From the "Letters to the Editor" today from the WSJ "An Election Judge on Fraud"...
...I don't have an online link as a friend sent me the article. Just see Dec 5, 2000 WSJ. (bolding is mine)..
....An Election Judge on Fraud
Your Nov. 22 page-one article "Florida Ballot Miscues Touch Off Debate Within
the African-American Community" may be misleading to readers.
Letters intended for publication in the print edition of the Journal can be
e-mailed to: letter.editor@wsj.com. All letters are subject to abridgment.
For more reader responses, see Voices.
Was the problem of large numbers of overvotes in the black precincts due to a
"lack of sophistication," as Congresswoman Hastings has suggested?
Or rather,
was there a significant amount of ballot tampering of the Bush ballots by
these Democrat precinct election officials, by their subsequently punching
out the Gore chads to invalidate the ballot and reduce the Bush vote count in
these heavily Democrat precincts?
Some were reported as 1,000-plus for Mr.
Gore, and less than a dozen for Mr. Bush.
How many overvoted ballots for
president in those precincts?
Was Gov. Bush punched on any of these?
How
many?
Having been an election judge here in Houston, Texas (Harris County),
for more than a decade, I have been made aware over the years by my fellow
Republican Ballot Security officials here of numerous examples of probable
serious election fraud in some of the inner-city precincts, where we
apparently use similar votomatic punch card voting systems, as in Palm Beach,
Broward, and Dade County, Florida.
We apparently have seen examples of intentional tampering of already voted
ballots by Democrat election officials in our inner-city precincts, that
probably took place after the polls had closed and the poll watchers had gone
home. The easiest opportunity for tampering has been for precinct officials
to improperly reopen the ballot transfer cases on the way to the election
center, and punch out a Democrat chad in a particular race on a ballot that
was voted as a Republican vote for that race, thus invalidating the ballot
for that race, thereby reducing the Republican's vote count. We even had an
incident several years ago of a Democrat precinct official driving around our
Loop 610 for more than an hour in their van altering and even adding ballots.
Remember that reducing your opponent's vote count is just as effective as
adding new ballots for your candidate, and virtually undetectable. The only
way to even sense this kind of tampering has occurred is to examine the
overvoted ballots for their two preferences, and then examine the down ballot
preferences. Every Bush ballot would have been double punched with Gore votes
too, and possibly even straight-Republican ballots would have been punched
with straight-Democratic holes too. The real story may be in a closer
examination of those 19,000 overvote ballots in Palm Beach County. Some
veteran ballot security officials of these vote fraud investigations here in
Houston believe massive voter fraud might be found to have occurred in the
inner-city precincts in those three Florida counties. Perhaps even in other
metropolitan cities across America.
If the presumption of election fraud is to be assumed, Gore will have more
chads punched out on almost all 19,000 overvoted ballots, and Bush some
number short of that. The Gore Campaign will argue that this differential
proves that Gore got more votes than Bush, but in reality, it may simply
suggest that his Democrat election officials punched out his Gore chads to
invalidate Bush ballots. One need only have watched the hand recounts in
Broward County to see how brazen some election officials can be.
One other factual note here that should cause you to understand the potential
gravity of the fraud in Florida. For comparison, here in Harris County
(Greater Houston area), with almost a million similar-votomatic ballots cast
on Nov. 7, Harris County had only 6,500 (0.7%) overvotes (more than one vote)
and 14,690 (1.5%) undervotes (no votes) for president. So, one should ask,
why such a problem in Palm Beach where overvoting was almost 5%. "Lack of
Sophistication"? Butterfly Ballot? Fraud? A combination of all three? You can
reject "Butterfly Ballot," if most of the ballots have Bush and anyone else.
In Houston, we have even observed discrepancies between the number of votes
cast and the number of signatures on poll lists to be as high as 4% to 6% in
precincts without pollwatchers, but it apparently reduces to below 1% when
poll watchers are used. Sadly, not even poll watchers are a guarantee against
a "sophisticated" and dishonest precinct election official. They're out there
every election, stealing lots of votes and undermining our precious electoral
system and thus our democracy. Wake up America, all may not be as it appears
in those Florida counties with heavily Democrat precincts, let alone around
the rest of America. Maybe we need to pay attention and investigate high
overvote precincts all across the nation.
C. Moore
Houston
A Little Matter of Interpretation |
