In states where the winner will be decided by less than 10% of the vote, mathematical analysis of raw voting data has revealed evidence of potential computer fraud. This fraud has been linked to a number of federal, senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial elections since 2008, as well as the 2012 primary contests, in which votes were allegedly flipped from Democrat to Republican.
The issue goes beyond the investment control of voting machine maker Hart Intercivic and Diebold’s close ties to George W. Bush. All five voting machine companies have strong fundraising ties to the GOP, yet executives, including the candidate’s son Tagg Romney, have denied any conflict between their financial support of one party and the machines that record and count the votes.
A retired NSA analyst has conducted an investigation into past election results in Arizona, which has revealed potential systemic election fraud on a large scale. However, the analysis suggests that this only occurs in larger precincts, as anomalies in small precincts can be more easily detected.
“Easy to Cheat”
Michael Duniho, a retired National Security Agency analyst, has spent the past seven years trying to uncover voting anomalies in his home state of Arizona and Pima County. The issue has been widely reported, particularly in relation to a 2006 RTA Bond issue election that is still being contested in the courts. According to Duniho, “It is very easy to manipulate the results of an election using computers, as it is impossible to see what is going on inside the machine.”
Duniho’s analysis of the voting results in the largest precincts revealed a startling trend: the Republican candidate in every election since 2008 had gained 8-10% in the Arizona primary, while the Democratic candidate had lost 8-10% – a swing of up to 20 points. As someone who has worked with large datasets for many years, Duniho was determined to understand why this phenomenon was only occurring in large precincts.
Nose Counting
Francois Choquette and James Johnson’s report on the South Carolina primary results in the February Republican contest sparked an investigation into the unusually large gain of votes for Mitt Romney in larger precincts. After examining various factors such as income level, population density, race, urban vs. rural, and party registration numbers, Choquette found no correlation to explain the trend. He then extended his research to the other fifty states and discovered a 10% switch in votes from Democrat to GOP in every state except Utah. In Maricopa County, Phoenix and its suburbs, Choquette even observed that Romney had used the same technique against John McCain in 2008, but McCain’s lead was too great for the 10% fraud gain to make a difference.
In order to analyze the data from every county across America, Choquette created a set of instructions to assist others in their own analysis. This involved downloading the text files of raw vote results by precinct from the Secretary of State’s Office, arranging them in precinct order, and putting in all of the candidate totals for each precinct. He then instructed users to sort the data by total vote smallest on the top, and add columns that show cumulative totals by candidate to establish trend lines. This process would reveal any trends that should remain statistically constant throughout an election.
Stealing Votes
Analysis of Arizona’s election contests revealed a startling pattern: for every race, the trend lines diverged in a suspicious manner. Rick Santorum and Ron Paul were losing votes that were then credited to Mitt Romney. Further investigation by Duniho revealed that someone had inserted a programme into the system’s central computer that flipped votes. This meant that Governor Brewer had in fact lost her election, and Congresswoman Gabby Giffords had won by a much larger margin than initially reported. Duniho concluded that strong hand count audits were necessary to ensure the integrity of these elections.
Ohio Precedent
The Republican Party has a long history of being accused of vote theft. In 2004, allegations of vote manipulation arose in both Ohio and Florida. In Ohio, GOP consultant Michael Connell was subpoenaed as a witness in a lawsuit against then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Connell had created a vote-counting computer program for the state and claimed it had a trap door that shifted Democratic votes to the GOP. Lawyers for the plaintiff asked the Department of Justice to provide Connell with security due to two threats made against his life by people associated with Karl Rove. Tragically, Connell was killed in a plane crash outside Akron before the trial began.
In Florida, a study by the Quantitative Methods Research Team at the University of California at Berkeley found that anomalies between counties using touch-screen voting and those using other methods could not be explained statistically. The study showed that a county’s use of electronic voting resulted in a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. Michael Hout, a Berkeley professor who conducted the study, noted the higher-than-expected votes for Bush in three large Democratic counties – Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach – and stated there were strong suspicions of vote-rigging. With the probability of such evidence appearing in a population where the true difference is zero being less than one in a thousand chances, it is clear that the Republican Party has a long history of being accused of vote theft.
Don’t Trust, Verify
With the 2020 US Presidential Election rapidly approaching, the question of election fraud has been brought to the forefront. In Pima County, Arizona, a group has been attempting to gain access to ballots for almost five years in order to conduct a handcount of votes by precinct, in order to verify the results. However, the courts have yet to reverse past trends and allow such a count. This raises the question of whether the results of the election could be manipulated by computerised machines, as was seen in Zimbabwe.
More than 100 million Americans will cast their ballots in the upcoming election, trusting that their vote will be fairly counted. However, with the election being much closer than in 2008, the possibility of election theft is a real concern. If the outcome of the election was to be stolen, it would place three of the four last national Presidential election results in question. It is essential that the US democracy is able to trust the results of the election, and that any potential fraud is identified and addressed.
Don’t Take Our Word
The results of the spreadsheet calculations in individual states, counties and precincts are compelling. It is time for the US Justice Department to take action and abandon the unrealistic expectation that results should be reported by 11 pm for the television networks. Hand-counted paper ballots should be used instead.
In the United Kingdom, paper ballots are used, and results do not start to come in until 3 am. It can take up to three days for the final outcome to be determined, but British voters are assured of the accuracy of the count, as each ballot is counted by hand. The news that Serbia, Belarus and Kazakhstan were sending election monitors to observe the US Election was a cause for concern.
Vote fraud is already occurring in the US on a scale that would lead to calls for international election monitors in any other country. Americans should no longer be victims of the “ghosts in the machine”. It is time to take action.
