Discrepancies Reported in Versions of LA County E-Voting System Source Code as Submitted & Escrowed

[BradBlog]

Source: BRAD BLOG

Discrepancies Reported in Versions of LA County E-Voting System Source Code as Submitted and Escrowed by ES&S
Letter Obtained by BRAD BLOG to Voting Machine Company Confirms Potential Violations Of California Election Law as Revealed During CA SoS Bowen's 'Top-to-Bottom Review' of E-Voting Systems
Matter May Have Far Reaching, National Consequences Concerning the Effectiveness of Escrowing Secret Vote-Counting Software...
-- Blogged by John Gideon and Brad Friedman

The results of California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's "top-to-bottom review" of electronic voting systems previously approved for use by her predecessor is still underway. But before any of the findings from her teams of security specialists, software analysts and voting systems experts have been made public, the unprecedented analysis has already revealed a disturbing anomaly which may have far-reaching implications for both state and federal voting systems laws across the country...

FULL REPORT: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4784


Read more: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4784

[robinlynne]

1. woowee!

[mod mom]

2. and don't forget in OH nearly 1/2 of machines tested in Montgomery Co FAILED

Nearly half of voting machines tested fail

Montgomery officials tested the 5% of machines that drew complaints; 56 of those 125 machines failed.


By Lynn Hulsey
Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 21, 2007

DAYTON — After two days of tests, the results are in: About 2,500 people cast ballots in November on 56 malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines in Montgomery County, said Steve Harsman, county board of elections director.

He said it is impossible to know how many people finalized their electronic ballots without realizing that the Diebold Elections Systems machines were inaccurately registering their votes. But people had three chances to review their votes before finalizing them, and all the machines accurately tallied the votes that were finalized by voters, Harsman said.



On Tuesday, county election officials completed testing of 125 machines identified in voter complaints collected by Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, which called for the investigation. Some 2,530 voting machines were used in the county on Election Day.

Harsman said several malfunctioning machines were clustered at certain precincts, indicating they may have been damaged during delivery by a trucking company that hauls the machines to the polls.

-snip

http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/03/21/ddn032107elex.html

IF WE WANT TO SEE REAL CHANGE IN THIS COUNTRY THEN WE NEED TO DEMAND A VERIFIABLE SYSTEM THAT IS FAIR FOR ALL VOTERS!

[kansasblue]

3. DID SHE TRAP THEM?

Did Bowen get them to send their cleaned up code all the while she had the escrowed code to compare the two?

[robinlynne]

5. she didn't have to. They simply refused to send the code. So she ordered it from

escrow, and what was in escrow did not match the certified version.
They still refuse to even submit their code to her for review, which is, of course, illegal.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. The GOP will NEVER allow free and fair elections in this country...

...It would mean their demise and they know it.

[robinlynne]

6. and may I add this:

straight from Clermont County, Ohio, photos of real ballots from the 2004 election:

>
>
>

[robinlynne]

7. sorry these came out too small to see. Someone put white stickers over certain votes,

over the kerry vote in one case, then blacked in bush, etc.

[emlev]

11. stickers on ballots--story originally broken by DU's own lalarawraw

Not news now, but still an important story. Here's that old link.

[robinlynne]

14. hiya emlev!

[emlev]

15. hiya back

:hi:

[cui bono]

8. Ironically, your image links also contain illegal code!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[cui bono]

9. Hey! That's MY county!!!

Time to call Xavier.

[goclark]

10. Arnold is NOT our Governor!

[UpInArms]

12. Senator Hagel Admits Owning Voting Machine Company (ES&S)

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0301/S00166.htm

Friday, 31 January 2003, 10:13 am
Article: Talion.com

BREAKING NEWS: Senate Ethics Director Resigns; Senator Hagel Admits Owning Voting Machine Company

By Bev Harris

U.S. CHUCK HAGEL NOW ADMITS OWNERSHIP IN VOTING MACHINE COMPANY SENATE ETHICS COMMITTEE DIRECTOR RESIGNS

“Hagel’s ethics filings pose disclosure issue” -- “The Hill” 1/29/2003

On October, 10, 2002 Bev Harris, author of the upcoming “Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering” in the 21st Century, revealed that Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has ties to the largest voting machine company, Election Systems & Software (ES&S). She reported that he was an owner, Chairman and CEO of Election Systems & Software (called American Information Systems until name change filed in 1997). ES&S was the ONLY company whose machines counted Hagel’s votes when he ran for election in 1996 and 2002. The Hill, a Washington D.C. newspaper that covers the U.S. national political scene, confirmed her findings today and uncovered more details.

Hagel’s campaign finance director, Michael McCarthy, now admits that Senator Hagel still owns a beneficial interest in the ES&S parent company, the McCarthy Group. ES&S counts approximately 60 percent of all votes cast in the United States. According to the Omaha World-Herald which is also a beneficial owner of ES&S, Hagel was CEO of American Information Systems, now called ES&S, from November 1993 through June 2, 1994. He was Chairman from July 1992 until March 15 1995. He was required to disclose these positions on his FEC Personal Disclosure statements, but he did not.

Hagel still owns up to $5 million in the ES&S parent company, McCarthy Group. But Hagel’s office, when interviewed by Channel 8 News in Lincoln, Nebraska for the evening news on October 22, 2002, said he had sold his shares before he was elected. His office issued a fact sheet claiming that he had made full disclosure.

Last week, Hagel’s campaign finance director, Michael McCarthy (currently an owner and a director of ES&S) admitted to Alexander Bolton of The Hill that Hagel is still an owner of ES&S parent company, the McCarthy Group, and said that Hagel also had owned shares in AIS Investors Inc., a group of investors in ES&S itself. Yet Hagel did not disclose owning or selling shares in AIS Investors Inc. on his FEC documents, a required disclosure, nor did he disclose that ES&S is an underlying asset of McCarthy Group, in which he lists an investment of up to $5 million in 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001.

...more...

[TrogL]

13. This is why we need open-source code

although we still need to certify which code is being used.

[Peace Patriot]

16. ES&S are bad, bad, BAD dudes!

These are the rightwing folks who got their initial funding from Howard Ahmanson (who also gave one million dollars to the rightwing 'christian' Chalcedon foundation, which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things), and who 'disappeared' 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas in FL-13, in 2006, and when lawyers for challenger Christine Jennings (the Republican "won" of course--do Bushites ever lose when these "strange" anomalies occur? --not that I know of) asked to see ES&S's source code, to try to figure out what happened to those 18,000 votes, ES&S REFUSED. They said that their "right" to profit from our elections by keeping their code a "trade secret" TRUMPS the right to the voters to know how their votes were counted.

And I don't know if they got a Bushite "bought and paid for" judge, or a scared judge, but the judge AGREED. Private corporate "property rights" now supersede the rights of the voters. What odds do you place on Anthony Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and gang agreeing? We ought to run it by Las Vegas, where they take far more care over the security and absolute integrity of their slot machines than Congress or our state/county election officials take with our voting system.

Except for Bowen, and a few others. She is top notch! Smart as a whip, into open government for her whole career--and one of the miracles of the 2006 elections (in which the voters threw Schwarzenegger appointee, Bruce McDiebold, out of office).

Speaking of throwing people out of office, how does Connie McCormack (aka, Connie McDiebold--big family, the McDiebolds) fit into this Los Angeles/ES&S story? Anybody know? Brad doesn't mention her. She is one of the truly bad actors on election theft machines in California. Her best friend, Debra Sieler, was the chief salesperson for Diebold in California, and McCormacks's husband had fingers in one of the InkaVote systems, I believe. McCormack led the group of corrupt county election officials (most of them Republicans) who helped drive Kevin Shelley from office, cuz he wouldn't give them their federal payola money for Diebold touchscreens. It doesn't surprise me at all that Los Angeles has a vote theft system run by rightwing corporate liars (ES&S, brethren to Diebold--similar computer architecture; ES&S spun off, I would guess, in case the more notorious Diebold got run out of the country on a rail). (Until recently, the two corps were run by two brothers, Tod and Bob Urosevich.)

[Wilms]

17. K & R n/t