Netcraft Shows Smartech Running Ohio Election Servers

goombah99 writes "Netcraft is showing that an event happened in the Ohio 2004 election that is difficult to explain. The Secretary of State's website, which handles election reporting, normally is directed to an Ohio-based IP address hosted by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp. According to the American Registry on Internet Numbers, Smartech's block of IP addresses 64.203.96.0 – 64.203.111.255 encompasses the entire range of addresses owned by the Republican National Committee. Smartech hosted the recently notorious gbw43.com domain used from the White House in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act, from which thousands of White House emails vanished." Update: 04/25 01:24 GMT by KD : ePluribus Media published a piece called Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again on election eve 2006, when a similar DNS switch to Smartech occurred. They have been investigating the larger story of IT on Capitol Hill and elsewhere for two years.

Breaking News

The President announced today that he as complete faith in the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Smartech Corp. and the RNC, which utterly destroys any remaining credibility they may have had left.

The longer this fellow stays in office, the more he resembles Richard M. Nixon, IMHO.

Nixon is not dead. How do I know? Always two there are, a Master and an Apprentice.

Re:Breaking News

No, he easily surpasses Nixon by leaps and bounds. And what's more, Nixon knew when he was breaking laws and doing shady things. This president seems to believe he's doing exactly what he's "allowed" to do and is operating within his rights.

It would be an interesting question to ask the president whether he thought Nixon was a shady character as president and whether Nixon's activities and actions were of a questionable if not illegal behavior. Could he agree with History's assessment of Nixon while at the same time continue to claim he is within his rights and is acting in the best interest of the nation?

Re:Breaking News

That's not fair -- Nixon was actually a pretty effective president. People only remember the resignation, but he was able to push through a large number of domestic policy changes and had a foreign policy that extended beyond Vietman. Whether or not you agree with his politics (and be sure you know what they are before you make that decision), and the crimes he helped cover up, you should at least respect his effectiveness in the office.

Re:Breaking News

Fuck.

AOLers found /.

Re:Breaking News

Best Economy Ever? My ass. You realize that credit card debt is skyrocketing, foreign markets are dumping US dollars at record rates, mortgage rates are unsustainably low (and I keep waiting for the bottom to completely fall out of that one).

The economy isn't blasting along. Spending is. It's not the same thing. It's just digging a hole that will have to be got out of later, somehow.

Re:Breaking News

Study history much?

What other president lied to start a war that has killed more than 3000 American troops?

Well there were lies told before Vietnam (we didn't even admit we were there for a long time). There was also lying that led to the U.S. invasion of Cuba. And the U.S. invasion of Mexico. And Panama (okay, so we didn't invade Panama, but parking our gunboats in a way that blocked Columbia from a chunk of their own territory is close enough for me).

What other president's administration has called the Geneva Convention "Quaint" and "Obsolete"?

Seeing as not many Presidents even had the Geneva Convention, I will ignore this. If you look at the spirit of the Geneva Convention though you will find many presidents who would be in violation if it existed in their day.

What other president has actually defended torture?

See the CIA, and every President since 1947.

What other president has overseen the arrest of innocent people (there have been "enemy combatants" released with their charges dropped), holding them for years as "enemy combatants" without any right to habeas corpus?

Are you serious? Do you remember this thing called Japanese internment camps? Ever look into how Abraham Fucking Lincoln had some of his opposition jailed for being his opposition?

What other president has overseen warrant-less NSA and FBI wiretaps?

Well seeing as the NSA was the agency involved with ECHELON, I would say at least every President since the early 1960's.

Re:Breaking News

Just because the other side isn't following the rules set by the Geneva Conventions doesn't mean we are freed from the responsibilities of following them. I'm pretty sure we're bound by them regardless of the antics of our enemies. I'll have to do some research to back this up, but I'm willing to bet there is no clause that waives your responsibilities to follow GC under certain circumstances.

Re:Breaking News

The Dow Jones Average is up, but most individual stocks are still trading low and many companies are posting lower-than-average numbers. You can't look at the average itself and use that as a reliable indicator of the health of the economy. The same with the unemployment rate. What you have to look at are correlations of average salary versus the average cost of living.

Re:Breaking News

The unemployment rate itself means nothing if the income is not stated for the employment.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2006- 02-23-fed-incomes_x.htm [usatoday.com]

The statements about the stock market are meaningless without knowing where the indexes come from, how they are derived, and most importantly: using multiple specific indexes centered around economic health stock indicators.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/04/13/savin g-and-investing-what-is-a-stock-market-index/ [getrichslowly.org]

Gas prices are around $3.20/Gal here and have been going up. It is getting to the point that it is no longer news worthy to report on the astronomic gas prices because they are becomming a standard. With the major gas companies all reporting record profits and bonuses for the upper management, there is a disconnect between the welfare of the people and the inherrant corporate goals of making a profit for such a vital infrastructure as gasoline. I hope I'm not alone in thinking that some services should be regulated by the government. If only to limit the maximum percentage of personal profit from sales of a vital infrastructure.

If we don't need to push alternative fuel souorces right now with aggressive legislation, then we should have the resources to keep our country running without sending additional billions overseas for oil. Paying the areas of the world that supposedly harbor terrorists. They have an economy just like ours, if there is an influx of money in a region then they prosper. "Trickle down" to the enemy is a bad way to support our troops. This government has reversed and hobbled legislation that could have kept us in the front running technology to become independant. No specific technology will help us now. It must be a multifacited environmental/political/economic push to be better at providing and distributing what we consume. Trash, electricity, and commuting fuel all need to be addressed a whole lot better than they are now. The political grandstanding and photo ops don't cut it. Real action and real commitment from the people in charge (automakers and elected officials) will keep this country a world power, or let it fall into mockery on the world stage, their actions will lead us, and we are responsible for our complicity.

Re:Breaking News

Care to cite references that say we're "kicking ass" in Afghanistan? You'd think the administration and the Pentagon would be quick to hype up the ass-kicking to deflect against Iraq.

If you believe the mass media have any sort of "left" agenda, or have any agenda whatsoever beyond getting the next advertising deal, you need to buy more tinfoil. The only agenda most American media companies has is to make money; some do it by pandering to religious conservatives, some do it by pandering to Democrats, others are trying to woo the traditional conservative (the small government type, not the current brand of conservatives). If all mass media pandered to the same group as in a nation-wide "agenda", you'd have a vacuum of ad dollars, which we do not have.

And yes, I do see combatant body counts. All the time, in fact, and you would too if you read media outside of the US or read some non-mainstream news sources, or at least not the "big" outlets.

Re:Breaking News

"Losing" does not mean that they are killing more of "us" than we are "them."

Losing means we are losing our country's dignity by continuing our unprovoked invasion of another country.

Losing means we are losing our brightest stars, sacrificing for political reasons those who would most readily pick up arms in defense of this country. This includes many of our bravest and brightest. What would do more good for this country, having a soldier in Iraq, toiling in endless war, or having that person back at home, raising their children to become good people like themselves?

Losing primarily means that this is not considered by either side to be a conventional war, with winners and losers. The violence and indignation will go on for as long as we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it will continue after we leave. The fighting will continue indefinitely. And as such, given that we are foreign invaders, and our "enemies" are defending their home, we cannot "win."

That's kind of monstrous, isn't it?

The way I see it is that Bush wants to expand domestic production of oil to 1) bring prices down and 2) keep the money here instead of sending it to people who want to kill us.
Tell me, who's stopping us from drilling in ANWR? It's not the Alaskans!
Also, gas is cheaper today than it was in 1979 (adjusted for inflation, of course) and there is no rationing and no gas lines.

The entire known reserves in ANWR would provide six months' worth of oil. It won't bring prices down, and it won't significantly reduce the amount of money sent to people who want to kill us. It will bring money to the people who want to drill there, but that's about it. I'm unconvinced that the nation has a meaningful policy on reducing the use of foreign oil, given that any move toward reducing consumption has been blocked over the last six years.

Gas is 2.87 a gallon [doe.gov] nation-wide. It peaked at an average of about $3 per gallon last year and the year before. I'm unable to find good graphs with this previous year's data on them, but it looks like the peak was around $3 in today's dollars; I should remind you that we're not being embargoed, and it's still almost as bad as it was then.

I beg to differ on the "losing" portion of your propaganda. However, we have those on the left (including the media) who WANT us to lose this thing so it looks bad for Bush. How many Al Qaeda members did we kill yesterday? How about on any day at all since 9-11? Don't know do ya. Why? It's not reported. Every single US military death is (rightfully) reported with all its gory details, but you NEVER see an enemy head-count. Well, OK, you do sometimes, but they are labeled as "Iraqi civilians killed by US forces". Fact is, we are kicking major ass in Iraq and Afghanistan, but you won't see it reported because it doesn't meet the agenda.

The media disbanded the Iraqi army? The media put incompetent partisan hacks in charge of the reconstruction effort? The media decided that torture was a great idea? "Kicking major ass" isn't a foreign policy goal, it's a movie tagline--and it's a stupid euphemism for "killing lots of people". Pretending to be the Golden Horde doesn't work when you're also pretending to be George Marshall. Don't blather on about how you're the armies of goodness and light when you also want to kill kill kill, and those corpses were probably Al Qaeda anyway.

Re:Breaking News

Just one comment on your exchange: Grandparent talked about the level of employment, you addressed the level of unemployment. Two different things since unemployment statistics relate to the percentage of job-seekers without work while employment is a measure of the percentage of the population that has jobs. If unemployed workers give up searching for jobs it is possible for unemployment AND employment statistics to both fall.

This is ridiculous.

That would make you French, possibly Spanish or German. In the US unemployment is nearing a historic low, the stock market and economy a historic high and petroleum products are expensive but hardly horribly so if all the full-size SUVs I see on the road are any indication.

Falling real wages, an unemployment rate that's only dropping because people have been out of work so long they're considered to have left the workforce, a steadily rising poverty rate and a negative personal savings rate are also indications. They don't affect the sorts of people who drive SUVs quite as much as they affect some others, but these things do exist.

Well, if we stopped funding the Palestinian Authority and encouraged a bit of civil unrest in Iran then we'd be "entrenched" in a battle with terrorism that we'd be winning faster then we're winning it now.

(a) At what rate do you see us "winning"? Please provide a situation that you think the current policies are leading to (e.g., Kim Jong-Il abdicates and North Korea becomes the 51st state) and a timeline for getting there. (b) "Encouraged a bit of civil unrest"? Ah, because funding the mujahideen, the contras, Pinochet and any tin-pot dictator willing to fight anyone left of Jeanne Kirkpatrick has only served to instill a deep love of America and Americans in the people who came in contact with those groups. Has this ever led to the desired results? Has starting bloody civil wars in other countries ever led to kittens and happiness for us?

You aren't kiddin'. You can be the sort of shmuck who jets from one environmental riot to another and never be troubled by the hypocrisy.

Ah, the "limousine liberal" defense. In short, "I bet you're wealthy, so I don't have to listen to you".

Or the sort who decries the fascist government, loudly, publicly, repeatedly and without the slightest concern that they'll end up where people who loudly, publicly and repeatedly criticize a fascist government traditionally end up.

It's a bit of a catch-22, isn't it? If you can hear the criticism, then there's no rising tide of fascism. If you can't hear the critics, then there's no rising tide of fascism.

Re:Breaking News

"The top 10% of earners pay 70% of the taxes. If that isn't "sharing the wealth," then socialism is much nastier than I thought."

Fascinating, that 10% you're talking about also earns 95% of the countries wealth in a year! Meanwhile the 90% that earns 5% of the country's wealth each year is paying 30% of the taxes! Wow, what a burden that must be for the bottom 90%, paying 6 times the rate the top 10% does.

Re:Breaking News

I remember Carter VERY well. Why would you consider him worse than Bush?

Where do I begin:

Carter was more in the "Religious Right's" pocket than Bush ever will be.

Carter was a Fundamentalist Christian (a religious affiliation), but it consistently galled the religious right (a political affiliation) that he wouldn't champion their causes. For example, he was politically pro-choice, but privately held that abortion was wrong.

Were visiting dignitaries allowed a glass of wine with dinner while visiting the White House in 1978? Nope! Alcohol was banned in the White House by Carter.

Ok... and that makes him a poor president, why? Remember, we're comparing him to a man who hired a flunky with no experience to head up FEMA!

Average mortgage rates during the Carter administration were over 15%! I don't even pay credit cards 15%!!!

Inflation was through the roof (12%).

Unemployment was high (7%).

The economy sucked under Carter. However, any economist worth their salt will tell you that this was an unavoidable consequence of global factors, including our exit from Viet Nam. There was also the fact that the Fed was still applying, what Greenspan would later prove to be a losing strategy for managing inflation. None of this was under Carter's control.

Deficit spending went through the roof (the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion).

Devaluation of the dollar.

These are consequences of a poor economy. Again, not Carter's doing.

Gas shortages.

Gas shortages are a tough problem, and I have to give R.R. credit for enhancing our oil options. Carter may or may not have responded in similar ways, but by the time any response was possible, he was out of office.

Iranian hostage crisis.

Failure to rescue Iranian hostages.

This was a very touchy situation, and I doubt we'll ever know for sure what happened. All I'll say is that, from the PR perspective, Carter hosed this one and hosed it good. Beyond that, there's just too much that was never disclosed.

Demoralization and dismantling of the US military

Well, the dismantling of large chunks of the military was inevitable, after the buildup during Viet Nam. Even Reagan's huge buildup in the mid/late 80s was only a stopgap that lasted as long as the end of the cold war.

Canceled the B1-B program as well as the MBT-70. (Both badly needed to compete with our enemy of the time... the Soviets who had the T-72 and the Tu-160 BLACKJACK)

I see no reason that those were badly needed to cope with the Soviets, and Carter's dealings with the Soviets and with arms issues were a major accomplishment of his presidency.

It's actually kind of sad. Carter was probably the most intelligent president in US history. He just sucked as president.

I think he was the best president we ever had. He refused to allow congress to continue to play their games, and effectively gridlocked them for 4 years. A better 4 years, I couldn't ask for.

but things were better when he took office than when he left and things were much, MUCH better after four years of Reagan.

Military spending was through the roof. Deficit spending dwarfed Carter's administration. The CIA and NSA were dealing drugs for international power-plays. No, things were not "MUCH better" after four years of Reagan - not by a long shot.

Re:Breaking News

The economy sucked under Carter. However, any economist worth their salt will tell you that this was an unavoidable consequence of global factors, including our exit from Viet Nam. There was also the fact that the Fed was still applying, what Greenspan would later prove to be a losing strategy for managing inflation. None of this was under Carter's control.

Well, I'm pretty sure the president appoints the members of the Federal Reserve. As president, he should have acted to reverse their course through whatever means he has as Executive in Chief. Saying their was nothing he could do is a cop-out. That's a lot like the other side saying Clinton had nothing to do with economic expansion. Presidents own their economies and have the power to right the ships, no matter how politically unpopular it is.

Re:Breaking News

***Demoralization and dismantling of the US military Well, the dismantling of large chunks of the military was inevitable, after the buildup during Viet Nam. Even Reagan's huge buildup in the mid/late 80s was only a stopgap that lasted as long as the end of the cold war.***

A common misunderstanding Carter was handed a disfunctional military by Nixon, Ford, and Donnie Rumsfeld -- who was as much a disaster in his first tour at Defense as he was in his second. Carter INCREASED real military spending by 3% in each of his four budgets (which were 1978,1979,1980 and 1981 BTW not 1976-1980) That's just about the same rate that Reagan increased spending until Congress eventually stepped in and decided that the US had about as big a military as it could afford. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP was 4.7 percent when Carter took office. It was 5.2 percent when he left.

Don't believe me? Look it up. It's public record.

Re:Breaking News

Carter was more in the "Religious Right's" pocket than Bush ever will be. Were visiting dignitaries allowed a glass of wine with dinner while visiting the White House in 1978? Nope! Alcohol was banned in the White House by Carter.

Oh noes!! Bring religious and being in the "religious right's" pocket are two different things. I don't think Carter is going around telling people that God came down to the White House and told him 'no more booze'.

Average mortgage rates during the Carter administration were over 15%! I don't even pay credit cards 15%!!!

Give it time.

Inflation was through the roof (12%).

Strong Fed has been keeping it low. Yay.

Unemployment was high (7%).

Unemployment is measured differently now than then. It's possible that unemployment now using the same measurements would be the same or higher.

Deficit spending went through the roof (the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion).

What is it now? Oh right $521 Billion [whitehouse.gov]. And that's after having balanced the budget in the late '90s. So going from 0 to $521B is a bit more impressive.

Devaluation of the dollar.

$2 gets you a pound

Gas shortages.

Not sure why this hasn't happened yet. But $4/gal gas, here we come!

Iranian hostage crisis.
Failure to rescue Iranian hostages.

Funny how that ended just as Reagan took office. And how a later scandal was called Iran/Contra. Huh.

Demoralization and dismantling of the US military

Yea, the day after Bush blames Democrats for keeping the troops in Iraq longer than they should, Gates says all tours get extended from 12 months to 15 months.

Canceled the B1-B program as well as the MBT-70. (Both badly needed to compete with our enemy of the time... the Soviets who had the T-72 and the Tu-160 BLACKJACK)

We still beat the Russians, right?

Need I go on?

Oh, please do. I don't see anything about Carter tortuing American citizens, or spying on their telephone or banking records. The Internets wasn't quite the same now as then, so I'll give Bush a pass on spying on that, at least in comparing to Carter. Maybe Carter is to blame for Walter Reed, or K Street, or leaking Wilson's name, or any of the collection of other scandals we've seen in the past 6 years that makes losing money on a failed land deal look almost..innocent.

But you go on.

Re:Breaking News

Wow, bush is really getting the blame for a lot of things here. I have some questions though. Maybe you can help me out with them.

In your world,

What is it now? Oh right $521 Billion. And that's after having balanced the budget in the late '90s. So going from 0 to $521B is a bit more impressive.

You don't think the tax revenue from the capitol gains cut and the roth IRA conversion which was temporary had anything to do with this do you?

And I'm wondering about,

Not sure why this hasn't happened yet. But $4/gal gas, here we come!

You don't think this had anything to do with the oil embargo do you? Or could it be the government price controls that lead people to believe tankers were waiting just outside US waters waiting on the government to increase the market cap?

We still beat the Russians, right?

Could this be because Reagan ended up outspending the russians and with his famous MAD scenario, took the only real leverage the Russians had off the table?

The Internets wasn't quite the same now as then, so I'll give Bush a pass on spying on that

Could this pass be also because Clinton started the spying on the Internet and the programs only matured under Bush? Green lantern?

Maybe Carter is to blame for Walter Reed, or K Street, or leaking Wilson's name, or any of the collection of other scandals we've seen in the past 6 years that makes losing money on a failed land deal look almost..innocent.

well, To be truthful, I don't have any questions here, just some clarifications. Leaking of wilson's name or more precisely his wife, PLame was done by Richard Armatage, a democrat and the special council knew this from the very beginning of his investigation. But more importantly, The land deal was a direct result of Carters policy and the collapse of the savings and loans along with the loss of farms too.

Carter tried to improve the economy by letting the banks invest directly in real estate were before all they could do is back a loan and broker the sale of a mortgage. When the banks dumped all their money into it, it drove real estate prices through the roof and eventually caused the bottom to fall out of the market once the prices for land became so high, a normal person couldn't afford it anymore. This forced the banks to scramble for funds to operate and they started foreclosing on mortgages in an attempt to bring cash flow into the system. Eventually this backfired and caused the loan collapse and the rose law firm was right in the middle of it with the Whitewater land speculation.

But because of this, Farmers were seeing land prices go from $25 -$100 an acre to over $2500 and acre and they took loans out to buy modernized farm equipment with the expectations that the prices would continue to rise and with the increased productivity of the new equipment they thought they could sell a few acres and afford the payments. once the banks dropped and the bottom fell forcing the bailouts, these farmers now owned a huge sum that they couldn't plant themselves out of and their land values dropped so much that selling the farm wouldn't even cover it.

This leads us into the farm crisis were family farms were being foreclosed to cover the debts of the banks and eventually the savings and loan bailout. The good thing about this was the instillation of the FDIC insurance and limits to the amounts of money that can be loaned out with a required amount to be placed in reserve.

Unfortunately, All this good stuff could have been avoided with a little more government oversight and some limits imposed on the banks concerning the investment properties. IT should have works on paper but failed miserably in practice. If you are old enough to remember how life was back then, you will know that it is much better today is and how wrong of a statement losing money on a failed

Re:Breaking News

"Could this be because Reagan ended up outspending the russians and with his famous MAD scenario, took the only real leverage the Russians had off the table?"

Its more likely the Soviet Union collapsed be because the Russians foolishly got bogged down in a decade long war in Afghanistan. A war that tore Russia apart from the inside. The scarred veterans returning from the horrors of Afghanistan were an integral part of the uprising against the Communist party that sent them there.

The only credit I'm willing to give Reagan in toppling the Soviet Union was the weapons he gave the Muhjadeen. As a cruel and ironic twist it turns out he was also helping build the Taliban and Al Qaeda at the same time. Reagan's arms build up had no clearly defined role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its main accomplishment was to enrich U.S. defense contractors. Most of the weapons he spent massive sums on were a joke, Star Wars never did anything worthwhile, his battleships were billion dollar artillery pieces that just diverted funds from more useful projects, and the B-2 and B-1B were a complete joke that are largely shunned to this day in favor of the B-52 which cost a fraction of the price.

I would give far more credit to Pope John Paul and Gorbachev for toppling the U.S.S.R than Reagan. They used peaceful persuasion, and accomplished a lot more, than squandering money on staggeringly expensive and largely ineffective weapons.

Re:Breaking News

Yep, good old Reagan supplying Iran with illegal arms to make a political game of freeing the hostages. What a great man, proving that by Iran taking hostages, we will bend over backwards to give them whatever they want by negotiating with terrorists. Got to love revisionist history. I'll bet you blame the way Bush trashed the economy on Clinton somehow too! (all good neo-cons can trace every problem in the world back to Clinton in 3 steps or less)

P.S. shouldn't your alias be "Archie B" as in Bunker?

Misunderstanding

Your own submission answers your question.

Nothing "changed" or was "transferred". http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ [state.oh.us] is a special web site in operation for elections. Otherwise, it points to http://www.sos.state.oh.us/ [state.oh.us] as it does now. It appears that the State of Ohio contracted with SmartTech for hosting, processing, and dissemination of the election results via the special elections web site, when it is in operation.

That probably won't be a good enough answer for people, though. Regardless, it appears that SmartTech has obvious ties to the Republican Party, and hosts many sites for various Republican political interests. The Secretary of State of Ohio is a partisan political position. This doesn't mean there aren't questions that can be raised or points to be debated.

The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.

Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."

It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.

Re:Misunderstanding

Save your logical explanations... Slashdot wants a conspiracy, so they're going to see a conspiracy.

Re:Misunderstanding

It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.

Thats not true at all. In 2004 I thought all the people who were saying the election was stolen were crazy tin foil hat types. The more I learn, the more I realize that it is much more likely that I was the blind sheep type. No one is debating that lots of non standard and illegal activities took place during the 2004 election, the only question is how wide spread, and how well organized those activities were. The more stories that come out, the more people will start to change their minds.
--crazy tin foil hat guy

Re:Misunderstanding

I've looked into a lot of these claims, and most of them are nonsense.

I personally debunked the UC Berkeley study (cough) which "proved" the Flordia results were rigged. Though they hid it in a bunch of technical nonsense, essentially what they said was that they had a model to predict the outcome of results in Florida (based on past elections in 1996 and 2000) and since the 2004 numbers were different from what they expected, the results were rigged. QED.

Needless to say, this is complete hokum, and they should have been laughed out of the room instead of published.

Seems to me there's more evidence for a vast left wing conspiracy. :p

Maxwell's deamon

I've done stat analysis too. I concur with you that accusations based on statistical about what happened in florida don't seem to be strongly supported. That is to say the statistics are not conclusive. But I've also follwed the ohio reports pretty closely too. Some of the reports are incorrect. But some can't be so easily debunked. The strongest cases indicate that shoddy voting equipment created long lines that detered voters in selected precincts. It's also now certain that the recounts were rigged (they precounted then selected the precincts without problems for the official counts. And there are precints where the votes and voters don't add up. You always expect some of that so one can never really put a finger on if there was too much or too little. All very statistically nebulous. and hence an opportunity to tilt things and hide in the noise.

This is why getting the results early and having the ability to delay posting them enlarges the opportunity for dirty tricks. For example here's a sort of maxwell's deamon way to rig an eleciton completely legally. If you look at the early returns you will see lots of mistakes. Some will go in your favor some will go against you. If you selectively inquire with precinct judges only on the cases where the votes go against you, you can make gains. Indeed both parties routinely do this after the elections so that's not even science fiction. But now suppose your party, and only your party, is magically granted the power to do this on election night itself. Getting totals "fixed" is a lot easier when things are in flux. a simple phone call can say "Hey that can't be right, read those numbers again" will get you an updated total. After the election is done getting changes is much harder. Hence eraly knowledge helps. Running the reporting site would be a windfall.

Re:Misunderstanding

I've looked into a lot of these claims, and most of them are nonsense.

That may be true, but let me share a personal anecdote. Studying in Ohio during 2004, I was glad that my vote might "count" for something, and eagerly anticipated the elections. Being in a (rich and somewhat elitist) college town, you can imagine that liberal sentiment was widespread. Sure, there were a few Bush supporters, but almost everyone I knew of planned on voting Kerry. This is a sizable group of people, several thousand.

The (Republican) voting officials assigned us just TWO voting machines, which coincidentally turned out to be the two oldest in the county. One broke after about an hour in use.

Personally, I ended up standing in line almost 11 hours to vote. Some people stayed in excess of 13 hours (by far the highest in the nation). Needless to say, our votes didn't make it into the county tallies.

Meanwhile, the "townies" (rural and overwhelmingly Bush supporters according to results) had surplus machines, and faced no wait.

I'm not saying that Kerry would have won anyway, but just the brazenness of these people's anti-competitive activities astounded me. I can certainly believe that lesser forms of the same or similar methods were enforced in other areas of the state. IIRC, Ken Blackwell, then Secretary of State (no idea if he still is), said that he would do whatever it took to re-elect Bush. I think that's a quote, but I'm not certain. Certainly, this implies no illegal activity, but given the political climate, I certainly wouldn't rule it out.

Re:Misunderstanding

While it hardly is a smoking gun, it does create situation so ripe for exploitation that it's proper to second guess the logic of the SOS's decision. There are other checks on the vote totals, but there's still problems if someone can adjust the reporting. Perhaps this is obvious but if you are planning any monkey business running the reporting site gives you the opportunity to see the data before anyone else knows and to delay posting it. Buys time and tells you exactly the minimum number of votes that have to be intercepted up-stream. (It's kinda like the plot of the movie the Sting, where horse racing results were delayed). Even if one is not planning to try to manipulate the precinct totals there's other values. For example, Early and large misreports in the florida election had Gore planning a concession prematurely (he eventually did concede of course). And perceived swings in east coast voting may possibly affect west coast voting turn-out.

Finally, there's other potential problems. As I said there are other checks on the votes, but it seems they really are not in use. Ohio was such a mess that it still is hard to match up precinct totals with final totals. Some of this is due to artifacts in the way they attribute absentee votes to precincts as virtual voters causing more apparent votes than voters signing in. In other cases the discrepancies in the poll books go the other way. And in some cases precincts post "corrected" total late. Now you might think a person could get all the data and sort it all out. But the fact is that in practice this is not really possible. There just never seems to be one set of books. If you go to many web sites to day, New Mexico, for example, you can do the addition yourself and find that the sum of the precinct totals on the SOS's website is not the sum of the election, and some counties had more votes than voters while others had undervotes in the tens of percent. In fact there are even errors that simply are accepted because the canvassing board accepted them.

Ordinary citizens usually don't have standing to contest elections. And it can literally be expensive for candidates to do so. Generally they don't get back any bonds they put up unless the election actually changes outcome. And with electronic voting they become more reluctant to do so since theirs nothing to recount (and so the totals won't change).

Thus in a close election changing the vote totals at the "top" is not even a completely crazy notion since it's in practice hard to verify.

For these reasons it's imperative that the vote counting system not have egreious opportunities to inflame partisan suspicions. It does not matter so much what was done, if anything, but if it expanded the opportunity for this to be done. Perceptions matter a lot.

In this case some reports say the crew that set up this site was the same one now being accused of the phone jamming dirty tricks against the DNC. So it's not really so far fetched to be suspicious.

Sec State is NOT a partisan position!

Damn it, this is why the republicans are driving this country into the ground!

The Secretary of State's office is NOT a partisan position. The Secretary swears to protect and defend the constitution (or whatever the equivalent is for Ohio state positions), not to protect the elephant. There should be a clear and unambiguous wall between the office holder's official actions and individual partisan actions, and should never, under any circumstances, use official resources for partisan purposes. When it's inevitable (the classic example being the president flying to events during the election season), the office holder is required to provide appropriate compensation for this use. E.g., equivalent first-class airfare for everyone on AF1, IIRC.

With most secretaries of state, I would agree with you that it's probably nothing more than temporary hosting during a period of high use.

But the outgoing Secretary of State, Blackwell (iirc), was extraordinarily partisan in his official acts. He's the reason why Ohio is usually the center of stolen election allegations. Given his amply documented bad behavior in the past, e.g., attempting to have his gubernatoral opponent disqualified on bogus grounds shortly before the election, a rational person would have no choice but to assume the worst and require proof that it truly was an innocent and unbiased decision.

Re:Misunderstanding

The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.

And there's your problem. Elections Canada [elections.ca] is an independent agency set up by the Canadian Parliament. Returning Officers [elections.ca] are hired for 10-year periods to run the election in every electoral district. All staff, from the Chief Electoral Officer at the top to the poll clerk at the bottom have to be non-partisan and the people at the top can't be members of political parties or have recently held office before their appointments.

You often hear of political scandals in Canada, but not electoral ones. The best example of that is recounts: recounts happen automatically if there is a difference between the top two candidates of 0.1% of the total vote. However, a losing candidate can request one outside that range if they saw instances of electoral fraud. Do you know when the last time a recount (not even a new election, just a recount) was ordered due to electoral fraud? Because I don't. There you go.

Netcraft confirms it!

The Republican Party is dying.

Re:Netcraft confirms it!

Next:

-But who confirms Netcraft? (5, Funny)

-In Soviet Russia, Netcraft confirms YOU! (5, Funny)

-That doesn't even make sense, dude. (5, Funny)

I fail to understand...

...why this is revelant. This sounds like an association fallacy [wikipedia.org] to me.

Obvious . . .

"Can anyone suggest a good explanations (sic) for this seemingly dubious election-eve transfer?"

Somebody obviously hacked the Netcraft server to make it look like the Republicans were so stupid as to try to steal an election by using their own block of IPs. It also seems amazing that the GOP would wait until the last minute to change the DNS, as it can sometimes take a bit longer than expected for such a transfer to properly propagate. Heck, if they were smart enough to steal an election by changing the DNS, why not spoof the entry to make it look like it pointed to the Democrat Party?

Yawn

There is no evidence of any kind that any votes we changed through this server "switch" bullshit, or that even if it DID happen, that it possibly could have or would have gone undetected. The counties would surely have seen that their reported results were not what was being reported by the state. If there was going to be fraud, it would have had to happen at the county level, and if it happened there, then why bother to do it at the state level?

This doesn't even pass the smell test.

As the Democrats' own statistician, Jasjeet Sekhon, who coauthored their 2004 post-election report said:

More voters supported Bush in Ohio in 2004 than Kerry. There is no scientific evidence that they did not. There were some irregularities (such as the allocation of voting machines), but they were not large enough to change the outcome. Bush won in 2004; Democrats have to admit that he really did if they are to fix their electoral problems much like how an alcoholic fist has to admit that s/he has a problem.