4 million of the 93.7 million votes cast in the United States.”

Central tabulating computers were used in an attempt to steal the 1986 election for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a favorite of the Reagan-Bush administration. This is captured in Hendrick Smith’s book “The Power Game” as well as the video “The Power Game: The Presidency.”

Thus, even prior to the touchscreen computer voting machines, there was a tradition of suspected election rigging with computer software and central tabulators. The actual computer voting machines were introduced on a grand scale in New Hampshire’s 1988 primary. The results are predictable – former CIA director George H. W. Bush wins a huge upset over Dole and the mainstream for-profit corporate media refuses to consider election rigging.

Here’s the Washington Post’s account of the bizarre and unexplainable election results when touchscreens were first used: In 1988, H.W. Bush was trailing Dole by 8 points in the last Gallup poll before the New Hampshire primary. Bush won by 9 points. The Washington Post covered the Bush upset with the following headline: “Voters Were a Step Ahead of Tracking Measurements.”

Think about the key findings of Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s report on e-voting machines. The corporate vendor-connected Microsolved, Inc. found that Ohio’s computer voting machine vendors have “failed to adopt, implement and follow industry-standard best practices in the development of the system.” The report cited “critical security failures.” Among them, according to the independent academics who wrote a different section of the report, was the “pervasive misapplication of security technology.”

They specifically cited the lack of “standard and well-known practices for the use of cryptology, key and password management and security hardware.” The academics went on to describe computer voting software practices as “deeply flawed.” The result leads to “fragile software in which exploitable crashes, lockups, and failures are common in normal use.”

Every honest account of the 2004 presidential election documents  the vote flipping in Youngstown and Franklin County and the convenient software freeze up in Clermont County. Since then there’s been massive problems in Montgomery County in 2005 and Cuyahoga County in 2006. The mainstream media prefers the term “recalibration.” Why not use the correct phrase: computer vote flipping? The only reason you would vote on computers is to pre-program the election results. Why do you think they call it computer programming?