Rand Paul Worried Vote Stealing May Hinder Ron Paul Campaign
Dr. Rand Paul – son of Republican presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul says he is worried that corruption and vote stealing may hinder his father's push to win the GOP nomination during the early primaries next year.
Speaking last Friday prior to his scheduled appearance at the record breaking fundraising rally marking the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Rand Paul spoke about the issue live on the Alex Jones show.
"I'm worried about corruption in general and people stealing votes, they steal them in multiple different ways. Back in LBJ's day he was stealing them by buying the chairman of the county and getting all the votes, and they were paper ballots, so you know, you can steal votes any time you have corruption."
Dr. Paul's concern is well founded given recent reports alleging that Mitt Romney has been buying victories in Straw Polls and State Fair contests.
A report from the St Petersburg Times two weeks ago suggested that Romney bought votes for his supporters, some of whom admitted to voting more than 20 times, at the Florida Straw poll. Romney got 893 votes, besting second-place Ron Paul's 534 despite Paul supporters dominating the crowd.
Further reports have alleged that Romney was overheard joking about cheating in a State Fair popularity contest, stuffing the ballot box in Ames, Iowa, and dodging questions across the state. Romney won the Iowa poll by a landslide last August.
Concerns were raised by Paul supporters over potential security vulnerabilities in Diebold voting machines at Iowa. Since the machines have been de-certified in other states, Paul's campaign had asked for a hand recount of paper ballots cast in the non-binding poll of Republicans. When the state party said it would count the paper ballots only if Paul's campaign covered the $184,000 cost of the count, the campaign withdrew its request.
At the time Jesse Benton, spokesman for Paul's campaign, said "We didn't want to use and will not use this as a public relations opportunity."
However, the machines will once again be a concern during upcoming primaries, particularly given that a new $1.9 million federally financed study found that voting machines and central servers made by Elections Systems and Software; Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold; and Hart InterCivic; were easily corrupted.
With everything riding on the early primaries, Ron Paul needs every vote he can get and any form of vote rigging could decide the difference between winning and losing. Furthermore, polls have suggested that 45% of Independents in New Hampshire are undecided on who they are going to vote for, Ron Paul is counting on drawing these votes for success.
Rather than pinpointing any individual case Rand Paul has suggested that the voting system as a whole needs to be subject to more stringent independent oversight.
"I think being conscious of trying to change our system, and I've talked with the people that want to change away from computer back to paper, New Hampshire has paper ballots which I think is good, the whole thing is that its a long term fight, you won't change that in one election if you want to change away from the system." Dr. Paul commented.
"But what you can do in an immediate election is go to the campaign, if you're in New Hampshire or Iowa or one of the early states, South Carolina, is you go to the campaign and say look I want to be a poll watcher. When you stand there in front of them, they may try to steal votes, but it's much harder with someone standing there." Paul concluded.
Rand Paul is the middle son of Ron Paul. Like his father, he is a physician. Dr. Paul's professional field is eye surgery, though he also has a penchant for politics. The younger Dr. Paul also is involved in health care reform and founded the Southern Kentucky Lions Eye Clinic which provides eye surgery and exams for those who otherwise cannot afford proper care.
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It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes...
You cannot and will not ever have a fair election of any sorts using the Diebold electronic voting machines. It's been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the machines can be easily compromised and have been used to alter the vote count in past elections.
Along with other studies which discount their reliability, there was even a programmer who gave sworn testimony that he was hired to create a back door in the company's software for vote count manipulation.
Not only is Diebold's execs on record as saying they would deliver the vote to Bush, I find it particularly offensive for the Iowa Republican party to hold hostage a paper vote and pimp this honest voting method as would a common whore for money.
Since when must a candidate himself have to pay for any type of voting mechanism and the right for a fair vote?
All efforts for a fair election will be lost in a few moments if the Diebold machines are used and no amount of oversight by volunteers will matter. Diebold's software key can be accessed from anywhere on the planet.
"It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes."
--Communist Joseph Stalin
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Congressman Ron Paul videos
oops...
sorry, duplicate post.
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Congressman Ron Paul videos
Bring your video camera
All the caucuses should be filmed and posted on the internet real time.
There will be many "plants" in the Ron Paul groups around Iowa on Jan 3rd that will defect to other candidates and try to pull others along with them. Get everyone's name in the begining and all the "plants" should be exposed in real time. When approaching the caucuses locations, ask others how much they were paid to vote.
Rand on vote fraud
I'm glad he finally came out and said the concern that most of us have...and should have! Don't know if he or Ron said anything like this prior, but they are concerned like we are obviously.
We now have money, we have a fair amount of voters (still need more), so we are missing two things: A way to make sure we have our votes counted properly (and all candidates should be concerned with that-except annointed one), and our delegates.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the need for delegates may possibly outdo the vote fraud potential in the primaries. Why? If we feel we've been cheated out of votes, the delegates can vote for Ron at the convention. They apparently are charged with a pledge to honor their state's vote count and vote for that candidate, but they won't get arrested for not doing so. It is not likely that many or any states will not depend on delegates as there apparently has to be a majority of votes in a respective state for it not to go to delegates to decide. No one candidate will likely get a majority in any state with so many candidates running.
So, we need to have poll watchers to see if we are being cheated. And, we absolutely need a dramatic amout of delegates to be able to reverse the result if vote fraud occurs.
Moral of story: be a delegate, be a delegate, BE A DELEGATE!!!!
Papers submitted!!
"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams
electronic voting machines
I think Bev Harris was the first person to discover the major flaws in the Diebold (& other?) electronic voting machines. (her site is www.blackboxvoting.org)
When I first heard about this issue a few years back, I remember watching a video clip showing one of these machines being demonstrated on some show, maybe Good Morning America? or a similar, major show
Well the host or whoever was demonstrating this was showing how easy it is to just press the screen to choose the candidate.
But lo & behold, as they were demonstrating this, the demonstrator placed their "vote", but the vote result actually SWITCHED it to the other candidate!
They just laughed about it, saying something about it just being a glitch... but I remember thinking, wow, it shows right there for all of the country to see, how easily there could be a miscounted vote, and they just laugh it off?!
I would think with all the YouTube clips about how these machines are easily hacked, no one would allow them anymore!!
only YOU can prevent voter fraud.....
here are some sites where you can sign up to help prevent the almost certain fraud:
http://www.votefraud.org/
Also, here is Jim Condit, Jr.'s explanation of everything:
http://www.youtube.com/wa...
Good luck everyone!
Vote Count movement
In Ausitn an RP meetup group member has established a schematic for addressing this concern. ronpaulvotecount.com
I disagree with the exclusion of other voters for various reasons. I think an exit poll or second election like scheme works best. I believe this movement should be organized at the county level where participating precincts report their numbers, compare them to the offical count, and then have a plan in place for challenging the numbers should it come to that.
Also, get the media involved!
This is every citizens problem. If you get a scheme together for challenging the official system then promote it to every citizen, not just Ron Paul voters.
ORGANIZE YOURSELF at the county and precinct level.
If not you, then who? If not now, then when?
Use your
Use your local Ron Paul meetup group as a means to get an anti-voting fraud movement aligned.
But might I suggest, again, don't promote it as only a ron paul voting tally. Rather, make it available to all voters.
Need action
What can we do? Maybe we need a group like this one:
http://www.voterescue.org...
The following was borrowed from their home page:
VoteRescue is a non-partisan Texas-based election integrity organization that is dedicated to restoring accessibility, fairness, accuracy and total transparency to the democratic process of voting in the United States.
suggest
I suggest not getting bogged down by all the beuracracy that will inherently come with challenging electronic voting on a national level. I suggest decentralized county and precinct movements. If this occurred in enough places it would get national attention and by staying out of the official challenge that Voterescue is involved in, we would create for ourselves more agile mobility.
E-exit polling database
It would behoove the RP campaign to exit poll online for all RP voters. A voluteer national database for recording all votes for Ron Paul, state by state, county by county.
This site is a good one for voting issues.
http://avirubin.com/vote/
My favorite part? The Daily Show video linked at the bottom... :)
JMR