Rove Vote-Switching 'Empire' Alleged to Threaten Nov. 6 Results

A well-funded alliance of Karl Rove-linked Republican companies with ties also to the Bush and Romney families is poised to repeat previous successes in decisive election-machine vote manipulation on Nov. 6.

That is the claim of Ohio attorney Clifford Arnebeck and several other attorney and author activists who for years have been protesting voting machine electronic software with the claim that it is impossible to secure. They have announced a financial chart of a Rove "empire" to bolster their argument that authorities should prevent so-called "emergency" measures to assist Internet-enabled voting. "I feel for the Hurricane Sandy victims," electronic voting critic Jill Simpson told me in a phone interview on Nov. 4, "but it's very dangerous to the entire voting process to encourage Internet voting, as New Jersey's governor has suggested."

Arnebeck said the video is now available via ElectionProtectionAction.org, which features the October 24 press conference in Washington, as well as a Simpson explanation of her viewable PowerPoint presentation of what she describes as Rove's network. In an exclusive interview for my forthcoming book, Presidential Puppetry, Simpson says that Rove once told her that election results can be manipulated to achieve victory without undue suspicion so long as the preferred candidate is within three percentage points of the targeted candidate in the final polls in a state.

Also, another coalition announced at the press club that it filed a lawsuit, Fitrakis v. Husted, demanding that "illegal patches implanted in critical electronic vote count software be immediately removed." The defendant is Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican official who has undertaken what he describes as emergency measures for voting procedures. Robert Fitrakis, named plaintiff, is an Ohio professor, attorney and author who has litigated extensively what he describes as corrupt electronic voting procedures allegedly determining the 2004 presidential election, and which he claims are part of a network led by prominent Republicans, including Bush financiers and Rove.

Fitrakis, co-chair in Ohio of the Green Party's presidential campaign this year,  said the suit seeks an injunction preventing Husted from circumventing Ohio law forbidding tampering with voting machines with untested new methods except in an emergency. He said there is no emergency requiring the secret software installations created in recent weeks to affect nearly 80 percent of voters in the state, creating the realistic possibility of secret vote-switching because the contractors are private, partisan, and beholden to the Republicans who hired them.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post reported massive frustration by early voters in Florida and Ohio, the two biggest swing states for the presidential race. Each is run by Republican governors suspected of trying to suppress votes in Democratic areas so that Republican Mitt Romney will win their state's electoral votes, and thus the presidency, as in the Bush victories in 2000 and 2004.

The state officials allegedly involved in vote suppression and those involved in election software ownership and manipulations deny any wrongdoing or even influence. They  accuse their critics of  making up the allegations for the political advantage of Democrats or other left candidates.

Rove has repeatedly denounced one of his main accusers, Simpson, an Alabama attorney who last week announced formation of a grassroots voting integrity group. Rove has asserted that he never met her, much less directed her on political research and dirty tricks, as she has claimed in sworn testimony. Rove also has denied involvement with specific claims raised by his critics. I have approached his office for comment, without reaction so far.

Arnebeck is a 1970 graduate of Harvard Law School who represented corporate and primarily Republican candidates in Ohio for many years in election law and related fields. After the serious disputes arose about voter suppression and vote theft in the 2004 presidential election he became a leading litigator for public interest groups challenging the legality of the 2004 election, which was narrowly decided in favor of President Bush based on Ohio results.

Arnebeck and his colleagues claimed in unsuccessful court litigation that Republican state officials worked closely SmarTech and GovTech, two IT contractors with operational headquarters in Chattanooga, in highly suspicious if not improper procedures. One of the leading witnesses in their  case, GOP operative Michael Connell died in a single-plane air crash in 2008 shortly after he gave a pre-trial deposition.

Simpson has said she visited SmarTech on occasion, and she revisited the company with March during the Republican convention (when they knew leaders would be away) as part of their national research and photographic tour. Simpson and Jim March are election integrity researchers who have traveled the country documenting the various elements of what they describe as Rove's electronic election fraud network. March is a specialist in electronic voting systems and one of Bev Harris' supporters at BlackBoxVoting.org.

Together they have produced what they described as "the first big picture” outline of what the total election fraud network looks like -- at least as connected to Karl Rove (which is most of it)."

The focused especially at their news conference on “MOVE Act” (Military Overseas Voting Enhancement). This was a federal law to make voting more efficient for military, contractor, consulate, and other U.S. citizens based overseas. The act provided new systems to provide an option for these voters to register and vote electronically over the Internet.  "No security provisions were put in – at all," March and Simpson said. "And worst of all, states are not allowed to put in security provisions more strict than the MOVE Act specifies if it slows down the “efficiency goals” of the MOVE Act in any way."

March and Simpson have focused heavily on Scytl, a voting system vendor based in Barcelona, Spain. They allege it "set up a series of sham US offices, but in reality ran these critical functions out of Spain." They photographed, for example, a private home in Virginia that was ostensibly Scytl's headquarters, as well as a virtual office in Baltimore serving as an alternative headquarters. In response, Scytl spokeswoman Michelle M. Schaffer, director of communications and government relations, wrote me,

Scytl USA provides electronic ballot delivery solutions for military and overseas voters. SOE Software, a subsidiary of Scytl USA provides election management software solutions that increase productivity and efficiency for states and local jurisdictions. These solutions include Election Night Reporting, Voter Education Web Portals, Online Training for Poll workers and Asset Tracking. Election Night Reporting should not in any way be interpreted as ballot tabulation. SOE does not provide ballot tabulation solutions. Scytl no longer has an office in Virginia. Scytl USA’s headquarters are based in Baltimore, MD and SOE Software’s offices are based in Tampa, Florida. See our website at http://www.scytl.com/en/contact-c-6.html. Combined, the company has over 50 U.S. based employees. Like many companies, some of our employees are based remotely within the U.S., but most work from either our Baltimore or Tampa offices.

Rove has denied in his Wall Street Journal column and in his memoir, Courage and Consequence, ever meeting Simpson. Boss Rove author Craig Unger question sought to question Rove about SmarTech and related issues, but described himself as unable to pin Rove down on the facts. Rove's responses are analyzed in an appendix below excerpting an Unger interview on his book.

Arnebeck and Simpson have announced that Simpson will lead a new organization, ElectionProtectionAction.org. Separately, Ohio voting integrity activist Harvey Wasserman announced a news conference at the National Press Club on Nov. 5 along with Green Party Presidential Nominee Jill Stein to call for strong federal measures to protect against voting fraud in Ohio. Wasserman has been highly active along with his co-author of several books, Bob Fitrakis, and Arnebeck in alleging via a lawsuit and multiple books that Republicans set up a system that had an apparent goal of stealing votes.

Shown below is a chart Simpson and March created that summarizes their claims about Rove's relationships with a variety of companies and executives involved who are major players in United States vote-counting, which is increasingly controlled by private contractors that are hired by partisan elected officials and who refuse to allow monitoring of their software in a transparent way, critics say.

The chart also summarizes recent reports by elections critics (primarily progressives and libertarians) claiming that the Bush and Romney families and their major financial supporters have suspicious financial interest in voting machine and election services companies. The few responses from the owners suggest that they have neither the desire nor the ability to affect results. Simpson said the Project's article here is the first publication of the chart with an explanation.

In his press conference panel remarks, March describes the meaning of chart in his opinion. This site will carry full responses of those named who will to share their reaction.

Related News Coverage

ElectionProtectionAction.org, The Next Frontier In Election Fraud: A Beginner's Guide To MOVE Act Election Hacking, Jill Simpson and Jim March, Nov. 5, 2012. The federal MOVE Act of 2009[3] (Military Overseas Voting Empowerment) was supposed to improve ballot access for every sort of overseas and/or military-away-from-home voter. It had the unfortunate side-effect of opening up the single worst security hole in the US election process ever seen.  This is not hyperbole – the nature of the security deficit created allows a very small “attack team” (group of knowing election criminals) to alter election results across multiple jurisdictions (and even states) while acting from overseas, reducing the risk of being punished even if caught.

Associated Press / Houston Chronicle, Judge rejects lawsuit's Ohio voting software claim, Andrew Welch-Huggins, Nov. 6, 2012. A Green Party congressional candidate and elections activist provided "zero" evidence to support his claims that new voting machine software could cause ballots to be altered, a judge ruled Tuesday. Bob Fitrakis presented only theories and opinions that the software might cause voting night irregularities, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost said in a 10-page decision issued a few hours after a hearing. Fitrakis and his attorney had wanted the judge to order Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted to stop using the software and break the
state's contract with Omaha, Neb.-based Elections Systems & Software.

Free Press, The e-voting lawsuit that could decide the election, Harvey Wasserman, The e-voting lawsuit that could decide the election, Nov. 5, 2012.  In Columbus, Ohio, 9:00am Election Day marks the opening of a federal adjudication that could decide who next occupies the White House. Heard by Judge Gregory Frost, the case is Robert Fitrakis vs. John Husted and Election Systems & Software. It revolves around an "experimental" software patch newly attached to the electronic voting systems in 39 Ohio counties. The patch is ostensibly meant to facilitate the transmission and analysis of the Ohio vote count as conducted on machines supplied by the E.S. & S. company.

FreePress, FreePress.org confirms installation of 'experimental' patches to ES&S voting systems, end-run of Ohio standard, Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis, Nov. 2, 2012. Investigation of the suspect procedures being used to effectively end-run Ohio's official protocols required to  certify changes to electronic voting machines continues apace, at FreePress.org. The new report updates earlier reporting that the secret installations had been carried out under supposedly exceptional allowances for experimental upgrades.

Free Press, Free Press confirms installation, secret justification of uncertified last minute election tabulation reporting software in Ohio, Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis, Nov. 2, 2012. The Free Press has obtained internal memos from the senior staff of the Ohio Secretary of State's office confirming the installation of untested and uncertified election tabulation software. Yesterday, the Free Press reported that "experimental" software patches were installed on ES&S voting machines in 39 Ohio counties.

Richard Charnin True Vote Model, Final 2012 Polls and Analysis, Richard Charnin, Nov. 6, 2012. In 2008, Obama won the recorded vote by 52.9%-45.6%. He won the unadjusted state exit poll weighted aggregate by 58-40.5%. The True Vote Model indicated that he won by 58.0-40.3%. The analysis indicates that Obama should do quite well in these battleground states – unless, of course, the elections are stolen.

Siegelman Family, Alabama Governor Siegelman Family Endorses President Obama, Nov. 5, 2012. Dana Siegelman who is serving as the spokesperson for former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and his family formally endorsed the reelection of President Barack Obama. “President Obama deserves reelection, and our country needs his reelection,” declared Dana Siegelman. “Every one of Karl Rove’s power plays poses an existential  threat to the survival of our democracy.  Rove’s imperial threat to President Obama’s reelection would, if successful represent the coup de grace to the American Democracy.” “Karl Rove’s power plays towards my family: 1) the 2002 election night theft of my father’s reelection as Governor of Alabama, 2) the instigation of political criminal prosecutions of my father, and 3) the instigation of Senate holds upon President Obama’s appointments to extort continuing control over federal prosecutorial policy in Alabama, constitute some of the worst abuses of public integrity in my 22-year lifetime,” further declared Governor Siegelman’s daughter.

YouTube, Karl Rove’s Election Fraud Empire, Press Conference, Jim March, Jill Simpson, Dana Siegelman, Clifford Arnebeck and Andrew Kreig (Moderators), Oct. 24, 2012. In a news conference at the National Press Club, prominent election sleuths allege a plan to own, operate, and manipulate voting machine software in ways that could improperly determine the 2006 presidential election. [YouTube discontinued display of the video on the grounds of suspected violation of terms service.]

Huffington Post, Florida Early Voting Fiasco: Voters Wait For Hours At Polls As Rick Scott Refuses To Budge, Amanda Terkel, Nov. 4, 2012. Once again, Florida and its problems at the polls are at the center of an election. Early voting is supposed to make it easier for people to carry out their constitutional right. Tuesdays are notoriously inconvenient to take off work, so many states have given voters the option of turning out on weekends or other weekdays in the run-up to Election Day. But in Florida this year, it has been a nightmare for voters, who have faced record wait times, long lines in the sun and a Republican governor, Rick Scott, who has refused to budge and extend early voting hours.

OpEd News, Election Fraud Nov. 6, Michael Collins (left), Nov. 4, 2012. It is now acceptable to talk about election fraud in "polite company." Those who run for office to serve or care about the process of elections, despite their disappointment in the system, will have their day on November 6. Why wouldn't the immensely greedy try to steal elections?  They've stolen everything else.

Atlantic, Ohio's Provisional Ballot Order: The Biggest Legal Story of the Weekend, Andrew Cohen, Nov. 4, 2012. A late voting directive from Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted begets an "emergency motion" about how to count provisional ballots.

BradBlog, NJ Gets Paper Ballots After Sandy; FL Purges Military Voters; DoJ Deploys; GOP Voter Fraud in NV, Brad Friedman, Nov. 3, 2012. NJ Orders Paper Ballots for Powerless E-Voting Sites, (Insanely) Allows for Voting by Email, Fax; ALSO: NY, CT, PA, VA and OH polling sites struggle to get back on line after Superstorm Sandy and in time for Election Day.

Legal Schnauzer, Article On Dana Siegelman Does Not Go Far Enough In Describing The Injustice Against Her Father, Roger Shuler, Nov. 5, 2012, One of the best written pieces on the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman appears in the current issue of B Metro, which bills itself as "The Magazine of Metro Birmingham Living." Reporter Jesse Chambers focuses on Dana Siegelman and her efforts to free her father from federal prison via a presidential pardon. The article is titled "Crusade: Dana Siegelman Was Once Alabama's First Daughter, But She Will Always Be Don's First Daughter."  Chambers does a splendid job of describing the emotional and financial toll the prosecution has taken on Don Siegelman's loved ones--Dana, brother Joseph, and wife/mother Lori. Even friends and extended family members, Chambers reports, failed to grasp the evil nature of the injustice committed against Don Siegelman and his family. As the driving force behind the Free Don Siegelman Web site and petition campaign, Dana Siegelman has become the public face of her father's fight for justice.

538 Blog/ New York Times, Romney’s Reason to Play for Pennsylvania, Nate Silver, Nov. 4, 2012. Our model puts President Obama’s chances of winning Pennsylvania at more than 95 percent, but Mitt Romney’s alternate paths to an Electoral College victory aren’t looking a lot stronger, especially given the Democrats’ early voting advantage.Nov. 3

Robert Reich, Romneyism, Huffington Post, Nov. 3, 2012. By now, in these last remaining days before the election of 2012, we have learned enough about the beliefs of the Republican presidential candidate to see them as a worldview all its own -- a kind of creed that explains Mitt Romney. Those who say he has no principles are selling him short.

OpEd News, Will America's 2012 Election Be Stolen? Harvey Wasserman, Nov. 3, 2012.  Media Advisory: Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein will speak at a noon press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC with voting integrity sleuths to warn against  danger to the public in the ownership and management of America's electronic vote count Nov. 6. Update: The Fitrakis v. Husted federal lawsuit filed today in Columbus, OH demands that illegal patches implanted in critical electronic vote count software be immediately removed. Robert Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman broke many of the major stories surrounding the theft of the 2004 election in Ohio, leading to a federal injunction and numerous criminal convictions. Widespread abuses reported in www.freepress.org and elsewhere indicate an election already tainted by systematic disenfranchisement and computerized vote count rigging. 

Justice Integrity Project, Book Reviews: Two Recommended Books on Election Fraud, Andrew Kreig, Nov. 4, 2012, Two leading voting sleuths are among a half a half dozen authors who have published books in recent weeks underscoring the dire threat of electronic election fraud on Nov. 6. Today's column features two of them: Richard Charnin, author of Matrix of Deceit, and Jonathan D. Simon, who wrote Code Red.

Pima County (Arizona),

LA Progressive, Retired NSA Analyst Proves GOP Is Stealing Elections, Part I, Denis Campbell, October 28, 2012. Retired NSA analyst Michael Duniho has worked for nearly seven years trying to understand voting anomalies in his home state of Arizona and Pima County. Said Duniho, "It is really easy to cheat using computers to count votes, because you can't see what is going on in the machine." When Duniho applied a mathematical model to actual voting results in the largest voting precincts, he saw that only the large precincts suddenly trended towards Mitt Romney in the Arizona primary – and indeed all Republicans in every election since 2008 – by a factor of 8%-10%. The Republican candidate in every race saw an 8-10% gain in his totals whilst the Democrat lost 8-10%. This is a swing of up to 20 points, enough to win an election unless a candidate was losing very badly. Since sifting through and decoding massive amounts of data was his work for decades on behalf of the National Security Agency, he wanted to understand why this was ONLY happening in large precincts. 

Harper's No Comment, Boss Rove: Six Questions for Craig Unger, Scott Horton (left), Sept. 3, 2012. After four years in the political penalty box, Karl Rove has returned as the undeniable mastermind of the GOP’s electoral effort. Vanity Fair contributing editor Craig Unger has just published a new book, Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power, that focuses on Rove’s fall from grace during the Bush years and his remarkable political resurrection. It shows how Rove’s tactics are remaking the nation’s political landscape and explains why, win or lose in 2012, he is likely to be a dominant force in Republican politics for some time. I put six questions to Unger about his new book:

Horton: A large part of your book focuses on a computer-services company, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, called SmarTech. You note that after SmarTech began serving Ohio’s electoral returns at 11:14 p.m... on election night in 2004, inexplicable anomalies began to flood the vote totals—all of which favored George W. Bush. The company also appears repeatedly in your book as the inner sanctum of GOP. voting-technology strategies, and as the host of servers on which Karl Rove’s mysteriously vanishing emails were stored. Yet when you asked Rove about SmarTech, he insisted he “had no idea who it was.” What do you think of Rove’s denial, and why do you devote so much of your book to the company? Unger: When I repeated the question to Rove, his response morphed into a classic Watergate-like non-denial denial in which he claimed to be “so many layers removed” from such operations that he didn't “recall” the company. Whatever the state of his memory, Rove’s relationship to SmarTech is emblematic of how he operates: with no fingerprints, via entities that serve his interests in extraordinary ways even though he has no visible ties to them.

Huffington Post,The Curious Case of Don Siegelman, Mimi Kennedy, Sept. 3, 2012. Don Siegelman should be a star in the Democratic Party. Instead, he's a former elected official sentenced to prison by a right-wing judge in Alabama.

Worrall, Simon. Cybergate: Was The White House Stolen By Cyberfraud? Amazon Digital, 2012. Robert Kennedy Jr. calls it " more important than Watergate." In this gripping, investigative work, critically acclaimed author, Simon Worrall, follows the trail of evidence to show that the 2004 Ohio election, which put George Bush into the White House for the second time, may have been hacked. At the center of the drama is Karl Rove's, brilliant IT expert, Michael Connell, who died when his Piper Saratoga plane crashed mysteriously in 2010. Was Connell murdered to cover up the truth? Drawing on extensive, forensic evidence and candid testimonies, including an exclusive interview with Connell's widow, Worrall unravels the mystery of Connell's death. Previously unpublished, secret documents obtained by the author point towards a chilling, possible cause. The result is a dramatic, True Crime story underpinned by colorful characters and painstaking research, which takes the reader inside the shadowy world of electoral fraud. And with a Presidential election looming this year, Worrall's detailed exposure of the vulnerability of digital voting machines to abuse could not be more timely.

Justice Integrity Project, Cutting Through Hype, Hypocrisy of Vote Fraud Claims, Andrew Kreig, Aug. 13, 2011. Recent events show why election theft deserves much more scrutiny than it receives from either government officials or news reporters. Most dramatically, a federal judge has released the 2008 testimony of GOP IT guru Michael Connell, as shown on a campaign website. The Ohio resident died in a mysterious plane crash that year after anonymous warnings he would be killed if he testified about his work with Karl Rove and others helping the Bush-Cheney ticket win in 2000 and 2004.

Free Press/Ohio Columns

Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis, Election software company Scytl on the run from the Free Press, from one fake address to the next, FreePress.org, October 22, 2012. On September 26, the day after the Free Press published the address and photo of Scytl headquarters, their vice president for media relations and governmental affairs, Michelle Shafer: Manufactured skepticism and exit polls) of Austin Texas, filed an official change of address form with the United States Election Assistance Commission. In just 24 hours, in the middle of a presidential election, Scytl USA miraculously relocated to Baltimore, Maryland.

Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis, Why are legal scholars dismissing election fraud?: Manufactured skepticism and exit polls, FreePress.org, October 21, 2012. Time and again, the scholarship of citizens, programmers, engineers and others has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that direct recording electronic voting machines fail, fail often, and fail in ways that primarily benefit the Republican Party. But to the self-interested, including the self-appointed legal scholar “experts,” the well placed, and those who benefit from those failures a different dynamic than fact is at work. A faith-based reality is being enforced for narrow interests by a few people who are very close to Karl Rove, the inventor of faith based reality and a leading proponent of push-and-pray voting.

Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis, "Employees of Romney Family's Secret Bank Tied to Fraud, Money Laundering and Drug Cartels," Free Press, October 21, 2012. As previously reported in by the Columbus Free Press, the Romney family, namely Mitt, Ann, G Scott and Tagg Romney, along with Mitt's "6th son" and campaign finance chair have a secretive private equity firm called Solamere Capital Partners. This firms ties to Romney's campaign and bundlers is already well documented, along with its connection to the manufacture and distribution of voting machines. What is not as well documented is a subsidiary of that private equity firm hiring employees of a failed firm tied to a Ponzi scheme that has a long history of money laundering for Latin American drug cartels and to the Iran-Contra scandal. As reported by ThinkProgress, Solamere Capital Partner's subsidiary Solamere Advisors is a investment advisory group, providing advice to Solamere clients and boosting sales. Would-be corporate pugilist Tagg Romney is a director. According to the New York Times, all but one of its 11 employees came from the Charlotte office of the Stanford Financial Group, the US investment arm of convicted felon R. Allen Stanford's offshore banking and fraud network that comprised a host of companies including the Stanford International Bank, Stanford Capital Management, The Bank of Antigua, Stanford Trust and Stanford Gold and Bullion. Three of these employees, Tim Bambauer, Deems May, and Brandon Phillips, received incentive compensation related to their direct sales of securities linked to a fraud that brought down this banking network.

Free Press, "Does the Romney family now own your e-vote?" Gerry Bello, Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman," October 18, 2012. Will you cast your vote this fall on a faulty electronic machine that's partly owned by the Romney Family? Will that machine decide whether Romney will then inherit the White House? Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 6. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States. In other words, a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and his brother, wife and son, have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall's election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help decide who "owns" the White House.