Are there ANY Iowa Republican precinct, district or county chairpersons who will tell us what the “Kansas Firm” is?!?!? Does ANYONE know a chairperson who will tell us the phone number they were instructed to call on caucus night to report voting in their precinct, district or county? Or the URL of the “password protected” website that they logged onto to report vote totals?
The Des Moines Register's Jennifer Jacobs reported the next day that “about 50 call takers from a Kansas firm that RPI (read then executive director, Chad Olsen) hired to collect the votes on caucus night” were overseen by about a dozen Iowa republicans at the “undisclosed, secure” location that Republican Party of Iowa HAD to move to (because of alleged threat by Occupy the Caucus) – Johnny's Italian Steakhouse and the Radison Hotel on the south side of Des Moines.
Bev Harris of Black Box Voting describes the “Kansas Firm” as a “middleman” – a bottleneck that all the results have to go thru before they are presented to the public. The possiblility for ELECTION fraud is obvious. And given the fact that the “official” results are not certified until two weeks later, there is plenty of time to Photoshop the Form E's to make them conform to what the votes were changed to in this “Black Box”/Middleman that IS the so called “Kansas Firm.”
We have asked EVERY Republican office holder in Iowa who, what, and where is the Kansas Firm. The silence is deafening, the stonewalling, thick. Even the new Executive Director of RPI, Steve Bierfieldt, who is presented as a Ron and Rand Paul/Campaign for Liberty supporter, has not answered as he promised us he would. We had an Open Letter to the Caucus Review Committee published as a guest editorial in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. . .no response.
Why are we posting this on a “left leaning” site like Bleeding Heartland? Because the “First in the Nation Iowa Caucus” is just as important to Iowa Democrats as it is to Iowa Republicans, and given its role of winnowing down the field of nominees – removing from the other 49 States any choice that might be better than the ones the Establishment and its media (basically ALL of it) foist on US, it MUST be honest and transparent.
There are a growing number of us who believe that the Repubilcan party of Iowa, in league with the national Republican wing of the One Establishment Party, robbed the Ron Paul rEVOLution of a first place win in the Iowa Republican Caucus this year. Jeffrey Phelps' excellent post “Iowa Vote Fraud Official” in the examiner.com, provides a pretty thorough analysis here:
http://www.examiner.com/article/iowa-vote-fraud-official
but he hasn't picked up on HOW it was done, as we think we have in our blog:
http://one3twelve.blog.com/black-box-blender/
Please, if anyone has any info about the Kansas Firm – if anyone knows the phone number RPI caucus officials were instructed to call (and obviously then shut up about) on caucus night, or the web site they were instructed to log in to in order to report vote totals, PLEASE contact us: Satyam108 at gmail.com
Liberty, Peace, Prosperity and Love
Jim and Randall
8 Comments
Why worry about the Kansas Firm?
Start with step one: the collection of scraps of paper indicating preference, which are then thrown away.
Given the lack of paper trail/verifiability, transparency is already lost before even getting to Form E. For this reason, I found it laughable to quibble about the 5x vote discrepancy later on.
The Dem caucus is no better. The IDP does its best to keep the raw preference count (both before and after alignment) a mystery.
I am not sure what you mean by fraud. Is it your suspicion that party insiders are shaping results? Or is it a more generic description concerning the lack of transparency? These events are private functions that limbo below the threshold of accountability to participants, not government-administered elections. In short, they don’t hafta provide you or anyone else with a verifiable account of what happens Caucus Eve.
Why the secrecy? A more benign view is that these events are big money-makers for the respective parties, although I’d say they are losing their grip on proprietary information. The details of what transpires on the precinct-level is information for sale. A straightforward example: lists of caucus attendees. Since these are not government-administered events, caucus attendance is not part of the participation record in the voter file from the IA-SOS.
In a recent comment, I observed that the caucuses are more infotainment events that cull the herd. I think they have been successful in this regard, whether presenting Paul-Romney-Santorum to NH and beyond or Clinton-Edwards-Obama. This doesn’t address any hanky-panky by “establishment insiders” to blunt “grassroot” efforts, but since these are private events, intra-party jockeying appears to be the only remedy.
Why does it matter to which company the RPI outsourced phone data collection? I’m sure they signed a non-disclosure type contract. Again, these events are not government-administered elections.
albert Tue 28 Aug 4:03 AM
The "Kansas Firm" is the key to uncovering the ELECTION fraud
The Iowa Caucus is presented to the world as being completely transparent and honest. The fact that NO ONE will answer these simple questions – even the Des Moines Register which first reported them – REEKS of fraud. There was what Bev Harris (Black Box Voting) calls a “middleman” between the precincts, districts or counties and the public. That middleman is the Kansas Firm and our research so far points to links between SOE Software – Clarity Election Software – both now owned by a company in Spain, no less, SCYTL. There are strong threads off of that to Diebold and ES&S voting machines. Threads to Karl Rove and Ohio being stolen from Kerry in 2004 and given to Bush. SCYTL is lining up to be a MAJOR force in the November election with these systems in place in a large and growing number of jurisdictions – down to the county level. With SCYTL there will be NO way to verify ANYTHING and all the results will go to Spain FIRST before they are reported to the public.
The middleman gets to see the results FIRST – before ANYONE does, AND presents the opportunity to alter those results before they are presented to the public. The Iowa Republican Party, with the “certification” two weeks later, allows plenty of time for the “official” results – the official Form E’s that were recorded and (supposed to be) signed at each precinct, to be ALTERED to conform to what the public was told on Caucus Night. What precinct officials are going to make the trip to Des Moines two weeks later, to verify that what they sent in is in fact what is displayed as the official Form E’s?
All that we need is for ANY precinct, district or county chairperson to tell us the phone number they called and/or the website they logged on to, so we can track this down and find out IF the results were changed in this Black Box Kansas Firm or not. Every Chairperson we have asked has refused to answer and referred us to RPI HQ in Des Moines, where we continue to be stonewalled.
Because the same SOE/Clarity/ and now SCYTL systems – linked with Diebold and ES&S voting machines will be used by governments in November, it is important for ALL Iowans, we feel – All Americans – to know if their votes are really being counted, I’m sure you agree. As in the quote (wrongly, I think) attributed to Stalin –
Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.
gimmesometruth Thu 30 Aug 1:32 AM
I know a few people
who helped count votes at Republican precinct caucuses. I will check to see whether they confirmed that the totals released later by the RPI accurately reflected their count on January 3. There’s no way to double-check except by asking people involved with the count, because the paper “ballots” are not saved.
At least the Iowa GOP does release raw vote totals at the precinct level. The Iowa Democratic Party never does that, and the delegate assignments don’t necessarily reflect who had the most supporters at the beginning of the night. You can’t tell how many people walked into their precincts intending to caucus for Democratic candidate A or candidate B.
desmoinesdem Tue 28 Aug 6:57 AM
notoriously unreliable
memory after the fact.
albert Tue 28 Aug 7:21 AM
Thanks, desmoinesdem, but the people of Iowa are not the problem
It’s systemic and comes from the highest levels of the national republican party. What happens at the precinct level IS open, honest and transparent. The RPI only published results at a COUNTY level – NOT at the precinct level. In all the precincts where Ron Paul may have won, for example, only to lose the county to Romney and then Santorum, the precinct officials would just shrug it off and think, “Well, we mostly voted for Ron Paul, but the OTHER precincts must not have.” They know that they did and they called in those results – posted them to the secure website – both being the “Kansas Firm” – on caucus night. Then they mailed in their Form E’s with the same info. They were open and transparent and honest.
As volunteers, paying their own expenses, how many are going to make the trip to RPI HQ in Des Moines two weeks later to verify that what is being shown to the public as the official Form E’s for their precincts, are in fact what they sent in? Not many.
If you know anyone who CALLED in or LOGGED in results on Caucus Night – and if you can get them to give up the number they called and the URL of the site they logged on to, then we’ve got something to go on and can track down who, what and where is the Kansas Firm, and either verify that what happened on Caucus night truly was what we were told, or NOT. The fact that chairpersons have been told not to tell us those numbers and URL, and the fact that Iowa GOP in Des Moines refuses to tell us, makes us smell a rat, (as Patrick Henry famously said for refusing to attend the CONstitutional CONvention – but that’s another blog 😉
If there is nothing to hide about the Kansas Firm, WHY is it being so ardently hidden? If what came out of it was what went in, then why hide that?
gimmesometruth Thu 30 Aug 1:58 AM
they published results at the precinct level
Because I remember looking up the results for a bunch of Polk County precincts. Earlier this year you could download a spreadsheet with results from the Iowa GOP website, but I couldn’t find the link just now.
I don’t think I know anyone who actually called in the results–just people who helped count or organize precinct caucuses.
desmoinesdem Thu 30 Aug 7:25 AM
the precinct-level results
were available for only a couple of days — a link from the fp of the IA-GOP site.
If you need a copy, I can probably find the file I downloaded.
albert Thu 30 Aug 8:01 AM
yes please
if you have precinct level results, I’d like to see them.
The key will be WHEN they were published and if that was before or after they went thru the Kansas Firm.
please send to me at satyam108 at gmail.com
thanks!
gimmesometruth Thu 30 Aug 11:44 PM