The Network of Spiritual Progressives San Diego
Election Integrity Facts
Caging Lists and Other Ways to Steal an Election
The use of caging lists by Republicans in 2004 was accidentally mentioned by Monica Goodling in her recent testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. Now it is known that caging lists were used in many states to prevent targeted groups (democrats or those suspected of voting for democrats) from voting or from having their votes counted in the 2004 and 2006 elections. We also know now that caging lists were drawn up to prevent the counting of the votes of many African American soldiers in Iraq. Data released by the EAC in September, 2007
reveals that overseas military voters (of all races) had less than half of their votes counted in last year's congressional elections. This is truly a betrayal of the Republican cry to "Support our Troops." It also betrays
the trust of every American whose vote, behind closed doors was secretly not counted. As progressives, we all
need to be involved in the conduct of our elections.
For a thorough description of what else has been done on election day in the U.S. to silence the progressive voice,
the following books and one new movie present a clear picture of our recent elections and warnings for 2008.
An excellent new book has just been published, March 2008, by Richard Hayes Phillips. He wrote "WITNESS TO A CRIME: A CITIZENS' AUDIT OF AN AMERICAN ELECTION" when he discovered, through a citizen's audit, that the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, the state that decided the election, was rigged.
Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., began investigating the Ohio election when he received an unsolicited
e-mail containing obviously erroneous election results from Cleveland. He quickly found that hundreds of votes in certain precincts had inexplicably shifted from John Kerry to other presidential candidates. This made him a witness to a crime, with a duty to investigate further and to present his findings publicy. The result is ...the book WITNESS TO A CRIME. It is an investigative report and eyewitness history, the document of record for what really happened in Ohio in 2004.
He began by analyzing election results at the precinct level. Assisted by a band of "spreadsheet angels" who compiled the data into tables and spreadsheets, Phillips wrote and submitted 21 papers to the Ohio Supreme Court as an expert witness in the Mossy v. Bush lawsuit. He presented evidence of voter suppression, failure to count ballots cast, and alteration of the vote count sufficient to question the alleged victory of George W. Bush in Ohio.
He resumed his investigation as a cold case. He presented two new papers to the Election Assessment
Hearing in Houston.
Assisted by teams of citizen volunteers equipped with digital cameras, Phillips amassed some 30,000 images of forensic evidence. Then he analyzed it all himself, examining 126,000 ballots, 127 poll books, and 141 voter signature books from 18 counties in Ohio.
His preliminary findings submitted to Federal Court in the King Lincoln v. Blackwell lawsuit, helped obtain a court order to protect the ballots from destruction. His ultimate findings are set forth in relentless detail in this book.
In the audited counties, three-fifths of the ballots punched for a liberal black woman for Chief Justice, and half of the ballots punched in favor of gay marriage, were also punched for Bush.
Thousands of ballots in heavily Democratic precincts were pre-punched for third-party candidates.
Voting machines were rigged, tabulators were rigged, ballot boxes were stuffed, ballots were altered,
ballots were sorted according to candidate, and ballots were destroyed.
The book includes a CD with 1200 digital images of ballots, poll books, voter signature books, and other election records, for all to see and for none to deny.
Richard Haye Phillips holds a B.A. in politics from the State University of New York at Potsdam, an
M.A. in geography and an M.A. in history from the Univeristy of Oklahoma, and a Ph.D. in geomorphology from the University of Oregon.
The above description of Richard Hayes Phillips and how he came to write this book is taken directly from the book jacket.
On page 4 of the book's Introduction, Phillips states:
"The struggle has always been about rescuing our democracy, which hangs by a thread. We, the citizens, have lost our most fundamental and basic right - to cast our votes without interference and have them counted correctly and without question.
We cannot win a free and fair election if we do not have free and fair elections.
The winner should win, the loser should lose, and the people should rule."
For all Americans, spiritual progressive and otherwise, this book is clearly a call to action.
This book has an excellent description of what happened in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections and what it planned for 2008.