Friday, January 6, 2012

Our comments to the Hillsborough County Commission 1/5/2012

The following were the comments we gave at the Hillsborough (Tampa) County Commission yesterday.

Here's the link for the video. Our part comes in at 1:12:20


Good morning. My name is David Kearns. I am an author from Palm Bay just across the state in Brevard.
I am here concerning irregularities in the office of supervisor of elections for Hillsborough County which I was made aware of in research for my book, Rick Scott, Enemy of the State.
During the election night there were 38,000 ballots, reportedly, rescanned back into the voting machines at the Falkenburg Road annex. News of this made the major newspapers as well the television stations.
A County Commissioner was quoted in the Tampa Tribune on Nov. 4, 2010 saying “There’s no excuse. We spent all that money and those machines: they should work. I think heads are going to roll over this.”
The same article mentions that the glitched ballots came to early voting places in five areas, including Temple Terrace, and other places. These glitched early voted ballots came in the last three days of early voting says one news account. This article I am holding says this number represents more than half the early voted ballots cast in late October.
As a comparison it represents 65 percent of the names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall. You would need to walk 142 down it length to get to the 38,000th name. This is no minor glitch as everyone, from the media to county officials has called it. 38,000 of something, represents a major amount. A major screw up requiring a major investigation.
We add this to the irregularities in this office coming in previous years.
There has been no report, broadly issued, with regard to Dominion voting machines as referenced in the in your commissioner’s statement. No word indicating any inquiry has ever happened with regard to these ballots, which, therefore, remain tainted. And thereby tainting the result, thereby tainting the election of our governor.
We get the same we always get from Hillsborough County, “glitch” defective and so on, followed by a promise that it shall never ever happen again, whereupon it does happen again, and this time much worse than ever.
38,000. The number is not only large it is one that generates suspicion. In that if you added this to Alex Sink’s vote totals tallied by the department of state you’d bring these two contenders, Sink and Scott within half a percent difference over total votes cast, .44 precisely. Necessitating a recount which never happened.
I call for an immediate investigation of the general election as it was handled in Hillsborough County. I have filed a complaint with the Florida Department of State. I have sent inquiries to the US Department of Justice. I ask all of you to do what is right and hold an inquiry yourselves. If there has been one, we in other parts of the state have heard nothing about it. Media blackout.
I call for all counties currently using Dominion, Premier Diebold machines in the state of Florida to abandon these systems until there is some accountability on the part of these companies. Until at the very least we know precisely what happened here in Hillsborough on these machines.
I call for a system of mandatory auditing for every general election as proposed by the Fair Voting Coalition of Florida.
We need to take back our democracy from the machines and the corporations who now control our legislators, our department of state, our supervisors of elections, and our county commissions.
Thank you
David Kearns

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