TomPaine.com – GOP's Cyber Election Hit Squad Exposed

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on election night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election? The answer appears to be yes.

There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004 , Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website—which gave the world the presidential election results—was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Recent revelations have documented that the Republican National Committee (RNC) ran a secret White House e-mail system for Karl Rove and dozens of White House staffers. This high-tech system used to count and report the 2004 presidential vote—from server-hosting contracts, to software-writing services, to remote-access capability, to the actual server usage logs themselves—must be added to the growing congressional investigations.

Oy. Add another major scandal to the tottering pile awaiting investigation and oversight. There might be something in it, but there's a lot of conjecture, too. Which you'd expect, if there really was fraudulent electoral tampering going on – because the bad guys would be highly motivated to cover their tracks under layer after layer of technology, software, servers, and shell corporations.

There's something that always strikes me as funny whenever there's a close election or a hotly contested runoff. Republican pols are always very quick to holler " voter fraud! " and start investigations and lawsuits when they're on the down side of the polls ( See "Washington, State of, Governor's Election of Christine Gregoire" ). 

Republicans are typically more interested in removing "fraudulent" or ineligible or duplicated names from the voter rolls than making sure that every person has a fair and balanced shot at voting in the election. They are suspicious of "voters" in general, and tend to assume that the great mass of eligible citizens aren't the kind of voters they're looking for. They tend to want "quality". Sometimes this is from enlightened self interest – moderates want and support the concept of an educated electorate. Neoconservatives, not so much, I'm thinking. They sometimes are not above out-and-out discouraging or intimidating potential voters from showing up, or confusing them with last-minute campaign materials that muddy the waters.

The Democrats typically respond with a "Dude…wait, what?" alacrity to charges of election tampering if they are on the upside, as if they're thinking "but we don't need to commit voter fraud, we're in the majority in urban areas."  On the other hand, when Democrats are on the downside, they'll often cry foul about overwhelmed, understaffed precincts and a lack of voting machines and polling places in "urban" ( read: "black" ) areas, while pointing at the well staffed, abundant, and well-stocked voting locations with plenty of voting machines in "suburban" ( read: "white" ) locations. This is most likely to happen where a Republican (or a group of Republicans) control(s) the mechanics of voting, as in the case of Ohio. 

Note: in the case of Chicago vs. Downstate Illiinois elections, stand everything I just said on its head. In Chicago elections, there are actually Democratic thug-types that go around their precincts, knock on doors, and lurk outside polling places, "encouraging" voters to go with the "machine" guy and not the "reform" candidate (especially in the Democratic primaries, which are the defacto elections for most city and county offices). Downstate tends to be more Republican, and we usually have a Republican governor (and may yet again soon the way Blago keeps getting himself snarled up).

Democrats are generally more interested in making sure that every last possible eligible voter of whatever color not only can vote, but is encouraged to vote. They tend to want "quantity".  If Democrats control the mechanics of voting, they make sure there are a lot of conveniently located polling places, plenty of volunteer polling judges, and plenty of the nuts-and-bolts supplies on hand. Or at least they try, although mishaps still happen that are sometimes innocent, and sometimes more than a little fishy.

Many years ago, corruption was much more common in Democratic electoral practices, and there are still whispers about "dirty" election tactics in the past (case in point: the way Daley's father handed Illinois' electoral votes to John F. Kennedy). 

Most "machine" Democrats would never dream of hacking the actual voting machines or changing vote tallies using technology, because their power is in their "people skills." Many ordinary, "party loyalist" Republicans rely on their mad GOTV database skillz and the dirtier aspects of "scare tactic" advertisments and Swift Boat Veteran hatchet jobs to do their jobs. They're not above tying up phone lines so their counterparts can't use their own mad GOTV skillz, too.  

The very, very small number of Republican officials that might be willing to risk fines or prison in order to deliver a satisfactory victory with a vew convenient "glitches," would probably prefer to work quietly and behind the scenes, where the likelihood of discovery is least.

Does everything in this country have to break down into the "nurturing, permissive Mother" and "judgemental, strict Father" models? Politics, religion, the works?

[tags]Election Fraud[/tags]