Letter to Keith Olbermann

Keith Olbermann
Countdown
MSNBC

Mr. Olberman:
I heard you opine that since the margin of victory is so high, that the voter irregularity story is a "local" story.

Take a look at the technology and the corporations involved. ES&S and Diebold are virtually the same company - founded by brothers, the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. and those two companies are involved in the counting of 80% of the ballots cast. And it isn't just the touch-screen machines, it is also the optical scanners that count the paper ballots. Did you read Thom Hartmann's article on the pattern that shows big variances in Florida counties where Kerry lost support from Democrats in huge numbers - but only in those counties counted by optical scanners?

Put the patterns together and you can easily figure out that if you are counting 80% of the vote, you could throw a percentage of the votes in every race in every jurisdiction to the President above what he earned, and come up with a popular vote lead, then concentrate on the swing states to ensure enough to put you over in electoral college. By simply reversing a percentage of the votes for one candidate to the other in small enough numbers so that suspicion was not likely to be aroused, it could reverse a lot of votes.

I am not saying that is what happened (although it fits the facts), but you can't pretend, when you see these patterns and look at exit poll data where the exit polls are wrong only where you can't check the results that it doesn't stink to high heaven. You would only have to fudge the number a little over 3% to get the results we now are looking at. It also tracks with the exit poll data. Exit poll data is almost always dead on, and the inconvenient fact that you left out of the analysis tonight is that it would be much harder to fake, because it exists in black and white and it can be easily audited. Not so our ephemeral vote on electronic equipment with no paper trail.

I believe it was Stalin who said that he didn't care who voted as long as he got to count the votes. I think that is the attitude of the Republican party, who seemed hell-bent on setting up the conditions that led to this debacle, often with the cooperation of Democrats.

No country in its right mind would turn its vote over to a corporation - but we did, in the face of the warnings that Bev Harris and several other groups have been putting out for over a year now and that have been studiously ignored by the mainstream media, in favor of the latest on the Scott Peterson trial or travails of Michael Jackson.

I appreciate you continuing to cover this mess, but PLEASE don't minimize the abuse potential. And for God's sake, put Bev on to discuss it. Nobody knows it like her. Or Thom Hartmann. From his appearance tonight, my guess is that Alterman couldn't find his ass with a map.

Also, wouldn't you think that some Republican somewhere would be the least bit concerned about this abuse potential? If they had not won, would they? Would they have any grounds to protest? Democrats have been beside themselves with worry over the issue for most of this campaign. Republicans kept the bill to require paper trails bottled up in committee. Doesn't that tell you SOMETHING!

Thanks,
SFL