via: OpEdNews
Ohio’s Secretary of State announced this morning that a $1.9 million official study shows that “critical security failures” are embedded throughout the voting systems in the state that decided the 2004 election. Those failures, she says, “could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State.” They have rendered Ohio’s vote counts “vulnerable” to manipulation and theft by “fairly simple techniques.”
Indeed, she says, “the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant.”
In other words, Ohio’s top election official has finally confirmed that the 2004 election could have been easily stolen.
Brunner’s stunning findings apply to electronic voting machines used in 58 of Ohio’s 88 counties, in addition to scanning devices and central tabulators used on paper ballots in much of the rest of the state.
Brunner is calling for widespread changes to the way Ohio casts and counts its ballots. Her announcement follows moves by California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen to disqualify electronic voting machines in the nation’s biggest state.
In tandem, these two reports add a critical state-based dimension to the growing mountain of evidence that the US electoral system is rife with insecurities. Reports from the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Government Accountability Office, the Conyers Committee Task Force Report, Princeton University and others have offered differing perspectives that add up to the same conclusion.
Coming in the state that decided the 2004 election for George W. Bush, Brunner’s confirmation of the electoral system’s vulnerabilities adds huge new weight to the charge that the Buckeye State’s vote count was stolen. Read on…
I would like to add a big “DUH!!” here.. People have known about this since right after the election, if not during. Why so long to publicly acknowledge it? There have been articles, books (here and here), and DVDs (here, and here) made and written from what took place. Two bloggers (and investigative reporters) have been on this story of stolen elections since it started – Brad Friedman and Greg Palast. Just consider over the last three years all the damage Bush and Cheney have wrought on this country due to this election (and the previous one too).
I am glad the SoS of Ohio is acknowledging this now, but what can be done to remedy it? What will be done to protect from having it happen again – with the next Presidential election only a year away?
TheZoo 