London Guardian/Choicepoint possibly cost Al Gore the 2000 Election!!

[KoKo]

(We here know this...but the Guardian saying it NOW...seems really significant...what's up with this? Bush gives the company that stole an election MILLIONS. It's the first time I've seen the connection whispered in a well respected newspaper.)
----------------------------------------------------


Firm in Florida election fiasco earns millions from files on foreigners

Oliver Burkeman in Washington and Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Monday May 5, 2003
The Guardian

A data-gathering company that was embroiled in the Florida 2000 election fiasco is being paid millions of dollars by the Bush administration to collect detailed personal information on the populations of foreign countries, enraging several governments who say the records may have been illegally obtained.

US government purchasing documents show that the company, ChoicePoint, received at least $11m (£6.86m) from the department of justice last year to supply data - mainly on Latin Americans - that included names and addresses, occupations, dates of birth, passport numbers and "physical description". Even tax records and blood groups are reportedly included.

Nicaraguan police have raided two offices suspected of providing the information. The revelations threaten to shatter public trust in electoral institutions, especially in Mexico, where the government has begun an investigation.

The controversy is not the first to engulf ChoicePoint. The company's subsidiary, Database Technologies, was responsible for bungling an overhaul of Florida's voter registration records, with the result that thousands of people, disproportionately black, were disenfranchised in the 2000 election. Had they been able to vote, they might have swung the state, and thus the presidency, for Al Gore, who lost in Florida by a few hundred votes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,949709,00.html

[BrklynLiberal]

1. It's about time!!! Nominated for GREATEST.

[Me.]

2. Boy It Just Never Ends

does it? Thank God for the Guardian, without that paper we'd never know half the truth or the dirty doings going on in this country.

[KoKo]

3. Can someone get this to John Conyers and anyone involved with Ohio?

Also the Liberal Bloggers who might have missed this article. How many voters did ChoicePoint throw off in this last election?

I should have posted this in the "Elections Forum." There's not much interest here. But folks may be busy with the other stories. I hope it's not that folks have forgotten that Gore won. :eyes:

What if this could prove Gore won...just as lost votes, or voters being thrown off the voting roles cost Kerry the election. Choicepoint may connect alot of dots. I don't want to get too excited...I just think this is significant enough that it needs follow up with all the past info we know.

[DulceDecorum]

4. The days of a thief are forty

and Bush was safe for four years.

Looks like he should have quit when he was ahead.

[meganmonkey]

5. Excellent - Kick!

[Kimber Scott]

6. Why does the US government need personal infomation on Latin

Americans? Why?

[serryjw]

7. PROBABLY my arse..Try definitely

n/t

[Jack Rabbit]

8. This isn't a new revelation form The Guardian

Greg Palast wrote about it in December 2000. His reports were published in the Guardian and its Sunday supplement, the London Observer. That is where I first learned about it.

It was the first time I realized that the election theft was not a mere crime of opportunity. It was planned and the Bushies' plans very nearly went awry.

[KoKo]

9. Yes....I know that and I know about the "Media Consortium Report" that

got "Deep Sixed" by 9/11 which would have shown Gore won. But, what's new about the Guardian Report is that it makes a statement about "Choice point" in big trouble in "current news" and ties it back to Gore vs. Bush. I think that Guardian has "connected the dots" that were blotted out after 9/11 here in US...and is trying to push the "thought" forward that GORE WON...after all these years...is significant.

What if Conyers and Ohio litigation can prove that "Choicepoint" and it's branches threw "other legitimate voters" off the voting rolls all over the USA. Rather than waiting for the litigation over the Diebolds, Unilects and ESS Voting Machine companies to release their code on the machines in 2004...we have a VERY VIAFIABLE case that Choicepoint is involved with 2000, 20002 and 20004?

IOW, instead of having to have folks go into "computer code" which may have already been changed in Ohio, Florica, NM, Nevada and elsewhere...we can connect FRAUD to Choice Point?

Which goes to Conyers and the Black Caucus and Jackson and many DU'ers who spent all their time digging up info on 2000, 20002 and 2004 Elections that it all comes down to "WHO WAS NOT ALLOWED TO VOTE IN OUR LAST THREE ELECTIONS? (Full caps for emphasis not to scream at you so your eardrums are blasted!

This is a much easier case to prove than trying to hope a "computer code expert" comes forward for the "Touch Screens" or that litigation can find the flaw or hack.

:shrug: Choicepoint might be much easier to go after to prove our case.
.

[Jack Rabbit]

10. Here's Palast's article, reprinted on his website

From the London Observer via GregPalast.com
Dated December 10, 2000

A Blacklist Burning For Bush
By Greg Palast

Hey, Al, take a look at this. Every time I cut open another alligator, I find the bones of more Gore voters. This week, I was hacking my way through the Florida swampland known as the Office of Secretary of State Katherine Harris and found a couple thousand more names of voters electronically 'disappeared' from the vote rolls. About half of those named are African-Americans. They had the right to vote, but they never made it to the balloting booths.

When we left off our Florida story two weeks ago, The Observer discovered that Harris's office had ordered the elimination of 8,000 Florida voters on the grounds that they had committed felonies in other states. None had. Harris bought the bum list from a company called ChoicePoint, a firm whose Atlanta executive suite and boardroom are filled with Republican funders. ChoicePoint, we have learned, picked up the list of faux felons from state officials in - ahem - Texas. In fact, it was a roster of people who, like their Governor, George W, had committed nothing more than misdemeanours.

For Harris, Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his brother, the Texas blacklist was a mistake made in Heaven. Most of those targeted to have their names 'scrubbed' from the voter roles were African-Americans, Hispanics and poor white folk, likely voters for Vice-President Gore. We don't know how many voters lost their citizenship rights before the error was discovered by a few sceptical county officials, before ChoicePoint, which has gamely 'fessed-up to the Texas-sized error, produced a new list of 58,000 felons. In May, Harris sent on the new, improved scrub sheets to the county election boards. Maybe it's my bad attitude, but I thought it worthwhile to check out the new list. Sleuthing around county offices with a team of researchers from internet newspaper Salon.com, we discovered that the 'correct' list wasn't so correct . . . .

I contacted San Francisco-based expert Mark Swedlund. 'It's just fundamental industry practice that you don't roll out the list statewide until you have tested it and tested it again,' he said. 'Dershowitz is right: they had to know that this jeopardised thousands of people's registrations. And they would also know the profile of those voters.'

'They' is Florida state, not ChoicePoint. Let's not get confused where the blame lies. Harris's crew lit this database fuse, then acted surprised when it blew up. Swedlund says ChoicePoint had a professional responsibility to tell the state to test the list; ChoicePoint says the state should not have used its 'raw' data.

The dots looked connected to me way back then.

[KoKo]

11. Thanks...many DU "newbies" would appreciate this read...

since "Gore 2000" is fading into "old news."

Without history...how do we know where we go? :shrug:

[KoKo]

12. A Kick for Al Gore...our TRUE President...who fought against the Bushies!

He fought for the vote in Florida....but those who came after him were happy to "cover it all over" with some litigation and some funds to throw at Ohio.

Let's hope they are ALL WORKING TOGETHER...Our failed candidates...

GORE AND KERRY working to make "VOTER RIGHTS AVAILABLE TO ALL AMERICANS!

GORE/KERRY..Working to ferret out the EVIL BUSH FAMILY CRIME SYNDICATE!

[John_H]

13. Anybody read the creepy vanity Fair article about the guy who

started this company?

I am the most anti-tinfoiler on DU--but something about this guy does not ad up. He ran drugs during the height of Iran Contra, came to the attention of the government as a DEA snitch, set up a database searching supercomputer within days of 9-11 on his company's private property, yet it was staffed entirely by FBI agents. Of course he takes great pains to say he donates to dems--but wouldn't you if you were deep cover for the BFEE?

[KoKo]

14. John_H , do you have a link or would just a search

under "Choicepoint" do it? Sounds like a good read. Maybe I even read it...but can't remember having read so much since "Selction 2000." :shrug: My memory ain't what it used to be. :D

[KoKo]

15. Is this the link you were talking about? Vanity Fair "Path to Florida"

VANITY FAIR
October 2004

THE PATH TO FLORIDA

As the Florida recount ate away at George W. Bush’s margin of victory (1,784 votes . . . 327 . . . 154 . . . ), the machinery of political power sprang to life. In Washington, stunned U.S. Supreme Court clerks watched justice become partisan, while in Florida, tens of thousands of citizens—thousands of them African-American—found themselves disenfranchised by misleading, faulty, and uncounted ballots, or inexplicably purged from the rolls.

-SNIP-

The 2000 election in Florida shook Americans from all walks of life and of all political persuasions. Many were left wondering about the viability of America’s democratic system. Much has changed since the election’s frenzied aftermath, in which hordes of reporters jammed the streets of Tallahassee, Palm Beach, and Miami, chasing ballots and lawyers for 36 days before the presidency was called by a margin of 537 votes out of the six million cast in Florida. But Florida is a state with a history of disenfranchising blacks—a legacy that seemed all too current in 2000. And the president’s brother is still governor.

-SNIP-

The state has been equally disingenuous in its attempt to bar ex-felons from voting. For the 2000 election, a notorious ex-felon list, composed of more than 50,000 names, was compiled and the appropriate sections were sent by the state to the elections supervisors of Florida’s 67 counties, along with a directive to purge those confirmed as felons from the rolls. It turned out, though, that the list had been swollen with an estimated 20,000 names of possible innocents, wrongly included. Roughly 54 percent of those on the list were black, while blacks make up just under 15 percent of the statewide population. In Florida, some 90 percent of blacks vote Democratic. Surely, the embarrassment would prevent the state from attempting another high-tech felon hunt in 2004. But no. In May, the local elections supervisors learned that there was a new list. Only in July, when flaws were again revealed by journalists—flaws that would once more favor Republicans—did the state throw out the list. While there will no longer be an electronic list used to keep former felons from voting, the recent events have led to disturbing new questions. What did the state know about the flaws? How was mass disenfranchisement almost caused again?
http://www.makethemaccountable.com/articles/The_Path_To_Florida.htm

[EFerrari]

16. Yes. This was a well done article.

And what I particularly remember is that Katherine Harris's office kept asking them to loosen the requirements that would put people on the list. In other words, these criminals were not criminal ENOUGH for the job!

[KoKo]

17. If criminality is found with Choicepoint giving out data or falsifying

their data both here and in Mexico and Latin America, then could we link it to Ohio and Florida and the removal of voters from the polling lists and finally get prosecutions going? Certainly would give the Black Caucus and those of us working for election reform some ammunition. :shrug:

Florida Election seems old news...but it's at the root of how our Democracy has been corrupted by the "friends" of the Bush Crime Syndicate.

[EFerrari]

18. It's not old news, imo.

It's possible that there is more and more focused scrutiny on Florida today than there was right after the election. We've learned a lot since then.

There's an elephant in the room! :hi:

[KoKo]

19. A kick to this old sucker. Because it makes me feel good to know that

somewhere down the line..the truth will out and Gore was our President.

A simple truth...but it's THE TRUTH!