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2/ Some of the people who helped Bush stop the election recount in Florida 2000- Kavanaugh, & Roberts--are in positions of power today. Roger Stone organized the Brooks Brothers riot to intimidate recount workers & stall the recount so it wld be hard to complete b4 the deadline.
The GOP blocked the 2000 recount and then suckered Ds into passing The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, which allocated billions of $$$ for new electronic voting machines, many of which made recounts impossible bc they did not use paper ballots. Some Ds co-sponsored HAVA. 3/
The only senators who opposed the Help America Vote Act, which allocated billions of dollars for often paperless (unauditable) voting machines were @HillaryClinton and Chuck Schumer. Again, w/o paper, there was no way to conduct meaningful audits or recounts w/ these machines. 4/
In 2002, Georgia became the first state to deploy paperless (unrecountable, unauditable) touchscreen voting machines statewide. That test election resulted in several poll-defying GOP victories. The GOP took over the governorship from the Democrats & have held it ever since. 5/
I forgot to mention that the 2000 presidential election between Bush and Gore was decided by just 537 votes in Florida. 6/
For the 04 presidential election, Ohio's Secty of State was Ken Blackwell, who also was the OH Bush Campaign's Honorary Chairman. OH's current Secty of State, @FranklaRose, made Blackwell his transition team leader. LaRose has recently banned more than 1 drop box per county. 
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Late on election night, Kerry led. But Ohio's server went down 4 no publicly explained reason. Blackwell had set up a backup server controlled by Mike Connell (known as Rove's IT guru). The server routed OH's results to TN. When the main server went back up, Bush had the lead. 8/
A suit was filed alleging that Rove had orchestrated election theft in Ohio. Connell was ordered to testify at trial in December, at which point Jonathan half joked to his colleague in an email that Connell wouldn't see Xmas. Connell didn't see Xmas. His private plane crashed. 9/
Connell had not admitted election theft in his depo & died b4 trial. His blackberry was not recovered from the crash site. The memory cards & equipment were proprietary to the vendors. Kerry did not seek a recount bc he assumed the Supreme Ct. wld block it as it had in 04. 10/
Jonathan & I continued all the way thru 016. You can listen to the rest of the interview here. We discuss his analysis of exit polls in 2004 and thereafter. Those analyses are not reassuring as to the legitimacy of the outcomes in 2004 and 2016. 11/
I wanted to thread the entire interview as I just did, but I have to prepare for an Ohio presentation on Monday. I may come back to this later. Please follow Jonathan at @jonathansimon14. I highly recommend his book too. 12/ https://www.amazon.com/CODE-RED-Computerized-Election-American/dp/1500319856
Our point is NOT that the situation is hopeless. Our point is that we, the voters, must take the potential for electronic theft seriously & do what we can to mitigate threats b4 November. Here's an article I wrote w/ twenty proposed mitigations. TY. 13/ https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/tips-to-mitigate-threats-to-our-votes-and-voter-registrations-before-november-690099f76cf4
You can sign up to watch the Ohio election security forum here. As I mentioned, I’m one of the speakers. It’s from 4-6PM PST. It’s co-hosted by OPAL & the Ohio Democratic Party. I will discuss different types of election equipment & protecting Nov.
14/ https://www.mobilize.us/opalmissionvote/event/306188/
14/ https://www.mobilize.us/opalmissionvote/event/306188/
OK, I can't help it. I need to at least finish Ohio 2004. So I'll add a few more. 15/
16/ Officials have claimed it wld have been impossible to remotely alter vote tallies. But in 2018, cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter reported that our largest vendor, ES&S, had installed remote access software in central tabulators sold from 2000-2006. Diebold had them too.
17/ In 2018, ES&S claimed to have confirmed the removal of all remote access software in its systems. But it would not say if it was removed b4 or after the 2016 election. It hasn't said whether Diebold central tabulators still have it. ES&S acquired many Diebold contracts in 09.
18/ Exit polls were buried in 2002 in Georgia because they had deviated so substantially from the electronic outcomes reported by the machines. In Ohio 04, Ken Blackwell tried & failed to block exit polls.
19/ Other states had anomalous results in 02 too. One example is @DonSiegelman's race for reelection as governor of Alabama. 6K votes disappeared in the dead of night, & Karl Rove's client, Alabama's AG, seized the paper ballots b4 they cld be recounted. Exit polls were buried.
20/ Jonathan tried to raise money to conduct independent exit polls for the 04 election, but few were interested. He thus knew he'd have to rely on the media exit polls, so he downloaded them on election night. He was apparently the only one to do so.
21/ The exit polls from the 2004 presidential election showed a consistent "red shift" (favorable to the GOP) compared to reported electronic outcomes. The red shift was largest in places where it mattered most to winning the election.
22/ A few years ago, @JohnKerry told Brian Lehrer that his campaign suspected electronic vote tally manipulation in 04. They went to court to try to see the machine algorithms before the election, but the judge threw their case out on the basis that the software was proprietary.
23/ This @nytimes piece by Kim Zetter discusses how the Kerry team went to court to try to see the voting machine algorithms but the court ruled against them. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/magazine/election-security-crisis-midterms.html
24/ Here's John Kerry's interview with Brian Lehrer where he said that his campaign suspected electronic vote tally manipulation in Ohio 2004. https://www.wnyc.org/story/john-kerry-reflects/
25/ The backup server in Ohio 2004, re-routed Ohio's results to a company called Smartech in TN. Smartech had also hosted the Bush White House's emails, including Karl Rove's emails. Russia reportedly hacked Smartech in 2015.
26/ McClatchy article about the routing of Ohio's results via a backup server to Smartech in Tennessee. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article24508330.html
27/ Article confirming that, in 2015, Russia hacked some "older" emails hosted on Smartech servers. Comey, naturally, downplayed this event. https://www.wired.com/2017/01/russia-hacked-older-republican-emails-fbi-director-says/
28/ If elections are so easy to rig, how did Obama win 2X? I don’t know. But in 08, both Rove & Connell were dealing w/ the suit alleging they had electronically manipulated the 04 election.
29/ Here’s a Sept. 08 declaration from @spoonamore, a formerly Republican IT expert who traveled in the same circles as Connell & was an expert witness in the suit. He said Connell worried some of what Connell built might have been used for election theft. https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/Lincoln-ReplyAff1-9-17-08.pdf
30/ Here’s an article about Connell’s plane crash in December 2008. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-it-guru-dies-in-plane-crash/
31/ To be continued.