Article: Election Defense Alliance presents: Are We A Democracy? Vote Counting in the US

Election Defense Alliance presents

Are We a Democracy? Vote Counting in the United States
Saturday, February 17
10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Rockridge Library
5366 College Avenue (at Manila)
Oakland, CA 94618
www.OaklandLibrary.org/Branches/rockridge.htm *
(See map below)
Speaking will be:

Dr. Steven Freeman
"Mass Scale Election Fraud in Recent U.S. Federal Elections"
University of Pennsylvania
Co-author, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?**
http://www.AppliedResearch.us/sf/

Dr. David Griscom
"Forensic Examination of Public Documents
Relating to Voting at a Tucson Precinct on 2 November 2004:
Proof of Poll-Worker Fraud"
Fellow of the American Physical Society,
formerly of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington
http://www.OpEdnews.com/author/author1826.html

Attorney Paul Lehto
"Legal and Political Standards for Verifying Democracy"
Verifiable Democracy
http://www.votersunite.org/info/lehtolawsuit.asp

Dr. Joshua Mitteldorf
"What Exit Polls Can Teach Us About the 2006 Congressional Election"
University of Arizona
http://MathForum.org/~josh/

Dr. Stephanie Singer
"How Will We Know We Have a Democracy?"
Campaign Scientific LLC
http://www.campaignscientific.com/resume061204.pdf

An audience question and answer session will follow the presentations.

Overview:

The past few years have seen major changes in the way U.S. votes are cast and counted. In particular, the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 spurred states and counties into a $3.8 billion rush to near-universal computerized voting. When hundreds of thousands of mostly elderly, volunteer pollworkers encounter hundreds of thousands of electronic voting machines running secret software that few understand and none can examine, what assurance do any of us have that our votes are recorded and counted honestly when it's the control of the U.S. government that's at stake?

Drawing on exit poll evidence, Steven Freeman will demonstrate how official explanations for the election results we've been getting in recent years just don't add up.
Josh Mitteldorf, a specialist in mathematical modeling, will review polling data from the 2006 Congressional election, asking what these might reveal about the honesty of the vote count.

What is required to verify our electoral process--and how do we know what we think we know about reported election results?
Stephanie Singer is working to have raw election data made readily available for public inspection, and with Campaign Scientific has expanded public access rights in Pennsyvlania.

Election Defense Alliance conducted a telephone poll with national scope the night of the 2006 election, and Election Integrity conducted an exit poll covering three Congressional districts in Pennsylvania. Data from these polls is publicly available, because it comes from a community that believes in transparency. Meanwhile, the National Election Pool conducted a poll sponsored by the major media, with much larger scope and a larger budget, but withheld raw data, so researchers must extrapolate from the data the NEP chose to release.

Even if we win the battle to ban paperless DREs, how will we know that other kinds of electronic votes are being counted honestly?
David Griscom will describe how corrupt Arizona pollworkers applied a complex, manual fraud technique to falsify optical scan ballots in the presidential election of 2004--in which optical scan systems counted about 60% of the national vote.

Official prescriptions for electoral security always seem to rule out direct oversight by the voters themselves. What kind of reforms can citizens realistically expect to implement against the resistance of e-voting vendors, election adminstrators, and the major political parties?
Paul Lehto, election law attorney, researcher, and founder of Verifiable Democracy, will contrast the values and standards of democracy as established by the Founders of the American Republic, with the conditions presently governing our election systems, citing election fraud cases he is litigating in Washington state, Kentucky, and San Diego, California, that illustrate an emerging, disturbing picture of a post-democratic America.

Sponsored by Election Defense Alliance

DIRECTIONS:

By Car:

*

From 24 East: Take Claremont Exit, turn left on Claremont, right on Hudson to College Avenue. Library is at this intersection.
*

From Highway 24 West: Exit at Broadway. Turn right on Manila to College Avenue. (0.2 mi). Library is at this intersection. To enter the metered City parking lot, turn left on College and left into the lot.

By Bus:

*

The # 51 and # 605 bus lines stop directly in front of the library.

By BART:

*

Rockridge Station. Walk 5 blocks south on College Avenue or take 51 bus.5 blocks south of the Rockridge BART station.
The # 51 and # 605 bus lines stop directly in front of the library.

* The Oakland Public Library does not advocate or endorse the viewpoints of meetings or meeting room users. Publicity notices/public fliers promoting a meeting
must be shown to the library employee in charge of the meeting room, for approval (by initials), prior to distribution.
** Copies of Dr. Freeman's book are available directly from Election Defense Alliance by pre-order, but cannot be offered for sale in the library.
To reserve an unsigned or an autographed copy, please send a query to Info@electiondefensealliance.org
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