Suspicion Surrounds Voter News Service
by Lynn Landes
Dissident Voice
January 20, 2003
It doesn't add
up. Why is Voter News Service (VNS) really going out of business? That's only
one of many questions that dog VNS, a private consortium of the major news
organizations that allegedly projected election night winners using exit polls.
VNS is owned by ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and
NBC News. But VNS has always conducted its operations in a highly secretive
manner.
I want to know
why VNS sent surveys to counties asking them for information about the kinds of
voting machines the counties used? Why should VNS care? What do voting machines
have to do with exit poll projections? The voting machine industry is
completely dominated by Republicans. Many people believe that the major news
networks are also dominated by Republican ownership. Is there a connection
between VNS closing its doors, the increased use of computerized voting
machines, and the growing disparity between pre-election polling predictions
and election results - a disparity that appears to heavily favor Republican
candidates? Are we witnessing election fraud on a massive scale and is VNS
involved?
One reason VNS
is shutting down could NOT be, as VNS spokespeople continue to claim, that they
screwed up the 2000 election exit polling in Florida. Any comprehensive review
of the Florida vote count proves that VNS's projection was correct...Gore would
have won Florida handily had it not been for uncounted "over-votes",
the notorious butterfly ballot, and the illegal removal of 91,000 names of
mostly black and Democratic registered voters from the rolls by a Texas firm
hired by Jeb Bush's Secretary of State.
The second
reason VNS has offered for closing its doors is that they couldn't handle the
technical and logistic demands of Election Day exit polling. What has changed
from previous years? After all, the major news networks have claimed that
they've been processing election data and using computers and thousands of
temporary employees since the mid-1960's. For this last election VNS even hired
the well known, if not controversial, Battelle Memorial Institute to revamp
their system. The hiring of Battelle, a major military defense and government
intelligence contractor, raised the eyebrows of many observers who believe that
there may be a connection between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and
VNS. Some suspect that the CIA doesn't limit its legendary vote rigging
abilities to elections in foreign countries.
Here's a
thought. Maybe VNS has never actually done exit polling before. Maybe this was
the first time. Some people believe that VNS never really conducted exit
polling in the first place, that VNS's claims were a logistic impossibility.
Some people believe that VNS only put a few people at the polls for public
relations purposes. Lee C. Shapiro, VNS's longtime spokesperson, told this
reporter in an interview last fall that VNS was going to use 46,000 temporary
employees for the November 2002 election. But news stories are reporting 30,000
instead. Since Shapiro has always refused to provide any information or
evidence to prove the existence of this army of Election Day workers, we can
only wonder at where the truth lies.
Some people
believe that VNS instead used pre-election polling data to project winners on
election night. The late Collier brothers, authors of Vote Scam: The Stealing
of America (1996), believed that VNS (and its predecessors) may have been used
to help rig elections by supplying bogus exit poll results to support equally
bogus election results.
Let's look at
Florida 2000 again. Why does VNS keep claiming that they screwed up in the
Florida 2000 election when they didn't? Some people believe that VNS decided to
stay on the sidelines in Florida and simply use the pre-election polling data
to project the winner. As things got increasingly ugly after the election the
Bush people may have given VNS a choice, "either you're with us or against
us." The result... VNS keeps apologizing for projecting the correct
winner.
And what's the
real reason VNS is closing its doors?
Maybe election
rigging through the use of computerized voting machines has become so pervasive
that VNS simply couldn't keep up and instead decided to "stand down".
Maybe network insiders and journalists demanded access to the highly secretive
VNS operations and the scrutiny was going to more than what VNS could
withstand. Or, maybe government authorities are investigating VNS.
Whatever the reason,
it doesn't mean an end to the mystery and suspicion that surrounds Voter News
Service.
Lynn Landes is a
freelance journalist specializing in environmental issues. She writes a weekly
column which is published on her website www.EcoTalk.org and reports environmental news for DUTV in Philadelphia, PA.
Lynn's been a radio show host and a regular commentator for a BBC radio
program.
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