With tomorrow's Iowa caucuses, I thought it was time for an entry on the history of vote fraud in the united states.

What Really Happened reports about vote fraud and the bankruptcy of the United States.

(emphasis mine) [my comment]

VOTE FRAUD AND THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE UNITED STATES
April Friday 8  2005:

… A search through the news reports of elections around the world shows that a truly fair and honest election is indeed a rarity. IT IS THEREFORE NAIVE (NOT TO MENTION RACIST) TO START OUT ASSUMING AMERICAN ELECTIONS ARE HONEST SIMPLY BECAUSE WE ARE AMERICANS.

Are the elections in the United States fair and honest? A review of the facts is far less than reassuring.

SINCE 1964, right after John F. Kennedy was assassinated [See Video 4 in my entry *****What I have been afraid to blog about: THE ESF AND ITS HISTORY***** for more on JFK’s assassination], VOTE TABULATION FOR NATIONAL ELECTIONS HAS BEEN HANDLED NOT BY THE GOVERNMENT, BUT BY A PRIVATE COMPANY LACKING ANY OFFICIAL OVERSIGHT AT ALL. This company, which changes its name on a regular basis, is currently called "Voters News Service" and is located in New York City. THIS COMPANY IS OWNED BY A CONSORTIUM OF TV NETWORKS AND WIRE SERVICES, which ARE IN TURN CONTROLLED BY THE CIA through its Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The TV networks will make a great show of being "first with the election results", but in reality all of them rely on the numbers sent to them by VNS, while seldom acknowledging its existence during the election coverage.

This is the voting process most in use in America today. A voter punches a card in the voting booth. That card is run through a computer at the local voting center, then that computer contacts computers at Voters News Service, or the precinct official telephones the numbers the computer shows him to Voters News Service, which then announces the results via the networks. POLL WATCHERS ARE ALLOWED TO WATCH THE VOTING BOOTHS, to guard against polling place electioneering, but IN MOST PRECINCTS, THE ACTUAL COUNTING OF THE BALLOTS IS CONCEALED FROM THE PUBLIC, and nobody is allowed to see inside the voting machines, or review the computer software that counts the ballots. 70% of all votes in America are counted by machine, and nobody, not private citizen, not local election official, nobody, is allowed to examine how it all works. The accuracy tests conducted on the voting machines before and after the actual election are utterly worthless, as they cannot detect fraud designed to fool the accuracy test itself. In 1988, when voting machines in Illinois were tested with tens of thousands of ballots instead of the few dozen normally used for the accuracy test, over 1/4 of the machines which had passed the standard accuracy test were found to have mistabulated the larger test vote results!

While researching the book, "VOTESCAM", the Collier brothers actually managed to VIDEOTAPE MEMBERS OF THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS FORGING BALLOTS, and found hard evidence that Shouptronics and Printomatic vote machines were rigged in the Dade County Elections. In the Shouptronics, the wheels of the mechanical counters were shaved to cause miscounts. In the Printomatic machines, a malfunction revealed that the paper tape with the voting results had been pre-printed before the voting even started! The Colliers, along with attorney Ellis Rubin, handed the evidence to the assistant State Attorney for Florida. Sadly, that assistant State Attorney was Janet Reno, who in a pattern we have all become too familier with, killed the investigation. 60 Minutes taped a segment on the Dade County Vote Fraud, BUT NEVER AIRED IT.

Mandatory voter registration laws, such as "Motor voter" have been a boon to election fraud, generating registered voters who don’t vote and whose names may be used to obtain absentee ballots. In the California election that unseated Bob Dornan following his efforts to investigate the Clinton White House, canvassers discovered that NEARLY HALF OF THE NAMES REGISTERED TO VOTE IN THE GOP ELECTION FROM 7 PRECINCTS SIMPLY DID NOT EXIST. The California Attorney General’s office was informed by the precinct worker, but again nothing was done. In 1998, almost 20,000 fraudulent voter registrations were discovered on the voting rolls, but were allowed to remain on the excuse that their removal in time for the election would cost too much!

The evidence for MASSIVE VOTE FRAUD IN THE UNITED STATES uncovered by the Voting Integrity Project and organizations like it are ignored by the government, which has obviously been the beneficiary of such chicanery, and by the media, which is complicit in the fraud. When vote fraud was suspected in the 1996 Arizona Primary (the one that ended Pat Buchanon’s winning streak after New Hampshire), the Arizona legislature passed a special law forbidding a recount for that one primary election only! When the Miami Magazine ran a story on the Dade County Vote Fraud, the magazine was purchased just one month later by the editor of the Miami News, Sylvan Meyer, who ordered that no further stories on vote fraud be published. When precinct workers in the 1974 Dade County elections discovered that the voting machines they were using were rigged, they walked off the job and refused to certify the election process. Police and fire fighters took over the polling duties. The next day, the Miami Herald reported the walk out, but not the reason. When the precinct workers went to the media to report the election rigging, the media ignored them. So did the local attorney general. So did the FBI. Citizens who tried to observe the next election were arrested.

[With tomorrow’s Iowa caucuses, the vote-fraud story below is especially important to note]

Typical of the horror stories associated with the media-owned Voters News Service is what happened in Dubuque County Iowa during the 1996 Caucuses. The county’s 41 precincts met in 41 classrooms at two high schools and voted on old fashioned paper ballots, which were then counted in full view of all present (including representatives of the candidates), and the results posted for all to see and verify. The vote totals were then phoned directly into Voters News Service by the county chairman, again in full view of all participants that night. Buchanon won the county by a wide margin, garnering 870 votes. By next morning, Voters News Service had dropped Buchanon’s vote total for that county down to 757 votes, a 13% drop. Buchanon lost Iowa by a much smaller margin than 13%.

The Iowa state GOP claimed it could do nothing about the problem; they were "in VNS’ hands". VNS, DESPITE THE PAPER BALLOTS PROVING BUCHANON'S 870 VOTES, refused to admit error and refused to change the results for the county. Needless to say, the question of whether Buchanon had had 13% of his votes shaved off in other Iowa counties, ones in which computerized vote machines meant there was no audit trail to check, was ignored. The fact that AN OBVIOUSLY FRAUDULENT VOTE had made it all the way through the system to be reported on national television was also ignored by the media. (Iowa is the state, it should be noted, where a columnist for Salon magazine was charged with vote fraud.)

The complicity by the law enforcement machinery of this nation is astounding. In one election in Boston, a judge declared 968 ballots which had been declared "blank" due to multiple punches to be valid, arbitrarily assigning most of the disputed votes to the incumbent candidate, thereby reversing his defeat. In a computer vote fraud case in West Virginia, an expert witness testifying for the plaintiff sat down at a CES voting machine provided by the defendants, studied it for a while, then with a single ballot card added 10,000 votes to one of the fictional candidates. The judge refused to allow the jury to see the demonstration and the charges were eventually dropped.

Only three states, California, Florida, and Michigan, have laws requiring that the voting machine source code be placed in escrow should it need to be examined after an election. None of those states have any means to verify that the source code placed in escrow is in fact the origin of the compiled code running on the machines election night, and in Michigan, the escrow is simply handled by the voting machine company itself with no overview by a state agency or public interest group.

All the voting machines used in the United States come from just three companies. THE PRESIDENTS OF TWO OF THEM HAVE BEEN CONVICTED OF VOTE FRAUD and yet all state governments continue to do business (at very steep fees) with just these three companies. The largest of the three companies has direct access to 50% of the nation’s votes. Nobody is allowed to inspect the machines, or watch as the vote totals are accumulated and counted, and there is no audit trail anywhere along the path from the voting machine to Voter’s News Service, the private media-owned company that without any official oversight, tells us all what the election results are.

Most states have now passed laws requiring a challenge to election results to be filed within a few weeks of the election, far too short a time for anyone to properly determine if such a challenge is warranted.

Despite such an obvious inhibition, a Democrat who lost a legislative seat in the 1998 Hawaiian election did file a challenge, claiming there was vote fraud. A quick audit showed that vote fraud involving absentee ballots had indeed occurred, but mostly by the Democrat; who had cheated, but not enough to win. This scandal triggered public questions about several races, including that of the Democratic Governor, Ben Cayutano, who had been trailing his Republican challenger all during the election night, only to have a sudden surge of votes at the last second push him over the top. The governor offered to over-ride the state’s two week filing deadline for election challenges and allow a full recount, then back-pedaled and made a full recount contingent on a "pre-audit". The "pre-audit" was assigned to the company which had run the election, along with a warning that if it turned out the election was flawed, their final payment would be withheld by the State of Hawaii. Needless to say the pre-audit found no errors in the election, and despite the urging of the Voter Integrity Project (which was conducting its own investigation) the full recount was canceled. The voting company, ES&S was again been awarded the voting contract for the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections, without any open bidding.

Who chooses what government we live under? Those who cast the votes, or as Stalin observed, those who count them? Do We The People pick those who govern us, or does a private company, owned by the CIA controlled media, and operating without any public oversight? …

Just think about all it really means if the elections are being rigged on a massive scale.

It means that the contract between ruler and ruled is broken. The government does not govern with the consent of the governed, it rules by treachery and deception. …

…
In light of the numerous incidents of vote fraud uncovered through the years and the quite obvious stonewall on the subject by the officials who benefit from rigged elections and the media that at least helps in the rigging, IT IS DANGEROUS TO ASSUME THAT AMERICAN ELECTIONS ARE HONEST. The burden of proof must lie with VNS and the voting machine companies to prove their honesty.

In an atmosphere of doubt about the validity of the voting process, it appears that the entire voting process is a sham, a trick to fool the American people into accepting whatever is done to them by creating the illusion that the people somehow voted for and approved of whatever is being done. That’s how Batista fooled the Cuban people. That’s how the USSR fooled the Soviet citizens. And that’s how the American government fools us.
…

The Landes Report reports on US Election Fraud and Irregularities.

Election Fraud and Irregularities 

Is there any evidence that voting machines have been rigged or malfunctioned?  Yes.  Lots of it.  Read on. (Also check out the complicity in vote fraud by the following organizations and companies: DOJ & FBI, NEWS NETWORKS' EXIT POLL AND VOTING MACHINE COMPANIES

•  Voters Unite, 2004 to 2008 - http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems & http://www.votersunite.org/news.asp
•  ALSO:  search news.google.com and yahoo.com/news for "voting" & "problems"
Noteworthy reports and landmark articles: Also check out books and videos
•  2003: Black Box Voting, Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century (Chapter II) by Bev Harris (2003)
•  2000: Vote Fraud and the Bankruptcy of the United States
•  1996: Pandora's Black Box by Philip M. O’Halloran of Relevance (good summary to that point in history) 
•  1988: Annals Of Democracy - Counting Votes  by Ronnie Dugger for The New Yorker
•  1988: Roy Saltman's 1988 full report  / Chapter 4 only - Voting machine irregularities  (also see http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/specpubs/500-158.htm
•  1987: The Cincinnati Bell-FBI scandal -- See http://www.thelandesreport.com/Donsanto.htm
•  1985: Computerized Systems for Voting Seen as Vulnerable to Tampering by David Burnham of New York Times

2004-2006 elections:

•  Jan 2007: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4071 CLEVELAND, OH — Two election workers in the state's most populous county were convicted Wednesday of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes.
•  2006 election: E-Voting Failures in the 2006 Mid-Term Elections A sampling of problems across the nation http://www.votersunite.org/info/E-VotingIn2006Mid-Term.pdf
•  Jan 6, 05: The Conyers Report(summary), http://www.truthout.org/Conyersreport.pdf (full report) Read Excerpts (Triad advised election officials how to manipulate voting machinery to ensure that a preliminary hand recount matched the machine count.)
•  ON VIDEO Congressman Peter King's (R-New York) pre-2004 election quote: "We already won....It's all over but the counting ....and we'll take care of the counting" (please copy and save to your websites)
•  Feb 4, 05: Prominent Statisticians Refute 'Explanation' of 2004 U.S. Exit Poll Discrepancies in New Edison/Mitofsky Report and Urge Investigation of U.S. Presidential Election Results REPORT
•  2004/2005: Election Incident Reporting System (click onto "download incidents" for entire report)
•  Patterns of Touchscreen Voting Machine Vote Fraud Identified and Documented in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and Elsewhere 
•  StolenElection2004.com
•  http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4220
•  http://election.solarbus.org/
•  2004: http://www.wanttoknow.info/electionsproblems
•  2004: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0706/S00165.htm
•  Brandon Adams charts on non-votes for president in Florida, etc. - http://electionexamination.blogspot.com/

Here is Lynn Landes's chart on the Florida 2004 election http://www.thelandesreport.com/Florida2004.htm.

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Lynn's list (1968-2003)

1)  1968 - Following widely publicized problems with punch cards in the 1968 election, IBM withdrew from the election machine business. http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/july01/July01_VTP_%20Voting_Report_Entire.pdf (Unfortunately, there's no documentation in this report. We'll keep searching.)
2)  1970s-1980s Ohio - The Cincinnati Bell-FBI scandal:  Leonard Gates, a Cincinnati Bell employee for 23 years, testified that in the late 1970's and 80's, that the FBI assisted telephone companies with hacking into mainframe election computers in cities across the country. See: http://www.thelandesreport.com/Donsanto.htm
…

[In the interest of brevity, 90 examples of US vote fraud omitted]

…
92)  2003 Special Report - Dan Spillane, a voting machine test engineer, has filed a lawsuit against his former employer, DRE touch-screen voting machine manufacturer VoteHere. Spillane's lawsuit charges wrongful and retaliatory termination; he contends he was removed so that he could not blow the whistle to certification labs and pass critical information to the US General Accounting Office. He says he has evidence which shows voting systems are certified despite known flaws, demonstrating a weakness in both the NASED and the ITA system for certifying machines. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/votehere-lawsuit-1.html 
93)  Jun 26, 03 Johns Hopkins Report: Numerous security flaws are identified in a newly published paper entitled 'Analysis of an Electronic Voting System' by Tadayoshi Kohno (JHU), Adam Stubblefield (JHU), Aviel Rubin (JHU), and Dan Wallach (Rice University). http://www.jhuisi.jhu.edu Read about it: The Baltimore Sun (Front Page), MSNBC News, CNN, New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, CNET News, Scoop, and Headlines@Hopkins.

Orlando Sentinel (blog) reports about the fear of voter fraud in Iowa.

Whom do you trust to report election results – if you support Ron Paul?
posted by Scott Powers on December, 23 2011 2:00 PM

A pro-Ron Paul blog called “The Daily Paul” is promoting an effort to independently document caucus votes in Iowa and primary vote totals in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida — out of fear that, through the Main Stream Media, the announced tallies could be fraudulent.

The Daily Paul is trying to organize support for something called the “TransparentVote.net” project which intends to use volunteers with cameras to make photocopies of all the results, “to provide a check and balance to the Main Stream Media’s (MSM) reporting.”

“This will force the MSM to report honest results in line with the documented results posted at TransparentVote.net,” declares a blog post from Spiritof1776, on The Daily Paul blog. “I do not believe the MSM wants to get caught in election fraud. It is a federal crime and we will have the documents to prove it.”
…

Transparent Vote explains about Transparent Vote Counting and Reporting.

December 13, 2011
Transparent Vote Counting and Reporting

Fair and honest elections are one of the greatest Rights we as Americans have and cherish. Unfortunately, we can not guarantee that Right today there is a monopoly on the vote reporting. It is called News Election Pool. There is no check and balance. There is no competition. The purpose of this site is to provide a check and balance to the Main Stream Media’s (MSM) reporting. … most Americans and all honest candidates would agreed we want to insure we will have honest, transparent vote counting and transparent reporting of our vote. This is the goal of Transparentvote.net . It is a free site, set up for We the People. We are non-partisan and would like to invite any American citizen that believes in a transparent vote to join us. We have sent out a request to all the Presidential candidates to support us in this effort. We will be starting with the Iowa GOP caucus- January 3, 2012 . Then the NH GOP primary- January 10, 2012. If you will be at an Iowa precinct caucus or a NH voting place on those dates and are willing to volunteer as an independent reporter, we need your help. All you will need is a camera or camera phone to upload the official vote results to this site. It is pretty simple and does not take much time. You will first need to sign up here and agree to the Terms of Service.  (We need to be assured only photos of the official vote documents are uploaded.)

Below is some history of what happened 4 years ago and what you can do today. We believe you will also see why this project is vitally necessary in keeping our elections honest and transparent.

IOWA- Iowa has 1,784 precincts. We will need 1,784 or more volunteer news reporters, at least one at each precinct, armed with a digital camera or camera phone that will photo and upload the official results from that precinct to Transparentvote.net. Four years ago, Liberty News Network, which no longer exists, attempted this. Although, they only had a few hundred volunteers participating in Jan. 2008 Iowa caucus, it shook the monopolistic Establishment Media to it’s core! The problem is News Election Pool is where ALL the MSM get their results. They had never had ANY competition before in reporting the election results. For example, leading up to Caucus night, all these false polls had one particular candidate at 3%. When the precincts started reporting and posting to Liberty News Network, the MSM were reporting the same numbers as Liberty News Network ! This candidate was getting between 12-14% It kept them honest! We believe the MSM eventually saw they did not have all the precincts covered and after a few hours, this particular candidate’s numbers started to drop, but he still finished with 10% instead of 3% ! This year we need 1,750 volunteers to cover ALL of the precincts, officially documenting (with photo) and uploading the total results, precinct by precinct, transparent for everyone to see.

…
Sign up here.  It’s free!

My reaction:  Whether Ron Paul wins or not tomorrow depends entirely on the success of TransparentVote.net.  Expect the vote in any county not independently verified to be rigged to the limits of believability.

Ron Paul Grassroots Energy