Can Karl Rove Steal the Election?

Will 9 GOP Governors (with Karl Rove) Electronically Flip Romney into the White House?
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman 9/25/12 Free Press.org [edited for length]

Nine Republican Governors have the power to put Mitt Romney in the White House, even if Barack Obama wins the popular vote.

With their Secretaries of State, they control the electronic vote count in nine key swing states: Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Arizona, and New Mexico. Wisconsin elections are under the control of the state's Government Accountability Board, appointed by Gov. (Walker).

With the GOP's massive nation-wide disenfranchisement campaign, they could---in the dead of night---flip their states' electronic votes to Romney and give him a victory in the Electoral College.



Electronic voting machines with ties to Republican-connected companies have proliferated throughout Ohio. Federal money from the Help America Vote Act has helped move electronic voting machines into other key swing states in substantial numbers that are not easy to track.

The machines can quickly tabulate a winner. But their dark side is simple: there is no way to monitor or double-check the final tally. These partisan Republican vote counting companies have written contracts to avoid transparency and open records laws.



In Ohio 2004, at 12:20 election night, the initial vote tabulation showed John Kerry defeating Bush by more than 4%. This 200,000-plus margin appeared to guarantee Kerry's presidency.

But mysteriously, the Ohio vote count suddenly shifted to Smartech in Chattanooga, Tennessee. With private Republican-connected contractors processing the vote, Bush jumped ahead with a 2% lead, eventually winning with an official margin of more than 118,000 votes. Such a shift of more than 6%, involving more than 300,000 votes, is a virtual statistical impossibility, as documented in our WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA'S 2012 ELECTION (www.freepress.org).

That night, Ohio's vote count was being compiled in the basement of the old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The building also housed the servers for the Republican National Committee and thus the e-mail of Bush advisor Karl Rove. Secretary of State Blackwell was co-chair of the Ohio Committee to Re-Elect Bush and Cheney. He met earlier that day in Columbus with George W. Bush and Karl Rove. That night, he sent the state's chief IT worker home early. The official Ohio vote count tabulation system was designed by IT specialist Michael Connell, whose computer company New Media was long associated with the Bush family. In 2008 Connell died in a mysterious single-engine plane crash after being subpoenaed to testify in the federal King-Lincoln-Bronzeville voter rights lawsuit (by way of disclosure: Bob is an attorney and Harvey a plaintiff in this lawsuit). The King-Lincoln suit eventually resulted in a federal injunction ordering Ohio's 88 counties to turn over their ballots and election records.

But 56 of Ohio's 88 counties violated the injunction and destroyed their election records. Thus no complete recount of Ohio 2004 has ever been done. More than 90,000 "spoiled" ballots, like those in Toledo, went entirely uncounted, and have since been destroyed.

No way was found to verify the 2004 electronic vote count. There are no safeguards in place today.
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