Appendix I

Election Night Gatekeepers (rev 12-03-2017)

 

On the night of the 2016 Presidential Election, most Americans had no idea that twelve mega-entities were cooperating in the role of Election Night Gatekeepers for the Presidential Election, and potentially all other elections with the exception of a few local elections in New Hampshire, and perhaps a few other small areas of the country. (WTV has never been able to verify for certain that anywhere outside of five counties in New Hampshire since 1988 were hand-counting paper ballots properly, meaning hand-counting paper ballots BEFORE the ballots left the public sight.)

More precisely, ten of these twelve mega-entities actually cooperate on election night. These ten mega-entities are: six media giants (1) ABC, (2) CBS, (3) NBC, (4) CNN, (5) FOX, (6) AP wire:  (7) NEP (owned by the just named six media giants); and three mega-election-Vendors: (8) Election Systems & Software (ES&S), (9) Hart InterCivic, and (10) Dominion (which bought Diebold circa 2013). Two of the twelve mega-entities: (11) the RNC (Republican National Committee) and the (12) DNC (Democratic National Committee), have green-lighted the hiring of the three mega-election-vendors by the Secretary of State in all 50 states, and 3000+ of our 3141 counties.

(Note: When we speak of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FOX with regard to election night, we are speaking specifically of the NEWS DIVISIONS of the 5 major TV Networks as part of the Election Night Gatekeepers, we are not referring to the on-air opinion commentator personalities such as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Chris Matthews, Megyn Kelly, Don Lemon, etc.)

 

These 12 Election Night Gatekeepers are:

– 6 major media corporations plus 1 affiliated , namely:

(1) ABC, (2) CBS, (3) NBC, (4) CNN, (5) FOX, (6) AP Wire, and (7) NEP (National Election Pool). NEP is a virtually unknown corporation owned by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, and AP Wire. NEP used to carry the name of VNS (Voter News Service) from 1964 until 2004, when apparently the name of VNS got too stinky after its role became increasingly well known the 1996 Iowa Caucus (Google “A House without Doors” by Jim Condit Jr.) and its role in dubious projections during the 2000 campaign, especially projecting Al Gore in Florida at first. FOX’s Bill O’Reilly eventually apologized for reading these projections on air.

On the Friday before the 1998 November Election, Ted Koppel’s Nightline did an entire show trying to explain why the various TV Network projections were arrived at independently, even though the Networks were getting the exact same exit poll information at the exact same time from the exact same corporation (VNS) which they jointly owned. The Nightline show was undoubtedly responding to the book, “Votescam: The Stealing of America” By Ken and Jim Collier, and the 60 radio appearances of Watch the Vote USA’s founder, Jim Condit Jr. (which reached over 700 radio station outlets, including the then 300 stations carrying the Chuck Harder Show, and the 350 stations carrying the Roger Friedenberg show west of the Mississippi) from February to November 1996.

Both the Collier book and the Condit radio talk show appearances tore the mask off of Voter News Service and its role on election night. The Colliers and Jim Condit Jr. had been working together since they first teamed up in 1985, and both the book and the radio appearances charged that the few-and-far-between Voter News Service conducted exit polls could not in any way be scientific, and, in any case, were often deliberately falsified to prepare the public for the computerized “results” to be announced later than night by the TV Networks.

Despite the name change from VNS to NEP (National Election Pool), nothing essentially changed with regard to the operation or its role on election night. The owners of both remained ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, and AP wire.

– 3 mysterious, private, virtually unknown-to-the-public mega-corporation election vendors, which are:

(8) ES&S (Election Systems & Software), (9) Hart InterCivic, and (10) Dominion. These three “count” approximately 99% of the USA vote on election nights on their privately owned secret, computer programs, with the full permission and protection of all 50 Secretaries of State and all 3000+ county Boards of Election which hire one of these 3 mega-election vendors. (Dominion acquired the election divisions of Diebold and Sequoia circa 2013. Again, the name of Diebold became too stinky as it became increasingly known that one of the Diebold officials bragged something to the effect that they would deliver the 2004 Presidential election to President George W. Bush.) – These same three mega-election vendors process the votes in about 96% of our 3141 counties in the USA. You can find out which counties use which mega-election-vendors at the excellent website, VerifiedVoting.org.

 

A check shows that as of  November 2017, 86 of the 88 counties in Ohio use either ES&S, Hart InterCivic, or Dominion; the other two counties in Ohio use a small company, Unisyn Voting Solutions, which respected Election Integrity investigator Lynn Landes has stated may be a front for ES&S. VerifiedVoting.org also documents that ES&S process ALL the votes in the state of Alabama. Ronnie Dugger reported in his 2004 article in “The Nation” magazine, entitled “How They Could Steal the Election This Time” that ES&S was “counting” 60% of the votes in the USA. (!!!) And yet, this extraordinary concentration of power seems to be of no concern to any major media “investigator”, nor to any major leader in the Republican or Democratic Party.

Since the 1970s, the predecessors of these corporations, such as CES (Computer Election Services), BRC (Business Records Corporation), and on and on – have morphed one into the other periodically, with again, the secretive and defensive mode of operation always being the exact same with all of these 3 companies, their predecessors, and all the smaller election vendors which have conducted computerized elections in lesser numbers of our counties over the decades since circa 1973.

Also, Scytl, a company now based in Spain, is a growing influence with increasing ties to the above three named mega-vendors; Scytl’s specialty is the most vulnerable and insecure method of voting and tabulating there is of all — internet voting!

(These entities change somewhat from year to year due to ownership transfers etc which at least in part are designed to confuse the public.  While the names and owners of these media companies and mega vendor change and have changed regularly since the 1970s,  the policies remain the same)  

– The 2 leading committees of the two major political parties, namely the:

(11) RNC (Republican National Committee) and the (12) DNC (Democratic National Committee), which have green-lighted and fully approved their Secretaries of State in all 50 states, and their county Board of Election officials circa 3000 of our 3141 counties, hiring one of these three mega election-vendor companies (ES&S, Hart Intercivic, Dominion). Then, in a complete abdication of their election night responsibilities, the election officials have allowed whichever one of these three mega-election Vendors they have hired, to process our votes on their secret computer programs. Furthermore, the RNC and DNC have green-lighted all these Republican & Democratic election officials to sign contracts with these three election-vendors, and the other minor computer-election vendors, which state that said election officials will not examine the source code of the programs which tell the election computers what to do on election night, and will not sue these election vendors no matter what happens on election night.

The Election Night GateKeepers – What They Do:

(Please keep in mind that some of these corporations could have bought and sold each other since the Trump Presidential Commission on Election Integrity (PCEI) has been formed. We urge everyone, including election integrity investigators and members of the PCEI to NOT get lost in the weeds. If Dominion, or Hart InterCivic, or ES & S have changed corporate names at some point, or if the 5 TV Network or News Election Pool (NEP) appoint an intermediary company to do some or all of their exit polls, or to be the intermediary between the unverifiable computerized election results on election night and the announcement of these alleged election results by the 5 TV Networks – do not be mesmerized. Keep your eye on the ball: that the progression of events on before election day, on election day, and on election night – are accurately described below.)

The RNC and the DNC and all their Republican and Democratic election officials involved in using these election vendors of computerized election systems totally abdicate their responsibility to the public and the nation on election night.

The mega-election-vendors of computerized election systems uniformly insist, and have always insisted, on taking the ballots out of the sight of the people before the ballots are hand-counted, and then insist on processing the ballots on their secret computer programs without any oversight from public election officials.

By three standing US Supreme Court decisions, these computerized elections are illegal because the chain of custody of the ballots is broken, meaning the voter has no idea whether his or her vote was counted accurately, or counted at all, possibly having been completely switched physically or electronically for another falsified ballot.

And the 5 TV Networks and AP Wire hide what is happening from the American public, holding forth that the those private company executives running the computerized election systems, and the election officials who hired them, are above reproach and do not need to be questioned in any way, This horrendous attitude on the part of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX is proven by the fact that there has not been one investigation by these TV Networks into any of the issues raised by this Watch The Vote USA report. Instead, these Big TV Networks have rather acted as if they are the PR agents, enablers, protectors, and hired hands for the entire, easily-rigged computerized election systems which are in place, as well as for the coalition of private entities behind it and responsible for it.

 

Here is what happens on election day and election night:

1. The exit polls reported to the public by the 5 Big TV Networks are officially sanctioned and/or commissioned by NEP (National Election Pool), owned by the 5 Big TV Networks and AP wire. These arguably un-scientific exit polls are then, real or falsified, given to the 5 TV Networks at the exact same time by NEP. The exit polls are then reported to the public in a pretend competition-charade by the 5 Big TV networks who all hold forth that they are rushing to predict the winners and losers “first”.  

To examine the unscientific nature of these NEP conducted exit polls, see the 1992 book, “Votescam

: The Stealing of America ” by James & Kenneth Collier, and the article “A House without Doors” by Jim Condit Jr. appearing in the November 1996 issue of “Chronicles Magazine”, and now also online.

VNS (Voter News Service, the predecessor of today’s NEP) admitted in the national media in the 1992 New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary, and NEP admitted in the 2016 Democratic Primaries – that their exit polls were wrong because the Pat Buchanan supporters in 1992 and the Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 were more willing to talk to the exit poll takers than those supporting President Bush in 1992 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 1992 the exit polls for the New Hampshire Primary showed that Buchanan would beat then President Bush, and in 2016 the exit polls often showed that Sanders would defeat Hillary Clinton, – but the published computerized vote count showed the opposite.

In 1996 at the New Hampshire primary, the VNS exit poll lady told our team what we observed: VNS started their exit polling at 9 AM, roughly two hours after the polls opened, missing the morning rush hours, and that the results were called into VNS beginning at 5 PM, roughly two hours before the polls close, thus missing the evening rush hours. And, furthermore, the exit poll lady admitted that only about 1 out of 15 voters were willing to be exit polled (people are private, or have to rush to work, or have to pick up the kids at school, or take Grandma to the doctor, etc.). So where is the scientific basis for such exit polls? This is only the tip of the iceberg.  What the Big TV Networks did with their entrance poll in the 1996 Iowa Presidential Caucus is even more shocking and obviously fraudulent, as revealed in the above referenced article, “A House without Doors”, and the 1996 radio talk shows interviewing Watch The Vote’s Jim Condit Jr.

The late Jim Collier used to point out the implausibly of exit polls from around the country, in view of the state of technology in the 1970s and 1980s, being called in to Voter News Service and collated, and analyzed in time for the TV Networks to often make incredibly precise projections, even in close races, as the polls were closing and long before any votes were even counted and reported. In “Votescam: the Stealing of America” the Colliers relate Ken Collier’s 1970 race against incumbent congressman Claude “Red” Pepper, in which the news media ultimately appealed to ONE voting machine in Dade County, Florida, never specified, to make a projection for incumbent Pepper as the winner right as the polls closed. It’s hilarious, but a harbinger of what was about to descend on the USA and its people.

2. To take a step back, these same networks issue alleged public opinion polls months leading up to a Presidential elections, and other elections of nationwide significance. In most cases, the public opinion polls prepare the public for the exit polls conducted on election day, which almost always prepare the public for the computer results to be published later on election night.

(This pattern, described immediately above, was disrupted on election night 2016 in the Presidential contest, for probable reasons mostly beyond the scope of this paper. But suffice it to say that, in light of the huge crowds at Trump rallies, usually 5,000 to 25,000 people for 14 months straight all over the nation, compared to non-existent crowds of 100 to 400 at Hillary Clinton rallies, including local Democrats virtually forced to attend, — and in light of the 1000 to 1 ratio of Trump signs to Hillary signs in the rural areas, and the 100 to 1 ratio of Trump signs to Hillary signs in the cities, — the Big Network Public Opinion Polls published for months leading up to the election, showing Hillary Clinton far ahead, seem to have been deliberately falsified to shape public opinion, rather than to reflect it. In fact, numerous commentators, not given publicity by the 5 TV Networks or related national media, have stated the opinion that rather than losing the popular vote by 3 million votes, that Trump actually won by up to 10 million votes, – that the computer results, according to these opinions, were warped by computer fraud perpetrated by election hackers, or even the big election vendors themselves. The scary part, the part that should concern every American, is that no one can prove what was the case, either way, since the chain of custody of the ballots was spoiled in 49 states and one half of New Hampshire. That is the whole point of this Watch the Vote report to the Presidential election commission.)

3. On election day, and now leading up to election day in early voting, the people vote using the systems presented to them by their local county Board of Elections.

4. 96%+ of the votes of the American people are then processed on the secret, easily-rigged computer programs of three mega-vendors of computerized election systems without any oversight by election officials over this process, or any effective checks and balances on election day or night.

5. When the three mega-election vendors approve the results in each county, they are then released to the county election officials via the local computers, and, the election officials, in turn, take these results on blind faith, and report these alleged results to the local news media.

6 NEP gets these results from either the local counties, or from the three mega-election vendors.

7. NEP then reports the results, county by county, state by state, directly or indirectly, to their six owners, the five TV Networks and AP wire.

8. The 5 TV Networks announce the results to the nation, and AP wire sends the results of the state and national elections, especially the Presidential election, to all of the establishment print media, both national and local publications.

9. If there are any recounts, which are rare, then the ballots are brought out about two or three weeks later, as a rule, after having been out of the public sight for these weeks. How the ballots are prepared before the public is allowed to see them again may vary, but the public has no idea if the ballots brought out for the recount are the same ballots marked by the voters. Needless to say, in an estimated 25% of the country where no paper ballots are used, there is no way to even theoretically double check the published computer results.

A more extensive treatment of this subject can be found at the website ElectionNightGatekeepers.com.

The solution, in any case, is hand-counted paper ballots counted by pre-selected voters from each neighborhood precinct BEFORE the ballots leave the public sight. This way it is impossible for anyone or any entity to rig the election results from a remote, central location.

——

The following points, related to the above report, are included for the consideration of the readers and Election Integrity Investigators:

• Do the local election officials or the 50 Secretaries of State even know the names of the actual people employed by these mega-vendors who program the software which tells the election computers in the USA what to do on election night? According to our research and contact with election officials over decades, the answer is “No”. (!!!)

• No one from Russia; no lone-ranger hacker; and no one from the mega-election-vendors, ES&S, Hart, and Dominion, can possibly alter the results of a election conducted by hand counting paper ballots at each neighborhood polling place BEFORE the ballots are removed from the public sight. Such a hand count of paper ballots prevents the current Election Night Gatekeepers, or anyone else, from using modern technology to warp or falsify or computer-rig an election from a central location, or a string of central locations. Those who profess concern that “Russia” hacked the 2016 Presidential election, show no interest in this one step — (hand-counting the ballots BEFORE the ballots leave the public sight) – a step that that would prevent ANY ENTITY or ANYONE from electronically hacking any USA election from a central location.

• Every 20-year-old young person knows that there are numerous ways to hack computers, most definitely including election computers. This was demonstrated in the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy” by votefraud investigator Bev Harris and computer expert Harry Hursti. At the recent Def Con Convention held in August 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada, numerous independent computer experts demonstrated how election computers can be hacked. Indeed, as reported in the groundbreaking article by Dr. Susan L.M. Huck in the November 1976 Issue of American Opinion Magazine, the Los Angeles Times sponsored “war games” between two sets of computer experts a few years earlier. One team was commissioned to try and hack into simulated computer elections, while the other team tried to prevent the first team from succeeding in hacking the simulated election. Then the teams would switch roles. In 35 contests, the hackers won every time.

Indeed, the commission to which this report is submitted, President Trump’s Presidential Commission on Election Integrity (PCEI), heard testimony from Harry Hursti at its September 12th, 2017 meeting in New Hampshire that election computers are able to be hacked in numerous ways. Hursti was backed up by two other top experts, Professor Andrew Appel from Princeton and Professor Ronald Rivest from MIT.

The Washington Post reported on September 13, 2017 that Commission Board Member and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell stated right after the testimony of these experts concluded that he was “duly shaken”, a reaction that should be shared by every alert American concerned about honest elections.

• Current Ohio Secretary of State John Husted made national news on several cable and broadcast networks shortly before the 2016 Presidential Election when he went on camera nationwide via CNN and other outlets to assert that no one could hack a Presidential Election in the USA because the election was completely decentralized in that it is run by 3141 separate counties. This sounds good until one realizes that 96% of those counties are counted on the secret software of one of three mysterious mega-corporation-election-vendors (ES&S, Hart, Dominion), which may be operating in collusion behind the scenes for a powerful special interest or interests unknown.

As has been explained in numerous forums, including articles, videos, and live testimonies, those rigging a computer election do not have to be physically present to do so. To believe Mr. John Husted’s analysis, one would have to forget about wireless, cell phone, and satellite technology. In the groundbreaking 1996 report, “Pandora’s Black Box: Did It Really Count Your Vote?” by Dr. Philip O’Halloran (Found linked on “WatchTheVoteUSA.com under the “More” menu tab and on the homepage of Votefraud.org), O’Halloran wrote about a conversation with an official at one of the large election vendors in which the official confirmed that there were modems in his company’s election computers through which his company could query the ongoing election results during the election day. When O’Halloran asked if these two-way modems could be used to manipulate the results as well as monitor them, the conversation and communication was effectively terminated by the company official.

So, it is essential to realize that even though elections in the USA are in fact run by 3000+ separate counties in the USA, this does not necessarily mean a thing if all the computers, and therefore the computer vote counts can be accessed, queried, and falsified by either hard wire connection – or remote cell phone, satellite, or other wireless-type type technologies.

By the way, on the WatchTheVoteUSA.com website, we have an audio of Ohio Secretary of State John Husted confirming at The Farm Wedding Hall before a Tea Party audience in September 2012 that in fact the contracts with the Election Vendors in Ohio prevent the election officials of Ohio from looking at the computer software election programs of the hired election vendors, which computer programs tell the election computers what to do on election night. What Husted candidly admitted is true in 100% of the counties in 49 states, and about half of the counties in NH.  

• As far back as 1985, in Schutzman vs. the Hamilton County Board of Elections (Cincinnati, Ohio), the head of Xavier University’s computer operations, Mr. Robert Strunk, in an official report to the Judge in that case, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus, informed the Court that the Hamilton County election computers were connected to the outside world during the election count by a hard wire connection. The full Strunk report is available at the election integrity website of Lynn Landes, www.TheLandesReport.com.

Indeed, in his 1985 decision in Schutzman vs. the Hamilton County Board of Elections, Judge Richard Niehaus stated, “There are no safeguards to prevent the computers from being programmed to distort the election results.” Despite this sound judicial decision, no changes were made to the system in Hamilton County, Ohio, as the Court of Appeals disgracefully overturned Judge Niehaus’s excellent ruling two years later, stating something to the effect that the county judge had no jurisdiction over the county election computers.

(This Appeals Court Ruling in Ohio was emblematic and representative of court rulings across the country since the 1970’s which have universally protected these indefensible, easily-rigged computerized elections, as well as protecting the election vendors which process these computerized elections on their secret software programs, and protecting the election officials who hire these vendors.)

• If a real-life Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Columbo, or Jim Rockford were looking at elections in the United States since at least as far back as 1988, 29 years ago, the first thing they would notice is the unholy concentration of power invested in the hiring of only 3 mega-election vendors to process the elections in over 3000 counties (96%) in the USA.

However, in the Big Media in the USA the real-world reporters and so-called investigators have no curiosity about this aspect of USA elections, or about any other aspect related to the dangers of computerized elections.

Thankfully, there have been real life Columbos and Nancy Drews in the independent media, including, roughly in order of their time of involvement in the computer votefraud issue:

 

Ron Keller (1964), Jim & Ken Collier (1970), Jerome Sauer in Louisiana (1970) Dr. Susan L.M. Huck (1976), Watch the Vote USA’s Jim Condit Jr. (1979), Ronnie Dugger(1988), Dr. Philip O’Hallaron (1996), Dan GutenKauf (1996), Christopher Bollyn (2000), Bev Harris (2000), Lynn Landes (2000), Dr. Laura Pressley (2014), Debbie Lusignan (2015), as well as University academics such as Dr. Howard Strauss of Princeton, Professor Doug Jones of the University of Iowa, Dr. David Dill of Stanford, Dr. Rebecca Mercuri of Harvard, among others, Roy Saltman way back in the late 1970s, who compiled reports for the Department of Commerce, Vickie Karp, former national chair of the Coalition for Visible Ballots and co-director of VoteRescue, the latter an Austin,Texas-based citizens’ election integrity group, believes “citizens count, one vote at a time.” VoteRescue hosted a radio show with that title, and Ms. Karp is also co-author and editor of HACKED! High-Tech Election Theft in America, and many other valiant Election Integrity investigators and activists are surely not included in this list.

In the field of computerized elections, skepticism and questions until recently have been treated as if THEY were the crimes. This runs counter to the entire history of investigations and the scientific method.

When you are dealing in a field with temptation to commit theft of any kind you must set up systems that treat everyone as a suspected and potential criminal, not treat those running the systems as above reproach and beyond question.

When you are dealing with suspected criminals, shoplifters, embezzlers, or vote thieves – you do not give them the benefit of the doubt, you treat them as suspected criminals until they are cleared. You set up a system with such checks and balances that no one is even tempted to cheat for fear of getting caught. Such a system is detailed in Part 3 of this report.

As one of the computer experts said in live testimony before the September 12, 2017 session of the Presidential Commission on Election integrity, we must run elections in such a way that we do not need to trust any person or any company.

• While some of the language in this report is pretty harsh when referring to election officials over the last 45 years or so, our intent is not to pick a fight, alienate, or insult the members of this commission. We rather hope our observations and documentation will help this Presidential Commission on Election Integrity to finally fix the problems that are inherent in computer voting systems by returning  the official count to hand-counted paper ballots BEFORE the ballots leave the public sight.

• The policy and goals of these twelve Election Night Gatekeepers has been to make sure that ballots are removed from the public sight before they can be counted. This is what vote crooks have done throughout history. Communist Dictator Joseph Stalin famously said, “Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything.”

• The large mega-election-vendors are highly resistant to answering questions or giving information about the real election night vote-counting process (which they hope the American people never think about), because they know that the 5 Big TV Networks and related “mainstream” Big Media will continue to erect an effective curtain between the eyes of the people and WHO the election night gatekeepers are and WHAT the Election Night Gatekeepers do on election night.

• The goal of our group, Watch the Vote USA, is to defang the Election Night Gatekeepers Syndicate.

A hand count of paper ballots in neighborhood polling places

BEFORE the ballots leave the sight of the public – ensures that

no one can rig an election from a central location.