NOTE from DL: Before everyone goes off the deep end about conspiracy theories, etc. Please read the entire story. Rove has made his living from ‘running the numbers’ in elections. And he has a pretty good success rate. Hey, when you cheat and don’t play by the rules, you can win just about any parlor game, until you get caught of course.
Remember the video posted…  Very Strange video targeted at Rove I have been reading about his for months and now the individuals are publishing more of the story… This is why Rove went crazy on FOX during the Ohio result announcement and declaration. Everything he was doing was destroyed. This is what he was doing to alter results during the 2004 Bush campaign with the Republican IT specialist. Michael Connell, who just happen to die in the plane crash just after giving the deposition implicating Rove was key to exposing this effort. Rove has been a key player to GOP voter manipulation since 1972. National political players are afraid of Rove and FOX because of his use of people unheard of in American politics. It is possible, the ‘sweet’ Megan Kelly moment on election night may have been part of the national GOP uber-power structure trying to get Rove under control.
Wow, this has so many implications…
- Centrally controlled voting systems
- Centrally controlled voter rolls
- Centrally controlled tabulators
- Citizens United
- So much more…
Karl Rove Loses Election After Being Checkmated By Cyber Sleuths?
By CL – Posted on 15 November 2012
Last month, we offered a million dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone who rigged a federal election on November 6th. We urged computer experts to contact us with information about any election manipulation of the tabulation results.
We Received A Letter
On November 12th, we received a letter from “The Protectors,†apparently a group of white hat cyber sleuths, mentioning our reward and stating that two months ago, they began monitoring the “digital traffic of one Karl Rove, a disrespecter of the Rule of Law, knowing that he claimed to be Kingmaker while grifting vast wealth from barons who gladly handed him gold to anoint another King while looking the other way.â€
“The Protectors†said that they had identified the digital structure of Rove’s operation and of ORCA, a Republican get out the vote software application. After finding open “doors†in the systems, they created a “password protected firewall†called “The Great Oz,†and installed it on servers that Rove planned to use on election night to re-route and change election results “from three states.â€
The letter indicated that “ORCA Killer†was launched at 10am EST and “The Great Oz†at 8pm EST on November 6th.   “The Protectors†watched as ORCA crashed and failed throughout Election Day. They watched as Rove’s computer techs tried 105 times to penetrate “The Great Oz†using different means and passwords.
Finally, they issued the following warning to Mr. Rove: don’t do it again or they would turn over the evidence to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
We are not in a position to vouch for the contents of this letter any more than we can vouch for the video by Anonymous warning Karl Rove not to rig the election.  However, we can analyze that content under the prism of Mr. Rove’s history and facts over the past few weeks.  We do so in the hope that this will lead to an investigation of Mr. Rove’s entire operation ala General David Petraeus.  In that spirit, we provided this information to the FBI prior to publication, and followed up after publication.  For years, we have campaigned for a complete investigation of Mr. Rove. And we have provided extensive legal memos and evidence to the FBI to support such an investigation.
We urge others who have information to about election tampering or other criminal violations by Mr. Rove, including violations of campaign finance laws, to provide that evidence to the FBI. Â We also urge people who gave money to Mr. Rove and his organizations to contact the FBI if they were misled, promised things that did not happen, or were otherwise defrauded.
Rove’s Background And Election Night Meltdown
Karl Rove has a history of rigging elections going back several decades, including in 2004 when he orchestrated a man-in-the-middle attack to change the votes from Ohio.
In 2012, Mr. Rove’s SuperPacs raised and spent hundreds of millions on behalf of GOP candidates. He courted billionaires and promised them that his candidates would win.
Days before the 2012 election, Mr. Rove predicted a strong Romney win. His spinners lionized him in articles that portrayed him as invincible.
On election night, Mr. Rove worked the three states that held the key to the election – Ohio, Florida and Virginia.  But when he tried to access the Ohio election website, he kept getting error messages.
Finally, immediately after Ohio was called for President Obama around 11:30 EST, Mr. Rove appeared on FOX News to dispute the call, saying the election there is far from settled and the call was “premature.â€
Fox News’s Chris Wallace said the Romney campaign does “not believe Ohio is in the Obama camp,†noting that he got an email from a top Romney aide who said the campaign disagrees with the network’s call. He then asked Rove if he believed Ohio has been settled.
“No, I don’t,†Rove said.
“I think this is premature,†he added. “We’ve got a quarter of the vote. Now remember, here is the thing about Ohio. A third of the vote or more is cast early and is won overwhelmingly by the Democrats. It’s counted first and then you count the election day and the question is, by the time you finish counting the election day does it overcome that early advantage that Democrats have built up in early voting, particularly in Cuyahoga County.â€
Rove said the network needs to be “careful about calling things when we have like 991 votes separating the two candidates and a quarter of the vote yet to count. Even if they have made it on the basis of select precincts, I’d be very cautious about intruding in this process.
The Failure Of ORCA On Election Day
The Rove/Romney coalition created Project Orca, which was supposed to enable poll watchers to record voter names on their smart phones, by listening for names as voters checked in. This would give the campaign real-time turnout data, so they could redirect GOTV resources throughout the day where it was most needed. They recruited 37,000 swing state volunteers for this.
According to various sources, however, ORCA totally failed on Election Day: PIN numbers and passwords did not work, reset tools failed, customer support was ineffective and unavailable, Comcast shut down access for fear of a DDOS attack, and the system crashed and had trouble re-booting. “At one point during Election Day, the system had malfunctioned so badly that desperate volunteers wondered if the program had been hacked.â€
Anonymous Warned Rove Prior To The Election
Two weeks prior to the November 6th election, the hactivist group Anonymous posted a video warning Karl Rove not to rig the election.
They told Mr. Rove that he was being watched and that if he attempted to rig the election, he would be stopped. That video went viral in just days.
The Letter From “The Protectorsâ€
The letter we received just days after the election ties together all the information set forth above about the digital difficulties faced by Karl Rove and the GOP on November 6th.
· Karl Rove’s digital architecture surrounding the election was identified and compromised by cyber sleuths in a way that denied him the ability to manipulate election results;
· Project Orca was not secure and had numerous flaws that were exploited to ensure failure;
· Karl Rove was focused on three states—Ohio, Virginia and Florida;
· “Orca Killer†was launched early in the day resulting in failures starting in the morning;
· “The Great Oz†was launched at 8pm, just as polls closed on the East Coast;
· The Ohio Secretary of State results were inaccessible to Mr. Rove after 8pm;
· Mr. Rove disputed the call for Ohio, and told FOX News that it was “premature†as he kept trying to access the results;
· Mr. Rove, Mitt Romney, the GOP, its billionaires, and its talking heads were all “convinced†up to the last minute that Mr. Romney would win, some even saying “by a landslide;â€
· Prior to the election, Anonymous warned Mr. Rove that it had identified his digital structure and was watching for any manipulations;
· Mr. Romney and the GOP leadership were “shell shocked†when President Obama won the election.
The Upshot Of All This
Apparently, “The Protectors†were able to completely thwart Karl Rove’s attempts to manipulate this election by employing a firewall to stop man-in-the-middle tabulation attacks and improper transfers of tabulation data. Moreover, apparently, they were able to pinpoint and exploit flaws and structural weaknesses in Project Orca that caused a cascading of problems and subsequent catastrophic failure.  Apparently, there was some connection between Mr. Rove and Project Orca, and they were probably both plugged into the same voter database.
Lessons Learned And Our Position
At VR, we have spent the past decade exposing flaws in the election process, especially the use of electronic voting, secret software and cyber-attacks on tabulation systems.  Princeton computer scientists, Argonne Laboratories experts, GOP insiders and even the CIA have shown that electronic election manipulation is both possible and occurring.
Based on our experience and the supporting evidence, we take the letter from “The Protectors†at face value. Karl Rove had the means, motive, experience and opportunity to do whatever it took to win the election for his clients. If he, in fact, intended to use improper and illegal means to digitally manipulate the election, and white hat cyber sleuths who stopped it discovered that, then that is a good thing. We hope that those cyber sleuths will provide that evidence to the FBI, post it publicly or send it to us to do so.
One thing that is not clear from the letter is the relationship between the cyber manipulation and Project Orca. Were they both part of Karl Rove’s scheme? Were they using the overlapping servers or databases? Did “The Great Oz†automatically cause problems for Project Orca? Did Mr. Rove plan to use the data from “Project Orca†to help the cyber manipulation scheme succeed? We would like to know the answers to these questions so we can more fully understand the legal and moral implications of “Orca Killer.â€
As far as lessons learned, we are hopeful that those who have been skeptical and opposed to greater security in elections will now get on board in a bipartisan manner to, as President Obama said, “fix†the broken election system. We are hopeful that billionaires, SuperPacs and politicians will see, as governments in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere have seen, that a few dedicated cyber sleuths can protect democracy from corrupt power brokers by thwarting electoral crimes. We are hopeful that everyone will see Karl Rove for what he is – a scammer who can’t win without cheating and manipulating election results.
Ouch…that was a long read! I wont even get into an argument about whether or not Rove manipulated ‘votes’ which I dont think he did…but will offer (as always) the other side of the scale just for consideration.
Think locally first when Johnson bought the election against Thune by “528 votes” in 2002. Thune held the lead all night until some hinky numbers came in from Shannon County tilting the election to Johnson. It worked out well in the long run because it sent the tax evading Tom Daschle into retirement early a couple of years later but here is the read…
$10 a vote
Key to Johnson’s alleged victory was Democrat fraud on Indian reservations. Chicago and other major cities aren’t the only places where Democrat criminals “register” dead people to “vote.”
Todd County, home to Rosebud Indian Reservation, was a center of vote fraud.
“You know what the going rate was around here? Ten bucks,” said Ed Assman, a retired state highway patrol lieutenant, who served as a Republican poll watcher at the Parmalee Precinct in Todd County. “There were several affidavits signed by Natives who either took money or were offered the money.”
UPI obtained copies of affidavits taken by the Republicans from two women and one man, all American Indians, who said: “I was promised $10 if I would go vote. I was given a ride to the polls in a van with Tim Johnson for Senate signs in the window. The name of the van driver was Terry. After I voted, the van took me back from the polling place. When Terry dropped me off, he offered me $10 for voting.”
Or lets talk nationally – lets look at Philly –
Still, was there not one contrarian voter in those 59 divisions, where unofficial vote tallies have President Obama outscoring Romney by a combined 19,605 to 0?
The unanimous support for Obama in these Philadelphia neighborhoods – clustered in almost exclusively black sections of West and North Philadelphia – fertilizes fears of fraud, despite little hard evidence.
Its pretty obvious that the big benefactors of voter fraud aren’t the GOP
Fraud is fraud. Theft is theft. Murder is murder.
“Its pretty obvious that the big benefactors of voter fraud aren’t the GOP”
Not in this past election anyway, they were finally foiled.
By definition.
lem·ming/ˈlemiNG/
Noun:
1. A small, short-tailed, thickset rodent (Lemmus, Dicrostonyx, and other genera, family Muridae) found in the Arctic tundra.
2. A person who unthinkingly joins a mass movement, esp. a headlong rush to destruction.
Lem, you definitely qualify under 2, prolly 1 as well. Listening to and swallowing everything faux news puts out to it’s ever shrinking band of lemmings is not so good for you.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/11/14/ignoring-history-foxs-hannity-claims-voter-frau/191370
Here is another long read lem. I know…there are lotsa’ words and no pictures, so try to concentrate.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2002_10_13.php
Hey Lemming, does Katherine Harris ring a bell to you?
Sorry, this is all black-helicopter bullshit. I want the several minutes of life back that I spent reading it.
Duke…rove is done. He was an embarrassment to even faux news for Christ sake. His meltdown was the hilite of that night. Even the staunchest of repubs are bailing on him.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/bill-lambrecht/akin-adviser-karl-rove-super-pac-a-colossal-failure/article_70c824a4-5462-5eb3-8f2e-eac9f4153dd2.html
I don’t put anything past Rove and crew. Oh, the schadenfreude to see his round, pasty white mug shot and see him in cuffs and an orange jumpsuit and doing the time he so richly deserves. Sadly, the wealthy and the slippery ones don’t seem to serve time — but we can dream.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/2319:new-court-filing-reveals-how-the-2004-ohio-presidential-election-was-hacked
Only a partisan would not see the evidence.
Only a partisan would call someone a partisan for throwing the bullshit flag on this.
I guess blind following has its rewards for some. But for the rest of us critical thinking is important, kind of like the respect for the vote.
Ruf – Nice link.
Duk, I don’t believe everything in the story, but it is hard to argue that some of these things did happen. How did they happen? I just put the story out there for something to gnaw on and think about.
DL – Agreed, it’s worth gnawing on and thinking about. Thanks as always for keeping the conversation lively! Someday maybe you should initiate a gathering for all of us who are too tepid (or whatever other reason) to post with actual names. Wouldn’t that be a hoot! I think I’d trust my identity to your ‘regulars.’
I used to have ‘South DaCola’ Fests, but it has been a few years. I think the last one was at TJ’s and one of my commenters ended up in a situtation he refers to now as ‘something that did not happen’.
But I do have Sunday and Monday nights off now, so maybe one in the near future.
About ORCA being hacked….
Let’s use Occam’s Razor:
Which is more likely to have happened
a) A group of white hat hackers put a firewall around and took down a large, complicated app that was secretly going to steal the election. Thus they saved the country as we know it.
b) A large, complicated app that had not been given stress tests, proper pilot programs, was developed by internal staffers and volunteers -NOT a commercial development shop or consulting company with experience in enterprise distributed apps, and was rolled out on election day experienced massive problems and crashed like nobodies business.
Even massive companies with experience doing this type of thing have major problems when they roll out their apps (see Blizzard Entertainment and the roll-out of Diablo III)
I’m personally much more likely to give credit on this to sloppy programming and a piss poor network then some white hat hackers.
Anthony, I personally think it was parts of both. Since McConnell’s death Robe has not had the IT house he could trust.
Phone likes to auto-correct too much… Robe = Rove
Festivus for the rest of us.
Thank you Anthony for saying it so well. I try to live by Occam’s Razor – it’s always a great guide and almost always leads you to the right answer. Dukembe and Lemming good posts as well.
This post is simply conspiracy theory garbage. It also betrays a very unflattering and disappointing feature of the left – instead of thinking the other side (conservatives) are simply well meaning but wrong on the issues, you accuse us of being bad and having evil intentions. And I think most of you really believe it, but its not surprising given the media and our schools. I think those on the left are wrong on the issues, but I don’t think you are deep down bad people. It’s a big difference.
To the specifics of this article – throwing out crazy accusations without evidence is scummy.
The author writer clearly has a weakness for conspiracy theories. The author probably thinks we brought down the twin towers on purpose too. And that Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy.
As far as the computer system crashing – I’m a software engineer and from my reading the designers simply made fatal design decisions, didn’t test this adequately, didn’t stress test this, and didn’t train the end users – period. By the way, stories from those who actually were going to use the system at the local polling places reported various issues including getting a email late Monday night with the voter roll, which they then had to print – many of them dozens of pages – which some didn’t have printer paper adequate to do that. And the website apparently was a secure http site (https://) but the designers didn’t setup a regular ‘http://’ site that autoforwarded you to the https site so novice users couldn’t find the site (this is SO dumb), and then problems getting a hold of contacts who could help with tech support. This was just simply terribly designed and probably rushed. Its all incompetent, but its not evil. Trust me, having years of experience at this, even in the best of circumstances you can’t always fathom how your users will use your product. And almost no matter how well you design your software, particularly in the first iteration, it will crash under extremely heavy load, revealing some code path, timing window, or bug you didn’t think of before hand. And this obviously wasn’t bullet proofed before hand or even tested reasonably.
It’s obvious someone thought using technology could streamline and make the GOTV effort even better (which it could have been and is a great idea), but the execution was terrible and they would have been better doing it the old fashioned way.
The main accusation here seems to be that trying to get out the vote in the most effective way is ‘voter manipulation’. Excuse me, but doesn’t President Obama have some legendary ‘ground game’? How is one side trying to get the vote out ‘voter manipulation’ but for the other side its a great ‘ground game’? Oh I forgot, its because when conservatives do it there must be nefarious intent. This stuff is just elections 101, you get the voter rolls, and you target and try to get those who have voted before or are registered in your party to get off the couch and get to the polls. Even somewhat competent city council candidates go get their districts voter rolls and target them with door knocking and phone calls. Its just basic. John Fund has documented countless cases of the left engaging in lets say questionable voting practices, so lets not pretend one side is all about high ideals and motives.
I stopped watching TV news a few years back (all of it), but I did make an exception and watched the results on Fox News on election night while I monitored swing state results on my laptop. Karl Rove disagreed with the call on Ohio so early, but he didn’t have a ‘meltdown’. I’d probably guess most of those who say he had a meltdown didn’t watch the coverage or video. This is once again projecting bad motives on someone. The guy simply thought the call was wrong (for a good and plausible reason I believe), and he turns out to have been wrong. I thought the polls were all wrong and this was going to be the complete opposite result. I was dead wrong. Many of us thought there was no way certain demographics would show up in the numbers they did in 2008. They didn’t, several million (7 or 8 million I think) peeled off, but the votes on our side dropped too (not as much – 1 or 2 million) but it wasn’t enough to make up the 2008 margin. The swing states were largely lost by slim margins, and who knows had the system remarked about here worked it could have made up the difference. Maybe not.
One final thing, it’s incredible projection and lack of self awareness (two more typical attributes of the left) when the side that continues to oppose any BASIC and common sense validation of identity like a drivers license/id card to vote accuses the other side of trying to manipulate and bring fraud to elections. Please.
By the way, all of western Europe requires an ID to vote. Germany requires multiple documents. Are all of them engaged in ‘voter suppression’? When I check into a hotel I’m always required to show an ID. Are hotels engaged in guest suppression? Enough said.
Karl Rove had a melt down. I’ve watched the clips many times. He made Megyn Kelly interrogate the Fox WORKING election analysts on their accuracy! They told her that Ohio didn’t have enough Romney votes for him to win, and he still didn’t believe it. He was having a fit because he lost big time and would have to answer to his billionaire donors.
Republicans imposed all kinds of voter suppression in Ohio, Florida, and other states and fell flat. Reducing early voting is never a good thing and Republican’s should be ashamed. They wanted less people to vote because they knew it would better their outcome.
I’m not sure if I believe hackers had anything to do with this race. I think probably not. It has more to do with Rove using his info that he used in 2004 to win and not realizing the Obama had a better ground game that gave him the win. Obama pulled voter that were not even on the Republicans list.
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…watched the results on Fox News on election night
You watched faux news on election night? For what? Your version of reality? Well, you got it. They are still making excuses two weeks later. The REALITY is, they, and all the radio spin doctors cannot accept reality.
I to watched faux news on election night. Not for the same reasons you did tho. I simply watched to see their version of election night versus the MSNBC version, versus the ABC version. Frankly speaking, rove did in fact meltdown, and Megyn Kelly egged him on…funny as hell. MSNBC, though biased, was at least tolerable and gracious in it’s reporting. And ABC. Diane Sawyer was a hoot.
Alternate universe time… GregN, Lemming and so many more are living in a Pollyanna world of Faux News. It’s amazing how true the media studies showing Faux News viewers have the least ability to accept common facts and complex concepts.
I am always amazed when discussing events how the Faux News reciters, who swear they do not watch Fox, can recite all the main talking points Rove / Alies have issued for the day. The ‘conservative’ radio meltdown has been as dramatic as the Faux TV.
The more I read the more I can accept the righteousness of the Rove troops blindly thinking they were the smartest kids in the room and could do anything. I am also a software designer and writer. I have had to clean up my share of code written by the smartest kids in the room. They may be able to write the coolest eye-candy to look at but are not able to make it function. The effort to make it the coolest, makes the software unworkable.
So Rove etal had a plan based on poorly written software and systems. Rove etal were so wrapped up in their glow of superiority they did not look at the software and process holes they left in their wake. All the hundreds of millions of dollars spent could not put their plan into action when they broadcast their superiority to IT geeks who enjoy breaking ‘superior’ plans.
I personally do not enjoy the ability of black or white hat cyber hacking, especially when it comes to the vote. The common person does not have any recourse to justice. When we rely on systems easy to corrupt, we have to accept corruption from all. This year we were ‘lucky’ the white hats may have won. Sorry folks, Karl needs to replace Don Siegelman in prison for all his transgressions since 1972.
Free Don Siegelman!
Great article on Obama’s IT nerd dream team kicking ass and taking names through redundancy and disaster recovery testing ahead of game day.
GregN, “I stopped watching TV news a few years back (all of it), but I did make an exception and watched the results on Fox News on election night…” What? This comment cost you all of your credibility …. need I say more.
I cannot help but notice that all of the Rove apologists on this blog have never mentioned the 2004 election results.
“Dubya” won that race because of Ohio. In that race, it was the first time ever a state Secretary of State (a Republican SOS) hired an outside firm (from Tennessee with GOP contribution connections) to gather county results and process them for them before having them sent to the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio … why?
Given the results of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, this so called conspiracy piece has far more validity than anyone who regularly watches Fox News.
The poo pooers of the Anonymous article all mis one important detail.. Read more carefully. They say their efforts to thwart a vote stealing app were SEPARATE to mangling ORCA.
Either way (hacked or built by hacks) – ORCA was a disaster for the Repubs.
@Poly43 – Speaking of meltdowns — did you see Chris Mathews say he was glad Sandy hit the East Coast – well just so Obama would win???? Even Madow and O’Donnell rolled their eyes on that one. That network has increased there viewership just because people love to watch train wreck/semi-reality shows like Jersey Shore.
Watch any of these cable “news” networks from 9-5 and you may get some news. Earlier and later all you get is a dumb down version of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They are political entertainers.
Ole, those who think they understand the news by watching or listening to only one type of reporting will never understand the full picture. Pundits are not reporters, none of the mainstream broadcast media or any of the cable networks are real news reporting services any longer.
In order to grasp the details of events a wide range of information must be digested from many sources. It entails reading…
…. none of the mainstream broadcast media or any of the cable networks are real news reporting services any longer.
I watched MSNBC because they lean left. I watched faux because they topple to the right. I watched ABC because they are “supposedly” nuetral, and I refuse to watch CBS any longer. The differences in reporting is remarkable…and laughable.
Like you, I believe digesting news takes a great deal of reading, and not just from paywalls like the argus.
I used to trust CBS News. I remember sitting with my Dad watching Edward R Murrow as a youngster on a very snowy 17″ black and white. I’ll never forget Nov. 22nd, ’63 watching Walter Cronkite deliver the news the president was dead and the ensuing 72 hours. Vietnam, thru the prism of CBS News. Watergate. Real news. Real reporters. Today. Viacom News. What a joke they have become.
Why did FOX have Rove in the studio on election night? Everyone knows Rove is biased. It was amazing to see the entire Fox news team jump to attention, just because Karl Rove doubted the election results. Fox called it for Obama because they knew the remaining votes in Ohio were coming from heavily democratic districts. Karl Rove would know this better than anyone. Even Fox analysts explained this to Rove that night, as if he didn’t know. It was humorous at the time. But now there’s a possible Anonymous story- Was Rove massaging a vulnerable Fox news team in hopes of a surprise reversal of the results? (it’s worth looking into especially after the 2000 election, false WMD intelligence, and the 60 second Ohio “glitch” in 2004)
Perhaps Anonymous had something to do with blocking a potential fix. I am not sure. Anonymous, or someone claiming to be Anonymous, could simply be using the name as a form of political art (sort-of like Banksy).
Regardless, I hope Rove goes away for good. Who would take his opinion seriously after 2012?
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