Anonymous: Keeping Karl Rove from stealing elections since 2012

Do remember the guy in Pennsylvania who posted the video of a machine flipping his vote from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney on election morning? While many people were willing to concede that it was just a poorly configured system, others believed it was purposeful vote rigging. Now think about Karl Rove and his meltdown on national television on election night, when he adamantly refused to believe the results that showed the president won Ohio and thus, the election until he could no longer deny it.

On November 6, Rove's now infamous mental breakdown caused him to reveal bits and pieces of his plans to steal the election. Progressive radio talk show host Thom Hartmann yesterday discussed how hacker activists (dubbed 'hacktivists') might have prevented Rove from rigging the election in favor of Romney by hacking into voting machine systems and preventing them from being scrubbed.

The 2000 and 2004 elections are noted for their highly suspicious circumstances, and this year was no exception. Hartmann discussed Craig Unger's book, "Boss Rove," which details the political consultant's shady practices of ensuring Republicans gain and keep power in the United States. He revealed parts of Unger's book that pick apart the entire voting system and how it was rigged. If you recall, in 2004, as Hartmann says, the "at 11:14pm at night, entire auto voting system crashed." The voting system there was subsequently rerouted to a server in Tennessee, and a minute later, Bush suddenly began winning Ohio, when just one minute earlier, Kerry had been clearly ahead.

The counties in question during the '04 election were Kerry seemingly lost Delaware, Butler, and Warren Counties and suburban Cincinnati. Hartmann details that Bush's margin of victory in these three counties was higher than in the entire state of Ohio, at 110, 000 votes.

Fast forward to 2012 election night. At 11:13pm, Ohio's vote tabulation website went down. That is one minute earlier than when it went down in 2004. Cuyahoga and Cleveland's websites went down, also. The same three counties were in play as happened in 2004. Prior to the system crash, Obama was ahead in Ohio. A minute later, when the system came back up, he was still winning, unlike what happened in 2004, when the votes were suddenly, and inexplicably flipped for Bush.

What happened?

Well, depending on who you voted for, you might either thank or blame the collaboration of Internet geniuses who call themselves Anonymous. Two members, released a letter detailing what they'd done to prevent Rove and his drones from subverting the will of the people.

The group wrote that two months before the election, they began to investigate Rove's digital traffic and soon learned key weaknesses in various programs and systems. "...after a short time, we identified the digital structure of Karl's operation, and even that of his Orca. This was an easy task in that barn doors were left open and the wind swept us inside."

The group had two choices: catch the "thieves" in the act of scrubbing votes, or prevent them from doing so in the first place. The group chose the latter, and created its own code--a firewall--to prevent Rove's vote rigging system from flipping votes. The code kept "tunnel rats" from siphoning the votes into servers in several different states, thereby handing the election over to Romney.

If this is true, and it very likely is, it explains how number 1, Mitt Romney was flabbergasted that he lost, and number 2, how Karl Rove had a breakdown on national TV, where he inadvertently revealed details of his plan to rig the election.

If the supposed "kingmaker" is, indeed, guilty of vote tampering, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Did Anonymous send law enforcement details of his plan to give Romney a win? Or did the group leave it to federal investigators to figure it out for themselves?

This incident highlights the vulnerability of electronic voting. The federal and local governments should seriously reconsider the merits of voting machines. They are easily hacked, and while paper can be a veritable quagmire, it is more secure, and you've got the benefit of a hard copy in case there's need for a recount. Another possibility is to move electronic voting over to an open source platform from the privately owned companies that currently control them.

Watch the video below for more in-depth analysis and decide for yourself: Are Republicans stealing elections? Did Anonymous keep the election honest? Do you think Rove and other Republicans tried to tamper with the will of the people?