By Geoff Metcalf Question: Were you involved in investigating this book with your dad or did you pick up the pieces after his passing?
Answer: It was after he died in 1998. I was involved a little bit on and off during the years, but I never thought that I would be continuing to take his place or to talk about the book for him. But he went a lot earlier than any of us expected, so somebody had to keep talking about it.
Q: Your politics are far more to the left than most of our guests. What attracted you to this issue?
A: We talked about vote fraud and debated about it for years in my family, and nobody else was talking about it until the "Votescam" book came out. Even after that, because it was banned by the major book chains, we've had to struggle for years to make it available to people who kept it going by word of mouth. People would buy cases of the book and pass them out to their friends. That was amazing. We've sold quite a lot of books over the years through just that sort of thing.
Q: Actually, your dad was one of the reasons I first put a website up. Back then, before I had any Web presence, I used to tell people, "If you want something from the program, just send a stamped, self-addressed envelope and we'll send it off to you." I had over 5,000 requests for information about the book. People couldn't find it in the stores so they were beyond frustrated.
A: That's because Barnes and Noble and Borders have been telling people for years it is out of print. The second it was published, they told people it was out of print. I've been involved in politics myself, and yes, much more to the left, as you said. But it was really my frustration with "the left" that also led me to continue to work on the votescam issue, because there is so much faith in the system on the left, much more so than on the right. And there is much less of a willingness to talk about vote fraud. Maybe that has something to do with the eight years of the Democratic administration.
Now we're faced with four years of George W. Bush so there might be more willingness now to talk about vote fraud. But unfortunately, what we're looking at is quite a lot of left-leaning organizations that are going to embrace the new computer technology that's going to be pushed in every state across the United States as an answer to the problems that we saw.
Q: Your dad capsulated the solution: paper ballots!
A: Paper ballots.
Q: That's the way to go. Jim Condit has been screaming about that for years, too. This computer thing scares the heck out of me. In fact, the guy who invented the personal computer --- Osborn, I think his name is -- he had a list of things that computers should never be used for. One of the top three is voting.
A: People are either going to heed our words now, or they will when it is too late. One way or another, it is going to come to pass that computers are going to be running the show, which they are already. We have to realize that. In many places, there are still paper ballots used. It's just that they are counted by computer. The counters can still be manipulated. But if somebody had the ability to call for a recount, you could have a recount with a paper ballot. And not all of them are ballots that would have any chads at all. You don't have to have the punch card system to have paper ballots.
Q: During the nightmare of the last election, at the same time that Florida was going through its melodrama, in Canada they counted something like 13 million ballots, and they did in something like four to six hours. And it was paper ballots.
A: Yes, all paper ballots. And they use paper ballots in Israel. I only bring that up because the elections in Israel are so contentious and so much is at stake. Not that there is not a tremendous amount at stake here in our elections but, of course, the violence that is going on there is felt palpably and the candidates are very polarized, so it is really important to these people who wins in the election.
It is a very, very different "feel" in the election over there. It's a feeling of honesty in the elections. You feel that people are paying attention, that everybody is deeply involved in the process and that the voters are watching to make sure that there is no fraud. You see much more reality in the elections over there and they use paper ballots.
They use paper ballots in England, in Israel, in India and in other places as well. These are big countries, big elections, and they don't have a problem with it. It is only due to the illusions that somehow human error is so vast, you can't trust the people to count the elections and paper ballots are such a mess, that we've got to have computers. That belief is pushed erroneously by the people who are going to benefit from having a multi-million-dollar electronic computer industry.
Q: Actually, the microcosm you can look at of the failed pilot program is the Voter News Service -- or whatever they are calling it this week.
A: Voter News Service -- that's another story altogether. My father and uncle wrote about Voter News Service years before anybody ever heard about them or even knew they existed. Their investigation, we should mention, started 30 years ago in Dade County, Fla. In 1970, they started investigating vote fraud in Dade County, and what they uncovered led them to continue to investigate for the next 25 years.
They were the top investigators into vote fraud and nobody listened to them; nobody believed them; everybody called them crazy. And finally, they wrote down and chronicled everything they did and everything that happened. They were definitely renegades, and they didn't play by the mainstream investigative journalist rules. But in that way, they were able to uncover a tremendous amount of corruption that normal journalists never would find.
Q: There was one incident in which Jim and Ken raided a boiler-room type operation where some people from the League of Women Voters were messing with ballots. I remember the first time your dad was on the air with me was in 1992 and he told that story. For about a week after that I had to deal with the League of Women Voters screaming. They were incensed at the facts Jim was presenting. I often say some people don't want to be confused with facts that contradict their preconceived opinions and Jim and Ken sure did a number with that reality.
A: They did. And they were not afraid of anybody. Which is really a remarkable thing. Rarely can you say that about anybody, but it's true, and I can testify to that. That's why "Votescam" is the kind of book that it is.
Q: I asked you in the beginning why you continue to talk about it.
A: The real reason is because I have been asked to by so many people. When I had to tell people in 1998 that neither Jim nor Ken were alive any longer, it was because ABC News had just posted the results of the 1998 off-year election on their website the day before the election. My phone started ringing off the hook. People were looking for Jim. They wanted him to get on the radio and talk about it and he had just died a month earlier. So, I had to tell everybody that, and the reaction that I got was really dramatic. I realized that they had been doing something that nobody else is doing and that nobody else could do at that particular moment in time.
Q: Why?
A: Because the corruption in our election system is huge; it is rampant; it is systemic. From election supervisors to the equipment that we use all the way up to state officials, secretaries of state who control the electoral process in the states, to the Supreme Court to Justice Antonin Scalia, who was responsible for covering up vote-fraud evidence that was moving through the courts in the 1980s.
Q: Please explain to our readers about the feud-jihad that went on with your dad and uncle and Janet Reno?
A: In 1970, when they started their investigation in Miami, they uncovered a tremendous amount of evidence of vote fraud -- not just one or two, but several various kinds of vote fraud that involved the machines that were being used as well as the television networks. They were projecting vote results to the public even before the polls closed in Miami. Their projections, Jim and Ken found out, were 100 percent accurate for something like 250 races 24 minutes after the polls closed. Now this isn't possible.
Q: What is the statistical probability of 100 percent accuracy in the collection of that many votes?
A: It just isn't possible, especially because when they asked the networks how they did it, they said they got all their information from one voting machine. Somewhere out there -- they wouldn't tell them which one. They took that information off one machine somewhere in Dade County, and they ran it through their computers and came up with perfect vote totals.
Q: They had to have asked someone the magic questions.
A: When Jim and Ken interviewed Elton Davis, who was the computer programmer for the networks, and asked, "What was the formula you used to get these perfect vote totals?" he said to them, "You'll never prove it! Now get out!" This was the very beginning of their investigation, and they realized that the media, the networks, had been involved in manipulating the vote results in predetermining the vote results. They took this evidence along with other evidence of vote fraud, including forged canvass sheets.
Q: What are the canvass sheets?
A: The canvass sheets are what the election supervisors have to sign in order to certify the election, and they had proof that the election sheets were forged.
Q: The obvious question is, when they have this overwhelming abundance of facts and documented material, why doesn't anybody bring charges against somebody?
A: They took the information to Ellis Rubin, who was a very well-known lawyer in Miami. He was the ombudsman for the evidence, and he took it to Janet Reno, who was assistant state attorney at the time. Ellis Rubin held a press conference, and when he came out in front of the cameras, he was expected to say that Janet Reno would be prosecuting based on the evidence. But he could not say that because Janet Reno would not prosecute. She told him that the statute of limitations had run out on the crime. This was not true. There were 48 hours left during which she could prosecute. She wouldn't do it. It wasn't until many, many years later that Ellis would tell Jim what Janet Reno had said to him about this. He wouldn't tell him back then.
He said Janet Reno said, "Ellis, if I prosecute, I will bring down every elected official and every judge in Dade County, and I can't do it." Which, of course, is true because she wouldn't have been able to reach the post she did many years later.
Q: In other words, if she had not obstructed justice to the level she did back then, she wouldn't have been provided the opportunity to obstruct justice on a grander scale subsequently?
A: That's right. They pretty much figured the investigation was dead at that point and it was -- for a little while. But it was awakened again some years later when the Republican National Committee came forward with a reward offer for anyone who could produce evidence of vote fraud. Of course, not only did Jim and Ken have their evidence, they went out and got more. That was when they infiltrated the League of Women Voters punching holes and tampering with the ballots as you were talking about earlier. And they got that on videotape. That is also on the "Votescam" video, which we also have available. They brought that evidence up to the Justice Department and, lo and behold, the Justice Department wouldn't even look at the tape. Wouldn't even look at it! Craig Donsanto was the attorney for the Justice Department.
Q: They have to say something. What was their reaction when presented with that kind of evidence?
A: That's in the book.
Q: I know the answer. I want you to tell the readers. Then maybe they'll buy the book.
A: The dialog is so good, because it is all translated verbatim. He would not look at the evidence. According to the reward offer, the Justice Department would proceed with any evidence that was brought forward to them and would bring it to the attention of the correct authorities. It was brought to Craig Donsanto, and he would not proceed. They were really stuck at that point, so they went to ABC News and told them the story. They spoke with the Supreme Court correspondent for ABC News, and he agreed when he viewed the tape that it was real evidence and that it should be shown. It turned out that ABC News at the time subsidized the League of Women Voters. So, after having a conversation with his "higher ups," he discovered they would not run the tape that Jim and Ken had because of that.
Q: They were also complicit because of the network involvement in the Voter News Service, although it wasn't called that at the time.
A: Right. I'll get to that. The main thing here is that they investigated. They found vote fraud. They went to the authorities that are supposed to move forward with the evidence, and nobody would move forward with it. The Justice Department would not look at the evidence. The mainstream press would not show any of it on television. Finally, they had to go to the Supreme Court, which they did. They filed suit against the League of Women Voters, the Justice Department, ABC News and another defendant. They had a lot of lawsuits moving through the courts, which they filed all by themselves, pro se.
Q: How did they pull that off?
A: Their father was a lawyer, and they had a lot of background in law. They gave up their lives to do this.
Q: OK, so ABC won't touch it because they are protecting the League of Women Voters. What about NBC? What about CBS?
A: I believe that nobody would even speak to them at the networks. They were treated with tremendous condescension for years. They really suffered. It is unfortunate that they were not here to see this past election, because so many people who really were their greatest naysayers turned around and said, "Maybe they had something to their story."
Q: The first time I interviewed Jim back in '92, listeners went absolutely ballistic over this, and it was always looked at as just so much "radical right-wing wacko stuff." Has it changed at all in the wake of what we suffered through in November?
A: It has, and at the same time new dangers have come up. Certainly, there is a tremendous awareness of the voting process that there has never been before. And in the first week of the election, our website received 10,000 hits in five days. What we've seen -- and it really surprised me -- is that many people who should know better are accepting the answer that is being promoted across the country -- that these computerized voting machines are going to fix our problem. That's distressing.
Q: One recurrent question is why a two-way modem is necessary in a voting machine.
A: If you want to speak to it. If you have something in the middle of an election you want to tell it, then it will listen to you.
Q: How many other lawsuits over this issue are kicking around?
A: These are the only lawsuits of their kind in this country. No one has done anything like this, which is why the "Votescam" investigation is important. Jim and Ken were really testing the system in all of the different avenues that were open to them to get some justice for the corruption they had uncovered. They went everywhere that they could go and they found that no route was open to them.
And, when they pushed their information into the courts and they filed lawsuits against people who were involved with and covering up vote fraud, their cases were not dismissed on the merits. They were actually pushed through the courts, and when they finally reached Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she also pushed them forward to the point where they were becoming very dangerous for the people who were defendants.
So, an important part of the "Votescam" book, especially in light of our last election, is when Antonin Scalia -- who wasn't a justice at the time but an appeals court judge -- filed a memo in regard to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's decision that the cases should go forward and be heard. The cases would have required testimony on the part of people who did not want to testify, people from the Justice Department, people from the Republican National Committee. Judge Scalia filed a "killer memo" -- that's what Jim and Ken called it -- that said that although he agreed with Ruth Bader Ginsburg's decision, he still felt it was plain on the face of it, that he fully supported prosecutorial discretion and the dismissal of the action.
Q: What the heck does that translate to?
A: What that means is that he supported the Republican National Committee and the Justice Department's refusal to prosecute vote fraud. It was their discretion. They didn't have to do it. And for that reason, he felt that the cases should be dismissed. It was a very strange, contradictory memo and, as it says in "Votescam," it was unprecedented 60 days after the original order for the cases to move forward, and Scalia surreptitiously entered the memo into the votescam file.
Q: What do you mean surreptitiously?
A: It was undocketed on unbonded, unwatermarked paper with no time stamp and with Xerox doodles on the back. All it lacked were tomato stains.
Q: Something folks need to be aware of is that there are no good guys in this story. This is not a partisan battle. It is not a case of where our team is the good guys and they are the bad guys. There is more than sufficient blame to go around.
A: Yeah. And we have to realize -- and until we do, nothing is going to get any better in this country -- that both the Republicans and the Democrats have been aiding and abetting vote fraud for at least the past 30 years. And I only say that because that's when the Votescam investigation began. It is an epidemic that has caused the problems that we see in the country today that everybody is waking up to now.
Q: Until recently, one significant thing I disagreed with Jim on was that I acknowledged vote fraud as being a reality, but I didn't, until relatively recently, think it was that ubiquitous. I really didn't think it was everywhere. I always thought bad guys would kind of cherry pick crucial areas they wanted to influence. Maybe there was vote fraud in this precinct or that precinct, but it wasn't as widespread as Jim and Ken were suggesting.
A: Are you aware what is happening in Peru at this moment?
Q: No.
A: There have been video tapes released that were seized from the home of the president -- thousands of them taping every kind of corruption that you can think of involving almost everybody in a position of power in Peru, from congressmen to their supreme court to their media. It is unbelievable.
Q: See, that's the point. We expect that kind of stuff in a place like Peru. Is it really that bad here?
A: It is exactly the same here. In fact, the tapes were made by a Mr. Montasino in Peru, who is a former CIA agent. The CIA has its hand in governments all over the world, but no more deeply than it has in this country. This country is highly, highly corrupt, just as corrupt as any third-world banana republic, and we saw that in our last election. People saw for the first time a glimpse of what Jim and Ken were talking about for the past 30 years.
Q: If the system is so corrupted and the people who you count on to mitigate the damage are themselves corrupt, is there any hope of fixing this mess?
A: I get asked that question every time I do a radio show.
Q: I'm glad I didn't disappoint you.
A: The hope lies here. The fact that we can speak about this is really the last bastion of freedom in this country.
Q: I've been talking about this for ten years and nothing has happened.
A: I know. I don't have good news to tell you, really, I'm sorry to say. But we can still talk about it, and as long as we can, then there is hope. We still have the website, and the Internet is an incredible source of access and information for people, and it's growing all the time. Unfortunately, we've got a grim, grim future in store for us, especially if these computers are put into place across the country. And that is what is going to happen because of this last election.
Q: To talk about the last election is to return to Voter News Service.
A: Voter News Service is coming into the spotlight for the first time in 30 years, and guess what? They have existed for 30 years, not since '92 or '94, which is what the networks are telling everybody. That's not true at all. They used to be called News Election Services, and they were created in 1964.
Q: Let's talk a bit about why they were created in the first place. How did it start, and why, allegedly, was it created?
A: I would say this is the only conspiracy theory that is in "Votescam" at all. Jim and Ken felt that because of the time that it was created in 1964 and because of the power that was given to the networks.
Q: Explain who owns VNS.
A: All of the networks own Voter News Services. It is a conglomerate. It is a joint venture among all of the television networks. It was called News Election Services at the time.
Q: They are not just passive board members. They are active participants in the management and control of the operation.
A: Right. The networks and Voter News Service are synonymous. It also includes the Washington Post, the New York Times and the wire services. So you've got one major media body where all of the election results on election night are being funneled into, and they have control over that information before any of the public sees it. They were given that control, according to Jim and Ken, in exchange for the assurance that none of the media would ever question the validity or the accuracy or the truth of the Warren Report -- the report of the John F. Kennedy assassination.
Q: Whoa! That obviously smells like Art Bell material. Where did the quid pro quo come from?
A: Like I said, it is the only piece of conspiracy theory in "Votescam," so I'm just letting you know that off the bat. It is an interesting theory that I think is fair to bring up, considering the fact that the transfer of power took place where the media gained unprecedented control over the United States electoral system. No other country has a system like this. No other country would, no country should. It makes no sense. And this is what happened in 1964.
The major media should be our watchdog organization. But if they have control over the numbers that are being funneled into their computers and through their telephone lines on election night, if there are mistakes -- accidental mistakes or purposeful mistakes -- there is no one to watchdog that organization.
Q: It is beyond hypocritical that in the wake of the disaster of Nov. 7, the networks are trying to get some kind of plausible deniability with, "Well, these guys [the Voter News Service] did this to us."
A: That's right. What is being portrayed to the public is a very twisted version of the truth. It is not the truth. It is based somewhat on the truth, which is making it so frustrating for those of us who know how the system actually works. They are saying that Voter News Service is like a private company that they just sort of hired on election night to give them results.
Q: It's kind of like saying NBC hired CNBC and MSNBC to work for them that night.
A: Right. News Election Services and a branch called VRS, Voter Research and Survey, which was another branch of NES, they melded to create Voter News Service. But it has been the same people involved all this time. It is the same group. It is the same media conglomerate. But because their name changed in 1990 or 1992, you get different numbers all the time from them. The major media right now is telling people they just popped up in the 1990s to give the networks better, quicker results.
Q: What do you see in the future? Are things going to get better, worse or stay the same?
A: They are going to get worse. The computerized voting machines are going to be funded by the federal government. The states are going to get millions of dollars to put in computer equipment that is unverifiable. It's not more difficult to rig them -- it is much easier to rig them. It's just more difficult to detect if they have been rigged. There will be no paper-ballot trail. We will not be able to ask for a recount. They can be manipulated in a variety of ways.
Go to the "Votescam" website.