2006 November Surprise:
the powers that be wanted the Democrats to take over Congress to stop the neo-cons
"A Democratic victory would not change the world,
but it would at least slow the berserk white-trash momentum of the bombs-and-Jesus
crowd. Those people have had their way long enough. Not even the Book
of Revelation threatens a plague of vengeful yahoos. We all need a rest
from this pogrom."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, 1986
The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies,
one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea
acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two
parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw
the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound
or extensive shifts in policy.
-- Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time
(one of Bill Clinton's teachers at Georgetown University)
www.alternet.org/rights/42458/
The illusion of democracy...
Posted by: SteveB on Oct 9, 2006 1:30 PM
is just too useful to the American ruling class to ever do away with.
Why not continue the pretense? Why not continue with two parties that
both follow the corporate line, a "free press" that publishes
corporate propaganda, all while maintaining the illusion that we all live
in a democracy?
This system is much more stable (and profitable) than any military dictatorship.
If you think the corporate elites who hold the real power in this country
are going to throw it all away just to keep Bush in office, you're wrong.
My prediction: now that the Republicans are no longer proving useful to
their purposes, our ruling class will throw their weight behind the Democrats,
who will mostly pursue the same policies pursued by the Republicans. The
illusion of democracy will be maintained, and those detention camps will
remain a figment of some people's paranoid imaginations.
Mike Ruppert accurately predicted the "old
guard" would dump Bush (but got the timing wrong)
Beyond Bush II, by Michael Ruppert www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102003_beyond_bush_2.html
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/070103_beyond_bush_1.html
BEYOND BUSH
July 1, 2003 1600 PDT (FTW) -- Let's just suppose for
a moment that George W. Bush was removed from the White House. Cheney,
Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz and Rove too. What would that
leave us with? It would leave us stuck in hugely expensive, Vietnam-like
guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would leave us with the Patriot
Act, Homeland Security and Total Information Awareness snooping into
every detail of our lives. It would leave us with a government in violation
of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to the Constitution. It
would leave us with a massive cover-up of US complicity in the attacks
of 9/11 that, if fully admitted, would show not
intelligence "failures" but intelligence
crimes, approved and ordered by the most powerful people in the country.
It would leave us with a government that now has the power to compel
mass vaccinations on pain of imprisonment or fine, and with no legal
ability to sue the vaccine makers who killed our friends or our children.
It would leave us with two and half million unemployed; the largest
budget deficits in history; more than $3.3 trillion missing from the
Department of Defense; and state and local governments broke to the
point of having to cut back essential services like sewers, police,
and fire. It would leave us with a federal government that had hit the
debt ceiling and was unable to borrow any more money. And we would still
be facing a looming natural gas crisis of unimagined proportions, and
living on a planet that is slowly realizing that it is running out of
oil with no "Plan B". Our airports however, would be very
safe, and shares of Halliburton, Lockheed and DynCorp would be paying
excellent dividends.
This is not good management.
Leaving all of these issues unaddressed is not good management either.
And this is why, as I will demonstrate in this article, the decision
has already been made by corporate and financial powers to remove George
W. Bush, whether he wants to leave or not, and whether he steals the
next election or not. Before you start cheering, ask yourself three
questions: "If there is someone or something that can decide that
Bush will not return, nor remain for long, what is it? And if that thing
is powerful enough to remove Bush, was it not also powerful enough to
have put him there in the first place? And if that is the case, then
isn't that what's really responsible for the state of things? George
W. Bush is just a hired CEO who is about to be removed by the "Board
of Directors". Who are they? Are they going to choose his replacement?
Are you going to help them?
What can change this Board of Directors and the way the "Corporation"
protects its interests? These are the only issues that matter.
So now the honest question about the 2004
Presidential campaign is, "What do you really want out of it?"
Do you want the illusion that everything is a little better while it
really gets worse? Or are you ready yet to roll up your sleeves and
make some very unpleasant but necessary fixes?
The greatest test of
the 2004 presidential election campaign is not with the candidates.
It is with the people. There are strong signs that presidential
election issues on the Democratic side are already being manipulated
by corporate and financial interests. And some naïve and well-intentioned
(and some not-so-naïve and not-so-well intentioned) activists are
already playing right into the Board's hands. There are many disturbing
signs that the only choice offered to the American people will be no
choice at all. Under the psychological rationale, "This is the
way it has to be done", campaign debates will likely address only
half-truths and fail to come to grips with - or even acknowledge - the
most important issues that I just described. In fact, only the least
important issues will likely be addressed in campaign 2004 at the usual
expense of future generations who are rapidly realizing that they are
about to become the victims of the biggest Holocaust in mankind's history.
The final platforms for Election 2004 will likely be manifestos of madness
unless we dictate differently.
Some on the Democratic side are already positioning themselves to co-opt
and control what happened on 9/11 into a softer, less disturbing "Better
this than nothing" strategy. This attitude, that the only thing
that matters is finding an electable Democrat, is nothing more than
a rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. Has everyone suddenly
forgotten that the 2000 election was stolen:
first by using software and political machinery to disenfranchise tens
of thousands of eligible voters, then by open interference at polling
places, and finally by an absolutely illegal Supreme Court decision?
Do these people believe that such a crime, absolutely successful the
first time, will never be attempted again?
And has everyone also forgotten that in the 2002 midterm elections the
proprietary voting software, in many cases
owned by those affiliated with the Republican Party or - as in the case
of Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska - the candidates themselves, has
been ruled by the Supreme Court to be immune from public inspection.
(Hagel won by a lopsided 83% majority). Throughout the United States
in 2002 there was abundant evidence that the so-called "solution"
to hanging chads did nothing more than enshrine the ability to steal
elections with immunity and also much less fuss afterwards? Who in their
right mind would trust such a system? Why have none of the candidates
mentioned it?
And, if all else fails, we can have more Wellstone
plane crashes. It has worked with three Democratic Senate candidates
in key races over the last thirty years. Maybe that's why no one in
Congress is talking about the election process. Plane crashes are part
of that process too.
Unless people find the will to address scandals, lies, and betrayals
of trust that, by their very existence, reveal that the system itself
is corrupt and that the people controlling it - both in government,
and in America's corporations and financial institutions -- are criminals,
there is no chance to make anything better, only an absolute certainty
that things will get worse. ....
Unless people find the will to address scandals, lies,
and betrayals of trust that, by their very existence, reveal that the
system itself is corrupt and that the people controlling it - both in
government, and in America's corporations and financial institutions
-- are criminals, there is no chance to make anything better, only an
absolute certainty that things will get worse. ....
There is only one difference between the evidence showing the
Bush administration's criminal culpability in and foreknowledge of the
attacks of 9/11, and the evidence showing that the administration deceived
the American public about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Both sets of evidence are thoroughly documented. They are irrefutable
and based upon government records and official statements and actions
shown to be false, misleading or dishonest. And both sets of evidence
are unimpeachable. The difference is that the evidence showing
the Iraqi deception is being seriously and widely investigated by
the mainstream press, and actively by an ever-increasing number of elected
representatives. That's it.
Democrats (and old guard Republicans) to urge
Iraqi partition after US election
Democratic Party chair Howard Dean was on the Charlie Rose show (PBS)
a week before the mid-term 2006 election, and suggested that partition could
be a solution for the "Iraqi civil war." It seems that the
empire is pursuing a "good cop, bad cop" strategy regarding
the plunder of Iraq - the Bush / Cheney neo-cons create chaos and devastation,
and the Democrats (and perhaps the old guard Republicans represented
by James Baker, whose "recommendations" for Iraq will be unveiled
after the election) will legitimize partition as part of an alleged
new direction for the US war on Iraq. The fact that this fragmentation
would be yet another drawing of boundaries by non-Arabs (the lines on
the existing maps were devised by the British
and French in 1920 without input from the indigenous population) that
conveniently would make controlling the oil more practical for the US
is unlikely to be mentioned in the mass media.
www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1555130,00.html
Sunday, Nov. 5, 2006
The Case for Dividing Iraq
With the country descending into civil war, a noted diplomat and author
argues why partition may be the U.S.'s only exit strategy
By Peter W. Galbraith
... In fact, the Sunnis may have the most to gain from partition.
The Sunni insurgency feeds on popular hostility not just to the Americans
but to a Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government. Most Sunnis don't support
al-Qaeda and its imitators, but they often prefer them to Iraqi security
forces, which are seen as complicit in the killings of Sunnis. If
the Sunnis were to establish their own region, they could have an
army and provide for their own security. Since Iraq's known
oil fields are in the Shi'ite south and the Kurdish north, the Sunnis
do have reason to fear being stuck in the middle with no resources
of their own. So, for partition to work, the Kurds and Shi'ites
would have to guarantee the Sunnis a proportionate share of Iraq's
oil revenues for a period of time, as they have already agreed to
do. Over the long term, exploration for oil in the largely unexplored
Sunni areas provides the region its best prospect for revenues. [emphasis
added]
the plutocrats wanted a Democratic victory to
stop the neo-cons
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20061119&articleId=3921
Cheney's Revenge
by Mike Whitney
.... the adults are stepping in and taking back their government.
The establishment "old school" Republicans and country club
plutocrats put-together a plan to sabotage the Cheney administration
and put an end to the Iraq debacle. The scheme first became apparent
when Bob Woodward, the establishment's number one scribe, released his
book "State of Denial". That was followed by the National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Lancet's Iraqi casualty report, the Mark
Foley page fiasco, and a steady barrage of ethics and corruption scandals.
The Democrats had nothing to do with the ferocious media-blitzkrieg
which pummeled the Bush team day-in and day-out. It was all the handiwork
of big-money Republicans who lost their place at the policy-table when
Cheney and Rummy decided they would run the whole shebang by themselves.
The only way they could be certain of undermining the Sec-Def and the
Veep's powers was by attacking their political base and destroying the
"rubber stamp" congress. And, that is precisely what they
did. It's a classic case of the parent killing its own offspring or,
as Dostoyevsky said, "One reptile devouring the other."
The election simply proves that one should not expect to take the country
away from the people who really own it.
It's theirs, and the political parties are merely the temporary security
guards who are paid to watch over their prized possession.
the prospect for a Democratic controlled Congress
http://rigint.blogspot.com/2006/11/who-ya-gonna-call.html
American politics isn't just theatre; it's dinner theatre, on par with
a Medieval Times franchise. It can put on a decent show: the way the
white and black knights joust you'd think they meant it, and that the
guy who falls off his horse really gets hurt and the champion wins something
of meaning. Voters are "treated like royalty" - every man
a king! - but their crowns are made of tissue paper. And while the menu
is all you can eat, all you can order is bullshit.
Bush's kangaroo court sentences former Bush business
partner (Saddam Hussein)
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2630520
World Opinion Divided on Saddam Sentence
Saddam Hussein's Death Sentence Hailed in Parts of World; Others Question
Capital Punishment
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Nov 5, 2006 (AP)
Praising the Iraqi judiciary for its independence, the White House
denied arranging for the verdict to be announced just two days before
pivotal elections in which Democrats are fighting for control of Congress.
www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1106-07.htm
Published on Monday, November 6, 2006 by the Independent / UK
This Was A Guilty Verdict on America As Well
by Robert Fisk
So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes
he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world.
America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas -
along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring
it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for
Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was
pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're
going to string him up, and it's another great day.
Of course, it couldn't happen to a better man. Nor a worse. It couldn't
be a more just verdict - nor a more hypocritical one. It's difficult
to think of a more suitable monster for the gallows, preferably dispatched
by his executioner, the equally monstrous hangman of Abu Ghraib prison,
Abu Widad, who would strike his victims on the head with an axe if
they dared to condemn the leader of the Iraqi Socialist Baath Party
before he hanged them. But Abu Widad was himself hanged at Abu Ghraib
in 1985 after accepting a bribe to put a reprieved prisoner to death
instead of the condemned man. But we can't mention Abu Ghraib these
days because we have followed Saddam's trail of shame into the very
same institution. And so by hanging this awful man, we hope - don't
we? - to look better than him, to remind Iraqis that life is better
now than it was under Saddam.
Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq
that we cannot even say that. Life is now worse. Or rather, death
is now visited upon even more Iraqis than Saddam was able to inflict
on his Shias and Kurds and - yes, in Fallujah of all places - his
Sunnis, too. So we cannot even claim moral superiority. For if Saddam's
immorality and wickedness are to be the yardstick against which all
our iniquities are judged, what does that say about us? We only sexually
abused prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects
and carried out a few rapes and illegally invaded a country which
cost Iraq a mere 600,000 lives ("more or less", as George
Bush Jnr said when he claimed the figure to be only 30,000). Saddam
was much worse. We can't be put on trial. We can't be hanged.
"Allahu Akbar," the awful man shouted - God is greater.
No surprise there. He it was who insisted these words should be inscribed
upon the Iraqi flag, the same flag which now hangs over the palace
of the government that has condemned him after a trial at which the
former Iraqi mass murderer was formally forbidden from describing
his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary
of Defence. Remember that handshake? Nor, of course, was he permitted
to talk about the support he received from George Bush Snr, the current
US President's father. Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed
last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before
the mid-term US elections.
Anyone who said the verdict was designed to help the Republicans,
Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, blurted out yesterday, must
be "smoking rope". Well, Tony, that rather depends on what
kind of rope it might be. Snow, after all, claimed yesterday that
the Saddam verdict - not the trial itself, please note - was "scrupulous
and fair". The judges will publish "everything they used
to come to their verdict."
No doubt. Because here are a few of the things that Saddam was not
allowed to comment upon: sales of chemicals to his Nazi-style regime
so blatant - so appalling - that he has been sentenced to hang on
a localised massacre of Shias rather than the wholesale gassing of
Kurds over which George W Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara were
so exercised when they decided to depose Saddam in 2003 - or was it
in 2002? Or 2001? Some of Saddam's pesticides came from Germany (of
course). But on 25 May 1994, the US Senate's Committee on Banking,
Housing and Urban Affairs produced a report entitled "United
States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to
Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences (sic) of
the Persian Gulf War". ....
Military newspapers call for Rumsfeld's resignation
www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2333360.php
November 04, 2006
Editorial
Time for Rumsfeld to go
... Now, the president says he’ll stick with Rumsfeld for the
balance of his term in the White House.
This is a mistake. It is one thing for the majority of Americans to
think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation’s current military
leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then
it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly
leads.
These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many
privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private,
adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination
of the military to civilian authority.
And although that tradition, and the officers’ deep sense of
honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them
believe it.
Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with
the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy
has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the
blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be
the troops who bear its brunt.
This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party
wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising
truth:
Donald Rumsfeld must go.
American Conservative magazine urged Republican
defeat
November 20, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative
GOP Must GoNext week Americans will vote for candidates who have spent
much of their campaigns addressing state and local issues. But no future
historian will linger over the ideas put forth for improving schools
or directing funds to highway projects.
The meaning of this election will be interpreted in one of two ways:
the American people endorsed the Bush presidency or they did what they
could to repudiate it. Such an interpretation will be simplistic, even
unfairly so. Nevertheless, the fact that will matter is the raw number
of Republicans and Democrats elected to the House and Senate.
It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen—in
America and the world at large—as a decisive “No”
vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on
George W. Bush’s failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty
for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution
carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration’s
endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge,
President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us
and why—thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective
response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed
his national-security team with people who either did not want to know
or were committed to a prefabricated answer.
As a consequence, he rushed America into a war against Iraq, a war we
are now losing and cannot win, one that has done far more to strengthen
Islamist terrorists than anything they could possibly have done for
themselves. Bush’s decision to seize Iraq will almost surely leave
behind a broken state divided into warring ethnic enclaves, with hundreds
of thousands killed and maimed and thousands more thirsting for revenge
against the country that crossed the ocean to attack them. The invasion
failed at every level: if securing Israel was part of the administration’s
calculation—as the record suggests it was for several of his top
aides—the result is also clear: the strengthening of Iran’s
hand in the Persian Gulf, with a reach up to Israel’s northern
border, and the elimination of the most powerful Arab state that might
stem Iranian regional hegemony.
The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason
than the feckless president can’t face the embarrassment of admitting
defeat. The chain of events is not complete: Bush, having learned little
from his mistakes, may yet seek to embroil America in new wars against
Iran and Syria.
Meanwhile, America’s image in the world, its capacity to persuade
others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has
been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for
this country—which once symbolized hope and justice—to be
humbled. The professionals in the Bush administration (and there are
some) realize the damage his presidency has done to American prestige
and diplomacy. But there is not much they can do.
There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which
will stain our country’s reputation for a long time. But the process
of recovering our good name must begin somewhere, and the logical place
is in the voting booth this Nov. 7. If we are fortunate, we can produce
a result that is seen—in Washington, in Peoria, and in world capitals
from Prague to Kuala Lumpur—as a repudiation of George W. Bush
and the war of aggression he launched against Iraq.
We have no illusions that a Democratic majority would be able to reverse
Bush’s policies, even if they had a plan to. We are aware that
on a host of issues the Democrats are further from TAC’s positions
than the Republicans are. The House members who blocked the Bush amnesty
initiative are overwhelmingly Republican. But immigration has not played
out in an entirely partisan manner this electoral season: in many races
the Democrat has been more conservative than the open-borders, Big Business
Republican. A Democratic House and Senate is, in our view, a risk immigration
reformers should be willing to take. We can’t conceive of a newly
elected Democrat in a swing district who would immediately alienate
his constituency by voting for amnesty. We simply don’t believe
a Democratic majority would give the Republicans such an easy route
to return to power. Indeed, we anticipate that Democratic office holders
will follow the polls on immigration just as Republicans have, and all
the popular momentum is towards greater border enforcement.
On Nov. 7, the world will be watching as we go to the polls, seeking
to ascertain whether the American people have the wisdom to try to correct
a disastrous course. Posterity will note too if their collective decision
is one that captured the attention of historians—that of a people
voting, again and again, to endorse a leader taking a country in a catastrophic
direction. The choice is in our hands.
Rats flee the sinking ship: Neo-Cons turn on
Bush
from the fourth leaflet of the White Rose (German student
group that dared to publish leaflets about the Holocaust, 1942)
"With total brutality the chasm that separates the better portion
of the nation from everything that is identified with National Socialism
must be opened wide. For Hitler and his followers there is no punishment
on this earth commensurate with their crimes. But out of love for coming
generations we must make an example after the conclusion of the war,
so that no one will ever again have the slightest urge to try a similar
action. And do not forget the petty scoundrels
in this regime; note their names, so that none will go free! They should
not find it possible, having had their part in these abominable crimes,
at the last minute to rally to another flag and then act as if nothing
has happened!"
www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/german/ftp.py?orgs/german//white-rose/leaflet-04
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/18/AR2006111801076_pf.html
Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 19, 2006; A01
FOCUS | William Rivers Pitt: The Rat Pack
www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110606Z.shtml
William Rivers Pitt writes: "Ken Adelman, Michael Ledeen, Frank
Gaffney and Richard Perle have spent many years waiting for the opportunity
to road-test their wild ideas about how to deal with the world, and
with the installation of the Bush administration, they finally got their
big chance. Now that the wheels are coming off, however, they are trying
to pretend that none of this has anything to do with them."
www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612
Neo Culpa
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters
have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their
grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a
series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David
Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target
No. 1: the president himself.
by David Rose VF.COM November 3, 2006
More Bad News on Iraq Leaked
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1152AP_Iraq_War_Games.html
Sunday, November 5, 2006 · Last updated 1:48 a.m. PT
1999 war games foresaw problems in Iraq
By JOHN HEILPRIN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games
in 1999 that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops,
and even then chaos might ensue.
Dick Cheney goes hunting on election day
www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/05/cheney.hunting/index.html
Cheney hunting for victory on Election Day
POSTED: 11:11 p.m. EST, November 5, 2006
(CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney will spend Election Day hunting
in South Dakota, his press secretary said Sunday.
It will be Cheney's first hunting trip since February, when he accidentally
shot a hunting companion while attempting to fire at a covey of quail
on a private ranch in Texas.
Sandinistas win in Nicaragua
Bush goes to "red" states before election
- R's are worried
Envangelist hypocrit outed by his gay prostitute:
"didn't inhale?"
Foley "page" scandal and Republican
blackmail strategy
Vote fraud from coast to coast
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20061104&articleId=3700
The 2006 U.S. Midterms: Another Stolen Election?
by Prof. Michael Keefer
November 4, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
When Votes Disappear
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 24 Novmber 2006
You know what really had me terrified on Nov. 7? The all-too-real possibility
of a highly suspect result. What would we have done if the Republicans
had held on to the House by a narrow margin, but circumstantial evidence
strongly suggested that a combination of vote suppression and defective
- or rigged - electronic voting machines made the difference?
Fortunately, it wasn't a close election. But the fact that our electoral
system worked well enough to register an overwhelming Democratic landslide
doesn't mean that things are O.K. There were many problems with voting
in this election - and in at least one Congressional race, the evidence
strongly suggests that paperless voting machines failed to count thousands
of votes, and that the disappearance of these votes delivered the race
to the wrong candidate.
Here's the background: Florida's 13th Congressional District is currently
represented by Katherine Harris, who as Florida's secretary of state
during the 2000 recount famously acted as a partisan Republican rather
than a fair referee. This year Ms. Harris didn't run for re-election,
making an unsuccessful bid for the Senate instead. But according to
the official vote count, the Republicans held on to her seat, with Vern
Buchanan, the G.O.P. candidate, narrowly defeating Christine Jennings,
the Democrat.
The problem is that the official vote count isn't credible. In much
of the 13th District, the voting pattern looks normal. But in Sarasota
County, which used touch-screen voting machines made by Election Systems
and Software, almost 18,000 voters - nearly 15 percent of those who
cast ballots using the machines - supposedly failed to vote for either
candidate in the hotly contested Congressional race. That compares with
undervote rates ranging from 2.2 to 5.3 percent in neighboring counties.
Reporting by The Herald-Tribune of Sarasota, which interviewed hundreds
of voters who called the paper to report problems at the polls, strongly
suggests that the huge apparent undervote was caused by bugs in the
ES&S software.
About a third of those interviewed by the paper reported that they couldn't
even find the Congressional race on the screen. This could conceivably
have been the result of bad ballot design, but many of them insisted
that they looked hard for the race. Moreover, more than 60 percent of
those interviewed by The Herald-Tribune reported that they did cast
a vote in the Congressional race - but that this vote didn't show up
on the ballot summary page they were shown at the end of the voting
process.
If there were bugs in the software, the odds are that they threw the
election to the wrong candidate. An Orlando Sentinel examination of
other votes cast by those who supposedly failed to cast a vote in the
Congressional race shows that they strongly favored Democrats, and Mr.
Buchanan won the official count by only 369 votes. The fact that Mr.
Buchanan won a recount - that is, a recount of the votes the machines
happened to record - means nothing.
Although state officials have certified Mr. Buchanan as the victor,
they've promised an audit of the voting machines. But don't get your
hopes up: as in 2000, state election officials aren't even trying to
look impartial. To oversee the audit, the state has chosen as its "independent"
expert Prof. Alec Yasinsac of Florida State University - a Republican
partisan who made an appearance on the steps of the Florida Supreme
Court during the 2000 recount battle wearing a "Bush Won"
sign.
Ms. Jennings has now filed suit with the same court, demanding a new
election. She deserves one.
But for the nation as a whole, the important thing isn't who gets seated
to represent Florida's 13th District. It's whether the voting disaster
there leads to legislation requiring voter verification and a paper
trail.
And I have to say that the omens aren't good. I've been shocked at how
little national attention the mess in Sarasota has received. Here we
have as clear a demonstration as we're ever likely to see that warnings
from computer scientists about the dangers of paperless electronic voting
are valid - and most Americans probably haven't even heard about it.
As far as I can tell, the reason Florida-13 hasn't become a major national
story is that neither control of Congress nor control of the White House
is on the line. But do we have to wait for a constitutional crisis to
realize that we're in danger of becoming a digital-age banana republic?
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