Wehrwolfen
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- May 22, 2012
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How I rigged the Democrats' vote
Telegraph [UK] ^
19 Nov 2000
By: Cindy Blake
THE world has watched the American Presidential election with mounting disbelief as tales of incompetence and skullduggery have emerged. None of these electoral misdeeds have surprised me - but I am puzzled that they have taken this long to be uncovered. I know they occur: I fixed an election myself.
In 1976, I was a campaign worker for Jimmy Carter and during the Democratic primaries, I was sent to Pennsylvania for a day to help out in any way I could. The night before the election, I was told I would be a poll-watcher in a district in South Philadelphia. I had no idea what this entailed but it was explained that I would be at a polling station to ensure that the process went legally and smoothly.
South Philly, a heavily Italian district, was a stronghold of Carter's opponent in the primary, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, an old-guard Democrat with strong links to the labor unions and with Philadephia's Italian-American Mayor Rizzo in his camp. The Carter consensus was that Jackson would win easily in South Philly, but I was there to make sure he did so lawfully. "Check the back of the machine as soon as you get there," I was advised. "Make sure there are no votes registered on it before the place has opened."
This shocked me. Every time a vote is cast, the back of the voting machine records it on what looks like a car mileage gauge, so at the end of the day the poll supervisors know how many people have voted. If the gauge registered a number of votes before the poll had opened, someone would have to have rigged the machine. Not only was this profoundly un-American, I couldn't believe it could happen in 1976.
(Excerpt) Read more How I rigged the Democrats' vote - Telegraph ...