the right to vote is the primary right by which other rights are protected thomas the nasty little secret of american democracy according to the people they should be talking about this not from the standpoint of your liberal and your conservative and you know which side of the fence are you on the issue is if it was tainted once it could be tainted again it is critical that all qualified voters are able to vote and that all votes are counted as cast there's growing evidence that eligible citizens are being denied the right to until recently most americans have assumed that our elections are basically honest but with each election more and more people are reporting incidents of voter suppression and irregular tallies  first machine problems were dismissed as glitches and difficulties faced by voters were simply the result of poor planning and poll worker error but as anomalies continued to be uncovered people began to realize that voting problems which had seemed in the past to affect only a few states could be happening nationwide one of the few mainstream venue's exploring controversial election issues has been comedy central now you have made quite a stir with this article of yours in rolling stone you say you ask with the title of this article did bush steal the two thousand and four election i'll bite diddy my answer is no but then the interviews i'll tell you in a representative democracy you want everybody to vote you want the majority of voters to try to select the president ok let me ask you something which was easier for bush to steal ohio in two let me say something obvious and say anything you want ok anybody who still has an election or tries to steal one is wrong no matter who it is american elections have never been administered by saints and angels all parties historically have stuffed ballot boxes suppressed votes look at the history of the voting rights movement in the south as recently as the one nine hundred sixty s people died to get access to the ballot american elections have been two fisted political brawls when kennedy beat nixon in one nine hundred sixty there was a lot of talk that in chicago the ballots had been rigged there's never been any question but that one in the election is at hand a true believer will do what he or she thinks is necessary how do we know if an election is fair one way is to recount paper ballots by hand or at least audit a given percentage of them another way is to use polls and compare the results with the final tallies in pre election polls people are asked how they intend to vote and in exit polls how they just voted the largest gap ever reported in the u s presidential election between exit two thousand and four election was very problematic and it wasn't just in one state or one city one location it was a national phenomenon and state after state exit polls show totally different outcomes than vote counters such an enormous disparity between exit polls which you've always been reliable and vote count and instead of coming up with some you know real hard look at this they just assume that the exit polls were described but why not the this is an issue that should be chorus and this is a people's issue this is not republican or democrat everybody at least says they want last presidential election is that democracy is far too important to rely on an outdated arrow prone system like punch card ballots so as we gear up for the two thousand and four vote many communities have moved on to electronic voting far more high tech error prone system one of the fabulous things about this campaign has been the number of volunteers we have one point two million volunteers out we have seven and a half million people who are activists voluntarily without being paid contacting their friends saying remember to  and other people went out and we registered voters sometimes you just had to beg people who had to stand there for a half hour you convince them voting was important door to door every day every day or every weekend we were out on the calendar it is election day the polls open in this particular location a huge number of new voters registered all across the state north south east and west and  about the many people don't go out to vote and everybody began to become stakeholders being at the most stupid idea that the number of young people in a combat zone i mean from eighteen to good a pass a couple polling places it was raining it was cold and i saw something i'd never seen a saw a long line of people around the corner waiting to go folks and i have been talking to democrats republicans all day even though they were predicting record turnout i think they're really stunned by the lines there's thing more than one hundred twenty million registered voters participated in the two thousand and four general election the highest number to have ever voted election in the united states rivaling a modern benchmark that was set for decades ago but along with the crowd there have been some complaints pennsylvania to florida and even across the country it was a wonderful feeling until we found that there was something wrong something was going on that was different why people should have to wait three hours four hours two hours whatever they had the way when i waited five minutes in my own tracing to vote it was outrageous and some of the african american communit lines that were eleven hours on average black people had to wait three and a half hours to vote whereas white suburban residents had to wait less than eighteen minutes there was some volunteers there from various groups saying this woman can't vote that one letter vote she just stated she said she'd been waiting two and a half hours that the people understood and she sections of chemotherapy she was entitled to be moved to the front of the bar and i was told by the judge no i'm not going to do it i'm the presiding judge here oh members going outside to the woman who was sitting down outside the school and say they won't let you vote they won't move you up and she said i did my b in some communities the new voting machines speeded up the voting process others there were simply not enough working machine the first time i got there they said four hours and then it turned into six hours eight and a half hours nine and a half hours certainly that's not an isolated case in the ohio precinct where kenyan college students voted some students waited more than twelve hours two machines served thirteen hundred registered voters each machine was expected to handle at least six hundred people more than three times the recommended federal guidelines we had one precinct where there were three machines one of them never worked and this was from nine o'clock in the morning we made calls to the board of elections all day and i was on the phone with the board of elections screaming at that point we need another machine we need something because at that point other polling places were closed there was no reason they couldn't bring in another machine we got a lot of calls from voters upset because you know again two precincts why distribution of voting machines the republican party denies even the democrats some of them saying well it was just hours ago people cannot wait for a day to vote our role is to provide access to the right to vote we are the gatekeepers of democracy and if we do not provide enough quick meant for the voters to access this process that in fact we are suppressing their votes i hope that those people  that look like this is the first time they ever stepped in a voting booth that looked like they had to bring their three tiers with that i hope that this experience does not make them say the next time we don't we don't make a some of the long lines were caused by machine shortages others were due to machine failures thousands of voters reported machine malfunctions in forty two states machine problems included touch screens going blank vote switching from one candidate to another machine breakdowns and inaccurate totals some computer screens froze causing delays as technicians tried to fix them the technology that promised to make voting faster and more accurate was turning out to be unreliable john we have finally arrived at a golden age of technology house eon era in which one serious touchscreen malfunction was vote switching voters would select one candidate and their vote would switch on the screen to someone else votes switching in florida was concentrated in certain counties in my area and on beach broward counties on election day remarkably every complaint was never heard anybody who intended to vote for george bush  people were indignant or near cheers because they had pressed kerry when they were trying to vote and the machine itself lit up and said bush again the good news problems virtually nonexistent just glitches here and there mainstream news neglected to mention certain difficulties faced by voters like vote switching though there was little t v or radio coverage election hotlines we're getting reports of vote switching from at least thirteen states mahoning county ohio was one place where votes were switching on multiple machines throughout the day i voted for kerry and when i got to the final page on this computer screen to say who my final vote for for it came up bush i pushed the square for john kerry and i almost went on to the next page before i realized that it was lighting up george bush i push my vote for john kerry immediately the vote jumps up and lights up the as she says oh i said again that's been happening i live as i was leaving there were people that were asking the poll workers to help them because the same thing happened to  and i thought to myself you're not real computer literate did you push the wrong button then when i got into my car i was thinking now something happened to me something happened to me that that machine is not right a few months after the election we had a gathering here at the church we met in the church basement and one of the things that we did is just ask how many people know someone not just the story but know someone whose vote switched and just in that room of forty people we knew fifty all the concerns going into the election about the ebo ting machines electronic voting not having a paper trail we're not really reporting any problems or significant problems most newscasters continued to ignore reports of votes which while concerned activists use the internet to bring attention to the issue in more than ninety percent of vote switching reports votes cast for john kerry switched on the screen to george bush there should be an expectation that  would fall kind of fifty fifty some would support one candidate some would support the other candidate they didn't seem to fall both ways it's simply impossible to validate what happens inside certain electronic voting and counting machines so one of the one of the ways of checking what's actually happening in this sort of black box  the two thousand and four election consortium of broadcast networks hired a polling firm edison the toughs interviewers were stationed at fourteen hundred eighty randomly selected voting sites across the country to gather information there are safeguards in place now we will be much more careful we know as we go throughout the evening tonight in part because the software is better the computers are better and also the analysis will be better in spite of edison effort to withhold results until the polls closed during the day early exit poll data was leaked to the public and published on the internet the leaked data revealed that in critical states sometimes called battleground or swing states kerry was ahead in the exit polls in ten of the twelve swing states every time there were percentages put up there kerry was definitely haven't had the momentum it was like he's going to win that with the states we can project for illinois john kerry wins that state as expected he wins connecticut as well as expected the district of columbia there was never any doubt there new big win for john kerry according to the washington post early evening exit polls pointed to a decisive win for kerry those exit polls showed kerry holding a lead in states that total three hundred nine electoral votes with bush's tally totaling one hundred seventy four after voting sites closest exit polls being released on the internet showed kerry  had been earlier in the day during the evening a discrepancy appeared between the exit polls and the official tallies the official tally as it was being reported by the broadcast media showed bush running much stronger than he had been doing in the exit polls those exit polls showing a kerry one in florida those exit polls showing perhaps a kerry win in ohio and in several other states that have already been called a kerry margin very different from what the actual results are showing so what the bush campaign believes now is that the exit polls were flawed when there's a difference between exit poll data and the vote count the exit poll company mathematically adjusts the poll numbers to match the between ten thirty and eleven pm edison matusz ski's computer server had gone down and the exit poll numbers remained on adjusted for several hours as a result of this temporary unintended freeze election observers were able to download the unadjusted exit poll numbers showing kerry still in the lead but went on the c n n web site and lo and behold there were all these exit polls broken down in all sorts of various demographic ways and i said about loading them so we're looking at the exit polls and the exit polls clearly show that john kerry carried ohio which was enough to give  predominately black precincts looking at the returns they think it's going to be very tough for bush to president bush to carry ohio they know they need ohio that is now the central focus for the rest of this night or at least the next few hours until twelve twenty one a m kerry was still leading cording to the exit polls the first indication that the apparent democratic victory might not happen as projected and come around midnight when a and fox news all called florida for bush and then something happened where the next time it was put on the screen the percentages in the numbers it was exactly in the early morning hours when the backup server reconnected and exit polling just missed resumed observers watched a dramatic shift from that point on exit polls now mirrored the vote count and projected george bush as the winner bush took the lead in the national popular vote as kerry's projected wins in key states were disappearing if you were to look on the internet any time after roughly one a you would see exit poll results which essentially conformed to the vote count the results that got pulled off the web and pulled away from the public eye that i was able to download and print out showed a discrepancy in the popular vote there was very very significant very close race could still go either way what's the mood there confident john the president is thrilled he will be leaving the country for the next few years so little early to say he will be the numbers really aren't in the numbers this is not a man who is going to let the numbers stand in the way of moving america whole there's also a growing dissatisfaction even anger with us in the media and it seems as if he wants the stamp of legitimacy days of two weeks the result that we get you will be a good result that the voters of the state of ohio could have confidence in happening and they were calling the phone and i couldn't believe this i was shocked among the last tallies added to ohio's totals were ninety two thousand votes from warren county according to the cincinnati enquirer well those votes were being counted the media and other observers were locked out of the county administration building the enquirer which is a respected local paper with a conservative perspective reported that the lockout was in response to an alleged terrorist threat during the week following the election after doing their own investigation the enquirer reported that both homeland security and how did hundreds and hundreds of thousands of votes shift not in a progressive incremental way but in this almost complete sudden violent reversal remember at the time the shifts are occurring the people in the lines are overwhelmingly african american citizens and college students at liberal campuses if anything the shift should be going in the other direction in the early morning hours reporters were closely monitoring vote totals in the last states to be called including new mexico judy woodruff help our viewers understand why we're now going back from the too close to call green column to the white column in which we don't have enough information yet to make any projection well we're trying to figure all this out right now wolf apparently what it has happened is that the associated press they were feeding numbers into was and then suddenly those numbers changed in other words there was about i'm told a two to six thousand vote margin between president bush's position and john kerry's position and then that margin grew suddenly to an eleven thousand vote margin and because of that we now want to make sure first of all we want to find out what happened what i'm telling you is that the numbers changed in to the states they're clicking up on these counties looking at the results come in in the president's elf pop in a short time ago and said what's the hold up the motorcade is on the other side of the white house it is gassed up and ready to go all right let's get some numbers for you as you can see president bush right now has fifty one percent of the vote senator john kerry has forty eight percent if he hangs on too long without conceding beyond the point where it seems reasonable and where they are in the media for example are all in the oh i'm wolf blitzer in new york twelve full hours after the last poll closings of election two thousand and four there is now an undisputed winner the democratic candidate for president john f kerry has conceded the race in a phone call to the republican president george w bush earlier today i spoke to president bush and i offered him and laura our congratulations on their victory i think today there is more sadness and there is anger there just feeling pretty sad about the whole thing because this jeff said they and we've watched them they have given the all i didn't i don't think any of us you know we looked at the polls over the last few weeks conventional wisdom was present at forty eight forty nine percent the final polls he's not going to get much more of that maybe one percent more rate and the actual lection he go way over that and i think that left everyone sort of puzzle what the heck happened and the anger of the republicans feeling that the press coverage in the early afternoon had been shaped by the exit polls not that anybody actually talked knows why they're so the exit polls are so wrong we all rely on this stuff not only for predicting but for trying to figure out what the electorate looks like i have yet to hear a theory of the case in effect for what  happened never sweep under the rug disturbing questions either because we don't want to face them or because we think it may advantage one political party and disadvantage another once that starts the truth recedes even more if the republicans in fact stole this election the democrats were willing accomplices by sitting by and letting it happen and not challenging it i mean there is a sort of unspoken situation here where the democrats don't want to raise these issues when senator bob hagan saw his vote switch from john  to george bush he tried to report what had happened to democratic headquarters i touched john kerry and as i touched it it immediately went to bush i called the kerry campaign and  said i really think that this is a serious problem we need to talk about this you know we should get out the press would be interested in this but the kerry campaign said leave it alone to talk about it it's not something we want to get out for decades senator hagan still strict in the hunting county had been a hub of political controversy involving both major parties when i was on the board of elections and he's there was a democrat who was secretary of state and he made outrageous rulings that help the democrats win elections in ohio that's the kind of system that we have and that and i speak want to change that that's a kind of system we're going to have both parties toy with the vote when they have the opportunity but at the moment the sophisticated methods and the big money which drives the sophisticated methods using massive computers massive mailings databases that is right now in the control of the republican party even though the republicans seem to control the voting technology and the corporations that they count the votes the democrats have not exhibited a keen interest in addressing the situation  if republicans no defend the constitution and democrats will then i'll stand with democrats and the great fear is that we are reach a point were neither party will defend the constitution developed in the late one nine hundred sixty s for years and years were regarded as very accurate and reliable indicators of how an election would turn out the exit polls in recent years have become increasingly inaccurate exit polls before they were adjusted had pointed toward a kerry victory the official vote tally reflected a bush victory a three percent decrease for kerry and a three percent increase for bush equals a six percent discrepancy in the margin of victory the margin of error is the maximum percentage one can reasonably expect a poll to differ from the actual results when you're dealing with statistics you never get certainty a discrepancy of six percent is so far outside the margin of error of that poll that statisticians across the board will give you a general agreement that it could not occur as a matter of chance or statistical aberration exit polls were a focus of concern at meetings about election problems hosted by representative john today we had the international to have questions of our own many of which said oh an early exit polling results that were uncharacteristically inaccurate in several battleground states this election has produced president levels of suspicion regarding its outcome there has been very little willingness to cooperate by those who hold the information which would be basically the consortium of major media outlets they claim proprietary rights to all this that was the only checks and balances we had with these electronic voting machines the electronic voting machines have no audit trail that can't be re counted we have to have some backup the man behind the exit polls very respected in this business is one of the key people who wrote the rules of ethics that are right here in my drawer one of those rules is transparency i've talked to warren mccoskey and he said to me well it's proprietary data some voters were prevented from voting after election officials selectively removed their names from the rolls in ohio which president bush won by one hundred eighteen thousand votes according to the official tally there were three hundred thousand democrat almost all democratic voters who were purged from the roles and immediately before the election george bush's margin of victory in ohio  almost one hundred in one thousand three thousand votes as long as we refuse to deal with the reality we won't move forward i'm not going to shut up i'm not going to get over it i mean that's what they tell you just get over it you know again what i always say or what what am i supposed to get over fundamental human rights my commitment to democracy my love of the constitution and the country i'm supposed to turn a blind eye when american citizens are disenfranchised because of the color of their skin i don't think so the tactic known as caging involves two steps first registered letters are mailed to the homes of potential voters then the names of those who don't reply are deleted from the voter ro the republican campaign staff mistakenly released data on the internet which was discovered and then forwarded to b b c journalist greg palast we got in our computers from the republican national committee spreadsheets the spreadsheets were addresses and names of tens of thousands of voters the b b c confronted the republican leadership and they said oh these are donor lists this was a challenge list a list for challenging voters on massive by the hundreds of thousands and i finding page after page after page of african american soldiers so the soldiers were shipped overseas they got a letter from the republican party it was not forwarded so the republican said their address is suspect you have thousands of african american soldiers whose votes were subject to republican party challenge because they were shipped overseas and by the way it's not illegal in the united states of america for a soldier to vote from baghdad from their home district now why wouldn't they  hundred sixty five the voting rights act targeting voters for a challenge even if you have some grounds for but where race is a factor is a lot is a felony there's just too many little incidents that if you don't add them up remain little incidents scattered like marbles and it takes some special effort to start adding them up and say this is a big story here given the problems in two thousand two thousand and two and two thousand and four voters approach the midterm elections of two thousand and six with increased caution and of course wolf we've talked a lot about the more than eight hundred fifty monitors and observers who were on hand today in twenty two states set by the department of justice and they're there to deal with issues as they arise voting glitches have been popping up at some polling stations across the country this election day and it's the same problem it's that they try to start the machines up in the morning and something goes wrong and the biggest question tonight is whether or not your vote will actually count election officials all across the country have been reporting problems with the voting machines data analysts have noted the correlation between the rise of electronic voting devices and elections in which exit polls don't match final tallies in two thousand and six there were once again a range of computer malfunctions and discrepancies between votes cast and official totals at first exit polls showed democratic house candidates winning by eleven point five percent after the exit poll was adjusted my estimate off ski to match the vote totals the final results show democrats winning by only seven point six percent this discrepancy reflects at least three million fewer votes for democratic candidates and exit polls predicted until two thousand and two the national exit poll margin of er had always been plus or minus one point three percent with mounting discrepancies between exit polls and the official vote count after the two thousand and six election posters chose to increase the official margin of error from one point three to three percent either exit polls are becoming harder and harder to do or voting manipulation is becoming easier and have been a wide range of election irregularities in the years since one thousand nine hundred ninety six have any laws actually been broken republican operative who served time in federal prison for his role in the two thousand and two new hampshire phone jamming operation he writes about the experience in his book how to rig an election confessions of a republican operative please welcome to the show alan raymond what is the phone jamming scandal of two thousand and two well that was when i got hired by the republican national committee to jam phone lines and sound it's exactly what it sounds like we called in it's almost it was like a prank democrats in manchester new hampshire a prank on democracy but what we did is we called in to where they got democrats were doing geo t v and we tied up the phone lines so nothing could go in or could go out on election day and anything you do want to election day is to get out the vote how do you convince yourself that this isn't voter suppression well you talk to an attorney which is exactly what i did and so in politics there's right and wrong and then there's what happens in a campaign allegations of wrongdoing in the two thousand and four presidential election where widespread especially in ohio has anyone been held accountable franklin county board of election deputy director democrat michael hackett was convicted on charges of profiting from a voting machine contract hackett's punishment was a year of probation three thousand two hundred fifty dollars in fines and forty five hours of community service his superior matt damn schroeder was also convicted of illegal actions his penalty he was censored and suspended from work for a month in cuyahoga county ohio two election workers were convicted for pre selecting ballots to avoid discrepancies when the votes were retaliate before the end of the year in two thousand and seven fifty six of ohio's eighty eight counties reported that they had destroyed most of their ballots and other records from the two thousand and four presidential election this action was taken despite ohio election law and in violation of a federal court order to retain without those ballot records the accuracy of the ohio vote reported on election night two thousand and four will never be kno even though various investigations have been carried out there have been few convictions if you look at the pattern behavioral pattern of and both leaders when they have a successful scam or a successful hack they don't go whole hog first they tend to be very very careful to make sure they're not caught and the longer that they go without being detected the more that they try and the more they get away with people can't conceive of a party or a sitting government stealing an election you know this is not something their government would do and you know some some corrupt local government might steal a local election but national to see a government organized to steal the election is beyond comprehension but you see it is not beyond the comprehension for an india logically motivated government and if you are an idiot logical government the only thing important is is your in your own ins justified any means indeed your in require you to steal the election if you need to steal the election to stay in power to achieve your ends there are people from every background every socio economic group every race every everything in this country that knows something very bad happened and knows it impacts themselves and their family and they want their country back we have to be sharper in our pursuit of the truth precisely because it's being so clever way to get in from view and pursuit of the truth in this case might mean paper bal things that can actually be counted paper what what like parchment or piracy the technology is approved the only people who can mess with your evo other computer programmers who designed the system it takes a long time to change ten thousand paper ballots by hand it takes three seconds to change ten thousand votes on a computer i think the most appropriate technology is is what we should be going for instead of the latest and greatest if you can just talk to another person or another citizen you say look these are the issues how do you want your elections conducted it's a no brainer i mean people are still really on the side of this they say yeah let's have ballots let's have paper ballots so in new mexico when we realized we had to get legislative action accomplished it just seemed like no boy however going to do this but we tapped into all the activists across the state each one with their own particular skills or talents as overwhelming as it was to imagine trying to change our electoral system or to shift from corporate back into the hands of the people are vote it seems so overwhelming but one of the women in the group said why don't you get on the internet post something somewhere and find out if there's any other groups in new mexico who are working on that was such a simple idea and so i posted a piece on there and i said here we are in las vegas is there anybody else out there i bet you it was a day that i got an e mail  at so we're working on that here down in los alamos county i know thats it this is all it's going to take two groups in different parts of the state hooking up and then it will just spread some of us went testified at the legislature and so here's our concerns and they listened and the pressure from various voting rights groups and individuals on the governor's office caused the governor of new mexico to sit down and actually take a look at th and so he proposed this legislation and the mexico legislature passed it and so now we have paper ballots and optical scan technology in mexico citizens are now working to pass legislation to strengthen the audit process for those machines at the same time some grassroots activists are laying the groundwork for hand counting the paper ballots so when i was overwhelmed i was overwhelmed says thinking i would have to do it by myself but when you know right across the state you can get congress to how we got this there are new mexico needs to happen all over the country and once we get that in place we will finally get our we need to ensure that all citizens who are eligible to vote are able to vote and that all votes cast are accurately counted until we as citizens decide that the most fundamental aspect of democracy is free and fair elections everything we believe in everything that guarantees our right to earn a living and protect our children everything our fathers and forefathers died for is being slowly and visibly taken from us it's time to wake up to what you stand to lose is everything you can raise your concerns with a neighbor with a friend maybe they thought of it maybe they haven't one linking to one linking to one how you make a necklace a and make a relationship now you make