Votescam Activists Want Honest Elections

• Amid compelling evidence showing that U.S. elections can easily be rig ged, an election watchdog group is calling for hand-counted paper ballots to guarantee that the elite can't steal your vote.

Election-reform leaders attending the Citizens for a Fair Vote Count (CFVC) convention in Cincinnati said Americans should demand that all future voting be by hand-counted paper ballots to reverse the tidal wave of vote fraud.

Speakers from across the nation presented compelling evidence that supported the assertion of Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party that "in the United States, vote fraud is not the exception, it's the rule."

"Hand-counted paper ballots" were the unanimous choice of the 150 participants at the first CFVC convention to prevent vote fraud. The convention was organized by Jim Condit, Jr. and held in Cincinnati, Ohio, Aug. 25 through 27.

The development of tabulating ma chines and computers has prompted most states to switch from hand-counted paper ballots to punch cards and other forms of voting. This has effectively re moved the local citizenry from the vote-counting and verification processes and centralized that authority in the hands of a select few who operate the machines or control the computers.

Only New Hampshire has retained the hand-counted paper ballot although 30 percent of the state's precincts have switched to using computers or machines for voting.

In New Hampshire, Buchanan scored an "upset" in 1996. Many of Buchanan's supporters insist that he would have been elected president that year if paper ballots counted by hand had been used in every precinct across the country.

Many voters fear that national elections could be rigged by those who write the computer code for the machines that tabulate the results.

Princeton University computer ex pert Howard J. Strauss supported these views in an interview with Dan Rather on the eve of the 1988 presidential election.

Ron Keller, one of the first investigators who exposed machine-vote fraud using the mechanical Shoup voting machines, told the convention that "Elections have been fixed for years."

Today, the election results are tallied on a central mainframe computer and supplied to the mass-media networks by a private corporation, known as Voter News Service, (VNS), located in New York City. This is how the networks are able to project results and declare the winners long before the polls close.

The SPOTLIGHT spoke with Lee C. Shapiro of VNS about its role in determining who wins the election.

Shapiro said that there is no published material about VNS available to the public, although she said, "we are working on that."

Readers with questions about who VNS is and what it does, can call company representatives at (212) 947-7280.

VNS has an executive director, Bill Headline, and a full-time staff of 30 that swells to 100 during an election year and 45,000 on Election Day.

She said that the firm is run by a "board of managers" that is comprised of one representative from each of the six major networks: ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC. She refused to reveal the names of the six managers.

Tom Valentine, host of The SPOTLIGHT'S weekly call-in talk forum, Radio Free America, spoke of the "unseen hand" that controls the vote count in order to put into power the "diabolical" scammers and further their agenda.

The "scam agenda" comprises three elements: the money scam, which includes the Federal Reserve System and usury; war mongering for profit and power; and the "scientific agenda," accor ding to Valentine.

Valentine said that it is necessary to "energize the base" of the electorate to rectify a problem that has come about largely due to a lack of vigilance on the part of the citizenry.

The need for citizens to get involved locally during elections was echoed by each and every speaker.

Dan Gutenkauf of Tempe, Ariz., spoke of his experience in Maricopa County where he tried to exercise his right to observe the vote tally at his polling station.

Gutenkauf timed his vote to occur as the polls closed and then requested to be allowed to stay and witness the counting of the ballots.

Arizona election law clearly stipulates that "the tally shall be public." However, the police were called, and Gutenkauf and his brother were removed from the polling station.

Gutenkauf subsequently filed suit for deprivation of his civil rights and denial of access to public records.

Several speakers reported experiences of this kind and emphasized that enforcing the public's right to observe the local vote count was the first step to ensure a fair and honest count for the nation as a whole.

"If the electoral process is illegitimate, then the whole process is off track," said Constitution Party presidential candidate Howard Phillips.

Phillips said he believes there was massive theft of votes in Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas during the presidential election of 1960, stealing the election from Richard Nixon and giving it to John F. Kennedy.

Chris Schaper spoke of the vote fraud against Pat Buchanan in Dubuque, Iowa, during the 1996 Iowa caucuses.

Buchanan has been the victim of vote fraud and stands the most to gain from an honest vote count, Schaper said.

A Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Phyllis and Vicky Collier, widow and daughter of the late James Collier, author of Votescam: The Stealing of America.*

James and his brother Kenneth Col lier, via The SPOTLIGHT, were the first to make "Votescam" a national issue.