SOURCE: News from Underground

By Mark Crispin Miller

Here is some amazing video: a very candid interview with Don Siegelman, who spoke to Julie Sigwart of Take Back the Media on Sept. 13, 2004--months before the Governor was finally put away on trumped-up charges by the Alabama GOP.

As he himself makes clear, Siegelman's ordeal began back in 2000, when he came out early on, and publicly, against the presidential bid of his fellow governor, George W. Bush, and backed Al Gore instead. It was a move that Karl Rove never did forget, and never would forgive, says Siegelman.

Rove's long drive to destroy the Alabama governor resulted in the theft of the 2002 election for Republican Bob Riley. Here Siegelman describes that theft--which took place primarily in Baldwin County--and also talks about his handling of that matter.

So far, the mainstream press coverage of Don Siegelman's ordeal has pointedly ignored the theft of the 2002 election. Clearly, Siegelman himself does not regard that theft as a side issue, but as a major crime, and one that is quite relevant to his whole story.

Today, the Alabama governor is not allowed to speak up on his own behalf. He's locked away inside a federal prison cell, and, for good measure, has been silenced by the Alabama courts. As Scott Horton has so aptly put it, Don Siegelman is the Man in the Iron Mask.

So let's do everything we can to get this interview played far and wide, so that his fellow citizens can finally hear him, and see him, talk about the criminal campaign against him.

MCM

View this amazing interview
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Transcript of the video:

Well, so I'm going to tell you a little story. Alright. Alright, so The Story is that I had the good fortune of serving two years with George W Bush when I was Govenor. And in the process of serving with him, when he was Govenor, I had the occassion to be with him personally at one National Govenor's meeting and I left there with the impression that while this guy was very personable, he was not exceedingly bright, and I was the first Gover to desert my collegues and openly oppose Bush's run for presidency and to support Al Gore, I gained the disfavor of Karl Rove who was also Alabama's Attorney General's Political consultant.

Whether there was a connection with Bill Pryor and his stepping in to stop a recount, and his subsequent appointment to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is something that we'll never know, I do know that during my term as Govenor I never saw Bill Pryor, the Republican Attorney General do anything outside of Alabama Law, except to allow the early certification of the results, that swung the election from me to my Republican opponent.

What occured on election night to me is inexplicable in any other way than someone electronically manipulated the election results to swing the election from me to my Republican opponent.

It was a hard fought political race, the county in question was a Republican county where we expected to lose, although I had made some distinctive inroads in Baldwin County by doing a lot of work on environmental issues that the people of Baldwin county would appreciate and reciprocate on election day.

We were not dissapointed in the election results even though we had lost in Baldwin County the night of the election, but what was dissapointing was after the polls had closed, after midnight when the pollworkers, the Democratic and Repiublican pollworkers, and representatives of the media, had gone home, the election officials all of whom are Republicans, got together and recounted the votes, In that process I lost some 6,700 votes...enough to swing the election from me to my Republican opponent.

Pollworkers should have been present during that process, and secondly the results should not have been certified the Next Day...Under Alabama law the election results cannot be certified, :LEGALLY, until after 12 noon on Friday, following an election, but after we had made a request for a Hand Count of the ballots in Baldwin County, and after the Attorney General, and the Republican District Attorney had said they would put anyone in Jail who Attempted a hand recount, the votes were suddenly rushed to Montgomery, certified by the Secretary of State, which put US at a disadvantage, Under Al law, anyone who wants to challenge the election must show that there were enough legal votes not counted, or illegal votes cast to make a difference in the outcome. Well the person challenging the election should have been my Republican opponent because the votes that should have been certified on 12 noon the Friday following the Election should have been that first vote which was publicly counted in front of poll watchers,

He (Karl Rove) does not like me, he brought the president in twice they had the largest fund raiser, they raised 4.2 million dollars for my opponent in one afternoon event in Birmingham, Alabama. They recipricated for my early endorsement of Al Gore.

You know, crazy things do happen, when this election was STOLEN, there's no other real kind, sugar coated way to say it, I was faced with a difficult choice, because it was a close election, we had won by what we thought was 3000 votes, and we ended up losing by, I think, 1500 votes. It would have been difficult for me to have challenged the outcome of that election, one, because they were denying me a hand recount, secondly, even if we were to have ultimately gotten a recount, from a Republican Federal Judge, very doubtful, from a Republican Circuit Judge, very doubtful, from a Republican dominated State Supreme Court, uh laughing we have one Democrat on the court, very doubtful, after what the United States Supreme Court had just done to Al Gore, I looked at the possibility of winning a legal challenge, and thought, even if I were to win by any stretch of the imagination, if I could have won, then I was afraid that people would have looked at me and said, "Ah, siegelman stole the election.." because it was so close. So I decided to walk away from that, thinking it was best to come back and fight it another day.

I think some of my Republican friends thought, "Well, if he's coming back here to fight another day, let's see if we can't make that fight a little more difficult for him..." So there are constant political challenges being placed up in front of people, not just with me, but I noticed that Cathleen Kennedy Townsend had been challenged and there are other democratic officials who have been castigated and are trying, you know, Republicans seemingly trying to prevent them from moving forward faster.

In this most recent election in 2002, I was for a Lottery, my opponent said over his dead body, as he was taking 1.2 million dollars from the Indian Casino Owners in Mississippi, to use in his election to defeat me. I guess there is some irony there that is not to hard to grasp I think.

Well, the Chronology really is this, on Tuesday night the Election Officials throughout the State had made their tabulations and had announced their results publicly, that Don siegelman had won the election, after midnight in one county 6,700 votes were switched... by the way, when they changed the vote... when they Recounted the votes, in Baldwin county... it was odd that the only person who lost votes.. was Me. It didn't affect a single other race, not one vote changed that night... from the original count, the final count, based on the recount, that was made after midnight, after the polling officials had gone... now one would expect that if there was some kind of computer glitch or some kind of computer programming error, that it might have affected more than one race, but it further raised suspicions about vote stealing when the votes came back and they were certified, and the only person who lost votes was Don siegelman, the Democrat, and the only person who gained votes was Bob Riley, the Republican.

The next day we woke up, uh, let me say this, I went to sleep thinking I had won, I woke, I was awoken by my staff about 4:30 in the morning saying there's been a second count of the votes since we went to bed, the second count shows you losing the election by 1500 votes, the next morning we scrambled, demanded a hand recount, later that day, on wednesday the Republicans contrary to State Law, certified the results. Bob Riley, oddly enough, the Republican Candidate was the one who made the "official" announcement of the certification of the results from Baldwin County at a Press Conference on Wed morning at about 11 O'clock.

And so after that we got with our lawyers and looked at possibility and the probability of success, at the possibility of succeeding, getting, winning a recount and then the probability of that recount being upheld by the State and Federal courts, and we determined that even if I was fortunate enough to get a recount, and being declared the winner, having that upheld by Republican courts at that time was going to be difficult and even if it had been upheld, that the race was so close, that the people of Alabama would always be in doubt as to who the real winner of that election was.

So with that in mind I decided that the best thing to do was to really spare the people of Alabama months and months... and spare myself, and my family the months and months of agony, just walk away from this one, and to live to fight another day... I think the recount actually occurred closer to 1;30 to 2;30 that morning, we heard about it a little later, that there was another recount that had taken place, .. you know how those phone calls got made I'm not sure, or who made them, but, uh, we knew that something was amiss about the time we got started early Wednesday morning.

We're not sure actually... how.. it got done..but Bob Riley, my Republican opponent, the Evening of the Election, after the official results were announced that showed that I was the winner in Baldwin County, and before anyone knew there was something wrong with any of the votes in Baldwin County, made the statement Publicly, over State television that something was wrong with the votes in Baldwin County and they were going to get to the bottom of it. That alerted our campaign team that we should be watching Baldwin County, because we knew the Republicans were doing Something there, but we didn't have access to the Courthouse, they had locked the doors, they had thrown everybody out, everybody had gone home. So who actually, from Bob Riley's camp ..directed people to get in there and to do another recount, whether he made the phone call or one of his staffers made the phone call .. but what we do know is that someone in the Sheriff's Office ran the ballots, ran the uh, new tabulation... again, when you're dealing with computers you don't expect different results unless somebody has changed something...

Audio lost in one channel - but legible in other So we weren't really too fearful when we went to bed... yeah, that they were going to produce a different outcome...we didn't know of course what they, what they were going to be doing, and we still don't know exactly what happened, but you know, we do know that, from Audio is restored to both channels our understanding of how voting machines work, how computers work, that it would be virtually impossible to produce Two Different Results using the same data... that some Human being had to come in and do something to manipulate those returns.

You know, the other anomolies we've talked about, you know, that only affected the outcome of my race and no other race, so that... we just.. all we can do is surmise that there was Laughing some... some hanky panky by somebody, and whether it was.. you know.. who it was.. and why it was, we'll probably never know.

Well no, there should not have been a recount, that was an Unofficial recount, the Official results.. the way Alabama law works is that the precincts report to the county, there are pollwatchers there, representing each party, and the media, the election officials of the county the Sheriff, the Probate Judge and Circuit clerk, who in this case were all Republicans... they.. that night, they announced the official results for Baldwin County...those results should have been the results that were certified sometime after noon on Friday following the election. What happened between the official account that was announced and the votes that were certified the next day, contrary to State law...was that, they got together, behing closed doors after everybody had gone to bed and came up with a new count which was UnOfficial, but was Officially certified ILLEGALLY, with the stamp of approval of the District Attorney and the Attorney General, and the Republican Secretary of State.

All in contrary.to Alabama..Express provisions of Alabama state law.

That's pretty Amazing..

It was pretty amazing, and pretty shocking and something that I didn't think would ever happen so Blatantly in an election... not just in Alabama, but anywhere in America.

You know, you think about, you know, third world countries, and you know, maybe in Russia or something, you know, but you don't think about open, and notorious vote manipulation, in the united states. It's just something.. that.. you know, we pride ourselves on our Democratically elected, Congress, and President and then local elected officials, and then we hold ourselves out to be models of how govt should work. In fact we send Jimmy Carter and other famous americans to other countries to say "Hey, this is the way you ought to do it.." and um, you don't expect this kind of blatant vote stealing to go on in this country, and then.. to go on.. uncorrected. You know it might happen, but you would think, okay if it happens, there's going to be a safeguard.. you know, we'll have a recount. But the only recount, and the only recourse in this case would have been the physical handcounting of the actual paper ballots .. which would have insured, once and for all, that the votes were correctly counted. And it just seemed so odd to me and to others that these Republican election officials, and the Attorney General and the District Attorney from that county, threatened to put anybody in jail if they allowed a hand recount.

There wasn't but one explanation for that, and that was that the hand recount would not have matched what they were about to certify that day, and that's why I think there was such a rush to certify, and I think that's why we never got a hand recount.

Yes, we asked for a hand recount the next morning, as soon as we realized the votes had been changed. The reaction for that. The reaction to our request for a recount was "If anybody tries to count these votes, we're putting you in jail." That was being said by Republican law enforcement officers.

I hope that we will take a second look at electronic voting machines, if they don't have a paper trail, don't allow them to be used, ANYWHERE in this country. Demand that these electronic vote counting and vote casting companies.. get people off their boards who have strong political ties and have a vested interest in a partisan outcome of an election. To give the people of this country the best assurance possible, that One, Every Vote does Count, and will be counted, and will be verified if there's a question. And Secondly, the people that are in charge of these vote casting and vote counting companies don't have a political axe to grind.

I would trust them if there is a paper ballot trail... if the voter has a chance to verify that his or her vote was cast and counted the way it was intended, and Secondly, that that paper ballot, that reciept that you would give... you get at a grocery store, you know, when you buy a roll of duct tape...they ought to be able to give you one when you cast a ballot for the president of the United States...that that reciept is then put into a ballot box, like we used to do, like we still do for absentee votes, so that there is a paper trail that can be counted if and when there is a proper request for a recount made...