Recovered History: U.S. Election Fraud Circa 2000

The August 25-27 Citizens for a Fair Vote Count Convention 2000 in Cincinnati, Ohio, affirmed what the Supreme Court has ruled in Wesberry v. Sanders "the right to vote is the highest right that we have as citizens and if that right does not exist, then all other rights that we have are purely illusory."[1]

Indeed, the United States cannot continue as a constitutional republic without the fair and honest exercise of the right to vote. Or, as Josef Stalin said "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

When Constitution Party Presidential candidate Howard Phillips spoke at the convention on Sunday, August 27, 2000, he pointed out that the purpose of having a vote is to peacefully remove a government from office. Likewise, Jim Condit, Sr. pointed out, we use ballots. Other people use bullets.[2]

The Fourth Commandment of Almighty God is "Honor thy Father and Mother." As part of that commandment, the Church teaches us that we are obliged to vote for the sake of the common good. We must vote for the best qualified candidate . "It would be sinful to cast a ballot for one who, in the judgement of the voters, would do grave public harm."[3]

But how can we exercise that right if the vote is not fair? The Supreme Court has ruled that the right to vote includes the right to have the vote honestly and fairly counted in US v. Mosley and again in Reynolds v. Sims.[4]

The fact that the speakers and convention-goers came from Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, and even Canada, attested to the widespread nature of vote fraud.[5] Former DEA agent Wayne Roques of Florida and Brent Beleskey of Canada also spoke on the ominous and looming trend of "direct democracy."

Like many of us, Ron Keller of Texas knew there was something wrong with his local elections but couldn't quite put his finger on the nature of the problem.

After further investigation, Ron Keller showed how to rig the mechanical Shoup voting machine in 1964 while TV cameras from ABC, CBS, and NBC were rolling. The networks showed the footage on television that night. Incredibly, as he recounted at the Convention, these TV networks never discussed the incident again.

Before the advent of mechanical and computerized voting machines, vote fraud was a difficult crime to perpetrate from a central location.

All ballots were made of paper and marked by the voter. For most of American history, the vote was hand counted at the local precinct by local citizens who were watched by the local press and other concerned local citizens to ensure that the count was fair and honest.

The results were posted at the precinct before the ballots were removed from the balloting area.

However, mechanized and computerized voting machines have changed all that. Jim Condit, Jr., Founder of Citizens for a Fair Vote Count, says that hand counting has become outlawed in every state but New Hampshire and the Iowa Caucus. Worse, Condit says the right to observe the vote count has been effectively outlawed in those 49 states.

Citizens such as Dan Gutenkauf of Arizona, another speaker at the Convention, who attempt to exercise their right to observe elections have met with threats from election officers. It has now fallen to the Board of Elections to ensure that elections are fair and honest.

Chuck Geshlider of Pahrump, Nevada, made the following analogy during his speech Saturday night, August 26, 2000: Suppose you ate at a restaurant and got a queasy stomach. Wouldn't you ask to see the kitchen? And what would you think if they said no?

Sadly, the answer to many citizens' questions about verification of the validity of elections has been a resounding "NO!" from local Boards of Elections. Yet, it is the duty of the Boards of Elections to ensure that no vote tampering has taken place and that the vote count is fair and honest.

Thus, as Jim Condit, Jr. pointed out, we as citizens have no way of verifying whether or not thousands of elected officials have been validly elected. These officials include Governor George Bush of Texas and Vice- President Albert Gore, both running for President this year.

According to Howard Phillips in 1974, the US election laws were changed. These changes gave the national party a greater control over its state and local affiliates. If a Republican official in the Board of Elections does not co-operate with the national party, he will be fired.

Computer Vote Fraud

On Friday, August 25, 2000, in the evening, convention-goers saw a video of Dan Rather's five-minute 1988 televised report on computerized vote fraud.

Mr. Rather asked computer expert Howard J. Strauss of Princeton University: "Realistically, could the fix be put on in a national election?"

Mr. Strauss responded "Get me a job with the company that writes the software for this program. I'd have access to one third of the votes. Is that enough to fix a general election?"

Strauss also said "When it comes to computerized elections, there are no safeguards. It's not a door without locks, it's a house without doors."

During an interview on the Catholic radio program Choose Life , Mr. Condit stated that "There is not one paper written by a computer authority defending that the elections we have are verifiable. There are many things written by authorities saying that they are not verifiable."

Mr. Condit further explained that when lawsuits requesting that the source code for the software of computerized voting machines be examined by the public, the judges have routinely ruled against such lawsuits on the basis that this violates copyright law.

"Their copyright has now become more important than the fair count of the election" says Mr. Condit.

This writer asked Dan Gutenkauf if a generic software code could be written for use in all of the computerized machines. He replied in a telephone interview that Relevance magazine in its November 19, 1996, edition demonstrated that the modem within a computerized voting machine can be accessed by a laptop computer and a cellphone. Thus we must return to paper ballots if we wish to restore a fair and honest vote count.

At the Vote Fraud Convention, Mr. Condit also showed a video of the late Jim and Ken Collier, authors of Votescam who attempted to videotape an election in process in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The video demonstrated how very difficult it is for American citizens to exercise their right to observe an election to ensure that it is fair and honest. The Colliers videotaped women altering the punch- cards in a Florida election.

They also "caught women on camera plucking votes out of punchcard ballots in Cincinnati, this time using household tweezers. Judge Niehaus (in his tennis shoes) was summoned down to the Board of Elections at about 7:30p.m. on that 1985 election night by the heads of both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

The judge, in a highly unusual move, modified his court order on the spot insisting that observing ‘all phases of the election process' did not include videotaping. … The Colliers were told to quit videotaping under threat of arrest."[6]

Jim Condit said that we are dependent on the "Three black boxes" of public opinion polls, phony exit polls, and computerized voting. The networks cover the same issues and appear to be attempting to manipulate public opinion with public opinion polls.

Can we really expect an accurate representation of the viewpoints of 260 million Americans when polls are usually conducted with about 1,000 people? According to Jim and Kenneth Collier, all of the exit poll data appears to come from Voter News Service. Margaret Sims of the Federal Election Commission says that ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox all contract with VNS for their services.

In his talk Friday, August 25, 2000, Jim Condit mentioned that The Wanderer recently published an example of vote fraud in Missouri.

Bill Federer ran against Dick Gephardt, Minority Whip in Congress, in 1998.

"On election morning 1998," Federer told The Wanderer in an interview, "the phones at my headquarters started ringing and people were telling me my name was not on the ballot in five wards in the city of St. Louis. When I complained to the county clerk, Gephardt's people responded by asking that polling stations around the district be closed. We had to get attorneys to keep the polls open.

"At noon, by the time returns started coming in, I was ahead of Gephardt 52% to 48%, but then, the computers went down in the city of St. Louis, and the electricity went off in the Jefferson County clerk's office. This was the third time the electricity went off at that county clerk's office in a close election," he said.

Mrs. Devvy Kidd of California arrived with a sheaf of statistics from the California Secretary of State demonstrating the vote fraud in her election when she ran for Congress.

Reform Party activist Chris Schaper, also of California, gave his eyewitness account of vote fraud in the 1996 Buchanan caucus in Iowa.

Chuck Geshlider also related his encounter with vote fraud during his election in Pahrump, Nevada.

Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party and independent Presidential candidate Charles Collins, spoke at the Convention on the need to address the problem.

Sadly, most candidates whether Democrat or Republican, are unwilling to discuss the problem. When asked why, Jim Condit, Jr. said that they are afraid of demoralizing their supporters. He added that their supporters are already demoralized.

Considering that both candidates and citizens put a great deal of time, money, and effort into running for office, one can only wonder if that is all there is to it. After all, the candidates owe it to their constituents to see to it that their elections are free from tampering.

Likewise, one can only speculate as to why the major news networks are for the most part silent on this crucial issue and who is behind their silence. In a telephone interview, Jim Condit, Jr. said that there appears to be a co-ordinated effort by the judiciary, news media, prosecutors, and the two major political parties to stop resistance to vote fraud.

Susan Madori, also from the Reform Party, described the attempt at Internet voting in her party. She learned that people were registering their deceased spouses, and one voter registered his doberman pinscher. Ballots were sent to voters by mail. Some received more than one. Others received none.

"Direct Democracy"

Brent Beleskey, founder of the International Voters Coalition of Barrie, Ontario, Canada, at has uncovered a newer and more sinister twist to vote Fraud, direct democracy.

Most of us have heard ancient Athens, Greece, described as a direct democracy. But that's not what the new "direct democrats" mean. (By law, both the governments of Canada and the United States are constitutional republics with elected representatives.)

Direct democracy circumvents the constitution with a modern version of the Roman Coliseum. Instead of using thumbs up or thumbs down, however, the modern direct democracy uses telephone and Internet voting.

Citing David Broder's Democracy Derailed, Brent Beleskey says that many ballot initiatives are funded by wealthy individuals and groups to buy influence. In addition to the fact that both of these types of voting are completely unverifiable, they also abolish privacy. The voter must identify himself by telephone and Internet to "vote."

When Mr. Beleskey contacted Bell Canada regarding telephone voting, they admitted that Bell Canada keeps records of the PIN number of each voter, his name, and how he voted. Thus they open the voter to coercion by his government.

What is a Direct Democracy?

Mr. Beleskey described the progression of vote fraud from the mail-in, or absentee ballot, mechanized voting machines, computerized voting machines, Internet voting, and finally the telephone vote. All of these methods of voting are completely unverifiable and thus says Jim Condit Jr., should be outlawed.

On June 7, 2000, Bill Kimberling, deputy director of the Office of Elections for the Federal Elections Commission, attacked Internet voting as "a breeding ground for fraud"[7] and was driven by the vendors of computerized voting.

Mr. Kimberling spoke at the Maryland Association of Elected Officials and said that his views were personal, not reflecting those of the FEC. He agreed with Brent Beleskey that "intimidation and vote-buying would be more likely when someone votes away from a polling place. In addition, the sanctity of the secret vote would also be in danger if votes are cast on the Internet," he said.

Mr. Beleskey believes that through ballot initiatives and voter referendums, the direct democracy movement wishes to remove politicians from the political scene and replace them with tyrants.

He says that this is treason and is gathering petitions in Ontario to demand a return to the paper ballot vote now that Ontario has become a "direct democracy" under the recent Bill 62.

Jim Condit, Jr. said, "The new dictator and tyrant of the 21st Century doesn't want to say, as did the old crude dictator ‘I am making you do this.' Instead, they are going to announce phony polls, phony exit polls, and phony Internet or computer results and then they are going to say ‘You demanded this. We're only doing what you wanted.' "

The Church teaches us that we ought to love our country. To show that love, we must protect and defend it from vote fraud.

Footnotes:

1. Interview with Dan Gutenkauf of Arizona, who spoke at the Convention.

2. "The Greatest Cover-Up of All: Vote Fraud in America" by James Condit, Jr., Citizens for a Fair Vote Count, P.O. Box 11339, Cincinnati, Ohio 45211, http://www.votefraud.org/

3. 2 page 200, paragraph (b) "This We Believe, by this we Live" Catechism No.2, Revised Edition of the Baltimore Catechism Copyright 1941 St. Anthony Guild Press, Paterson, NJ.

4. Interview with Dan Gutenkauf.

5. Network America e-wire "Overview of the CFVC Convention" September 7, 2000.

6. The Greatest Cover-Up of All: Vote Fraud in America" by James Condit, Jr., Citizens for a Fair Vote Count, P.O. Box 11339, Cincinnati, Ohio 45211, http://www.votefraud.org/

7. "Federal Election Official Blasts Internet Voting" June 7, 2000. The Associated Press.

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