Problem-free day at polls erases memories of past glitches, bubbles (NOT!)

[cascadiance]

I put the NOT there, because the subject line of this article is totally misleading. Jim March of Black Box voting got arrested yesterday trying to monitor the Diebold Central Tabulator machine which was positioned so that it could be well scrutinized by election observors, for yesterday's San Diego Special Election for Mayor.

Consider that Donna Frye in a runoff election against Jerry Sanders was probably the most *realistic* outcome that could be "had" by those that don't want Donna Frye in as mayor (since she'll have a lot more difficult time winning against Sanders than against Francis). That's not saying they engineered this outcome, but one wonders...

Anyway, from the following article in the Union Tribune web site:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20050727-0036-7n27vote.html

---------------------------

Problem-free day at polls erases memories of past glitches, bubbles

By Jeanette Steele
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

12:36 a.m. July 27, 2005

SAN DIEGO – For the first time in a while, voting in San Diego seemed to go smoothly.

...

There was some commotion at night, however.

About 10:45 at the registrar's office in Kearny Mesa, a member of a group that monitors elections stormed into a computer room where votes were being tabulated. Jim March, who sits on the board of Black Box Voting, complained about having to observe from behind a window eight feet away. When an election worker opened the door, March bolted inside.

Two sheriff's deputies jumped from their seats, pulled him out of the room and led him to a patrol car.

Thirty minutes earlier, March told a reporter he was going to perform an act of civil disobedience.

--------------------

The following email was sent out to the Open Voting Consortium Discussion List, with a "slightly different" version of what went on.

Subject: Black Box Voting Board Member Arrested in San Diego for Viewing Vote-Tallying
From: "Black Box Voting" <[e-mail] >
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 01:51:05 -0700 (PDT)

VIEWING THE DIEBOLD VOTE-TALLYING SCREEN PROHIBITED

Jim March, a member of the Black Box Voting board of directors,
was arrested Tuesday evening for trying to observe the Diebold
central tabulator (vote tallying machine) as the votes were being
counted in San Diego's mayoral election (July 26).
(- online discussion: http:/www.blackboxvoting.org -)

According to Jim Hamilton, an elections integrity advocate from
San Diego, he and March visited the office of the registrar
of elections earlier in the day. During this visit, March made
two requests, which were refused by Mikel Haas, the San Diego
Registrar of elections.

1) March asked that the central tabulator, the computer that
tallies up the votes from all the precincts, be positioned so
that citizens could observe it. According to Hamilton, this
would have required simply moving a table a few feet.

2) March also asked for a copy of the ".gbf" files -- the vote
tally files collected during the course of tabulation – to be
provided for examination after the election.

During the tallying of the election, the Diebold computer
was positioned too far away for citizens to read the screen.
Citizens could not watch error messages, or even perceive
significant anomalies or malfunctions.

Unable to see the screen, March went into the office where the
tabulator was housed. Two deputies followed him and escorted
him out.

According to Hamilton: "He was not belligerent, not at all.
After he went inside the tabulator room he came
out and he said clearly 'I’m not resisting.' They handcuffed
him, took him out of the building. They put him in a squad car.
take him to jail," said Hamilton. "He’s getting charged with a
felony, 'interfering with an election official.'"

March's actions are the culmination of two years of increasing
frustration with the refusal of election officials to respond to
security deficiencies in the voting machines. The software that
tallies the votes in San Diego is made by Diebold Election Systems,
a company that has already paid the state of California $2.8 million
for making false claims, due to a lawsuit filed by March and Black
Box Voting founder Bev Harris.

On July 4, a report was released by European computer security
expert Harri Hursti, revealing that the Diebold voting system
contains profound architectural flaws. "It is open for business,"
says Hursti, who demonstrated the flaws on Leon County, Florida
Diebold machines. He penetrated the voting system in less than
five minutes, manipulating vote reports in a way that was
undetectable.

Despite the critical security alert issued by Hursti, San Diego
County sent 713 voting machines home with poll workers, increasing
the risk that the "memory cards" housed in the machines could be
hacked, and removing the argument that "inside access" was carefully
safeguarded.

The arrest of Jim March underlines a fundamental problem facing
Americans today as, increasingly, they lose the ability to monitor,
verify, or watch any part of the counting process.

The San Diego registrar of elections knew of the security flaws in
the voting system. Diebold has never denied the vulnerability
identified in Hursti's report, found at http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf .

Despite knowledge of the increased risks, Haas made the decision
to create additional vulnerability by sending the machines home
with hundreds of poll workers.

While San Diego officials will no doubt point to a small seal on
the compartment housing the memory card (the component exploited
in Hursti’s study), Black Box Voting has interviewed a former
San Diego poll worker, who reported that all that is necessary
to dislodge and then reaffix the seal is a small pair of pliers.

IN A NUTSHELL:

- The machines have been demonstrated to be vulnerable to
undetected tampering
- The San Diego registrar of voters chose not to take
appropriate precautions
- The main tally machine was placed in a location that was
impossible for citizens to observe
- Many voting integrity advocates have come to believe that
voting machine reform now rivals the urgency of the Civil
Rights movement in the 1960s.

Jim March acted on those beliefs.

* * * * *

If you share the feelings that Jim March has expressed
about voting system secrecy, please forward this message to
your lists and to online blogs as appropriate. Permission
granted to reprint, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org .

* * * *

[Kelvin Mace]

1. A publicity stunt where

Jim March tries to set himself up as a martyr.

I guess the $76,000 he got from the "qui tam" wasn't enough. Now he'll sue for "false arrest" and/or "malicious prosecution".

Viacom and Diebold are now engaged in a race to see who can make ol' Jim a millionaire first

Jim March
7/9/04
http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=90961&perpage=999

[cascadiance]

2. I agree that we can't accept Jim March's comments without extra scrutiny

But doesn't it bother you that San Diego's major newspaper prints an article with a subject line that indicates to the browser that *nothing* went wrong, when someone got arrested in this fashion?

This article falsely characterizing how "smooth" this election was was *not* something that Jim March had any control over. Why did they try to make it sound smooth when it wasn't?

I don't think we still yet have the full version of what happened then.

That troubles me. We're in a day and age where it is hard to find information we can trust. This sort of event and descriptions of it is an illustration of this.

[Kelvin Mace]

4. I agree

Unfortunately, part of the reason we don't know all the details is we can't trust the word of people like Jim March.

Once up on a time, we had two sets of liars to worry about. BBV vendors and election officials. Now we have three.

[cascadiance]

13. I have an email sent by a gentleman who knows Jim...

and he differs with you on whether Jim is someone to be trusted or not. He's very much involved locally with election integrity issues.

Here's the text of his email, and an explanation as to why Jim was feeling it important to do what he did yesterday...

"I happen to know Jim and can tell you that he is a
very sincere individual. If he uses this event as a
reason for entering into a lawsuit against the San
Diego County Registrar of Voters, I think it's a great
idea.

The current weakest point where an election could be
rigged in San Diego, is the Diebold GEMS vote
tabulation system which is apparently what he was
trying to observe. I have been working with Bill
Fischer here in San Diego County and the Ewig's in
Riverside County on poll watching issues with an
emphasis on auditing the GEMS vote tabulation. This
sort of 'mushroom treatment' seems to be a chronic
problem where the GEMS system is used. Based on my
research and consultation with experts in the field
(including the highly respected Doug Jones of the
University of Iowa) the only realistic way to audit
such a system is effectively parallel processing. To
do this requires that someone observe the screen of
the computer that is being used for data entry. A
person needs to first look at the precinct level data
paper tape print out from the Acuvote scanners and
then see if the increment of the vote totals on the
tabulator screen when the data chip is counted in the
GEMS system is the same as the paper tape data you've
observed. The Acuvote data is both printed out and
written to a memory chip. However, the memory chip is
almost always what is read into the computer. It
takes less effort and is faster than keying it in.
If someone makes it difficult to see this screen, it's
likely that they either have something to hide or
don't understand how the system works. It would be an
extremely simple matter for the ROV to have provided
multiple monitors placed in such a way that both the
computer operator and 3rd party observers can see the
data as it is entered. I've had conversations with
the San Diego County ROV (Mikel Haas) and I can tell
you that he has the local shinola franchise and has
the local soft soap distributorship IMHO. Frankly,
because of this harrasement of Jim March, I think that
there should be a hand recount of the ballots.

Thanks,..."

[aquart]

5. What's truly frightening

is that this is exactly what I'd expect to hear from professional disinformation planters.

I have no idea who Jim March is. But my basic suspicion is that questioning anything about a San Diego election is probably correct. The last one wasn't honest and my first reaction to hearing the results this time was it meant a bitch of a fight in November.

Lawsuits that increase the visibility and press and information on these elections ain't my idea of a bad thing.

[Kelvin Mace]

8. Are you accusing me

of being a "professional disinformation planters"?

Jim March and Bev Harris schemes have been THOROUGHLY documented on this board.

[Kelvin Mace]

9. Uh, and another thing

Lawsuits that increase the visibility and press and information on these elections ain't my idea of a bad thing.

The lawsuit in question was settled on terms quite favorable to Diebold. It was also settled "with prejudice" which means they can never be sued again on that evidence. March and Harris totally blunted the evidence that was gathered in the rush to make money.

They accused other people of filing qui tam suits for personal gain, when they themselves were doing precisely that (after swearing they would do no such thing).

[aquart]

6. Publicity stunts gain press and call attention, right?

Which makes them bad, how?

Are you telling me the voting counter was correctly positioned and easy to view?

[Kelvin Mace]

7. I have no idea

as we only have the word of people who have lied in the past and who have admitted that they are in this for the money.

[cascadiance]

10. The real problem is that the media today is ALL about making money

No matter who is involved (the media companies, those are reporting it, those who are being reported on, etc.).

It is what corrupts everything and makes it so hard to be informed now.

I don't think we can dismiss Bev Harris or Jim March, just because they are making a bit of money on it.

The right wing is doing the same thing when they dismiss Richard Clarke because he "has a book deal" and charges a lot for lectures he gives.

On the other side, you have some people who make a point of trying to run in politics without "taking in" money (aka Donna Frye versus heavily funded Steve Francis), or whistleblowers like Sibel Edmonds who are intentionally trying to avoid having the "for profit" label hung on them, but as a result aren't heard about *near enough* in their efforts to inform the public of what's going on...

How does one in this day get important information to the masses when there are no things such as Clean Election Laws everyplace or the Fairness Doctrine (which had offered the less "funded" an opportunity to counter others' claims).

That is a fundamental problem that until solved, we have to accept that some folks are going to profit from this info here and there. We have to be more educated and srcutinizing as a public to determine what is truth and what isn't, but I'm not prepared to just dismiss Jim March's version because at some point he made money off of some interview or the like, or the reporter for the Tribune that might have some information that is useful to us, but had her editor (who's implementing his corporate media bosses wishes) slap on a subject line making it sound like everything's hunky dory too.

[Kelvin Mace]

11. I don't suspect their actions because of one incident of money grubbing

I don't think we can dismiss Bev Harris or Jim March, just because they are making a bit of money on it.

I dismiss their actions as "suspect" based on other actions and money grubbing they have done.

I have serious problems with the press glossing over this, but then, some on the press gloss over this because of past experience with March & Harris.

They have been quite abusive to the press in the past, this I know from first-hand experience of trying to calm angry reporters after Bev exploded on them.

Ms. Harris has a very poor record on this board. She has refused to account for huge sums of money raised, attacked fellow activists with lies and innuendos, consorted with Freepers and egged them on to hound a dying man.

The list of people she has accused of misconduct is a "who's who" of the Left.

How do we trust people who have been caught repeatedly in lies?

[KurtNYC]

3. "Erases memories"

Kind of an interesting phrase to use in the headline of a story about vote fraud and Diebold machines! A freudian propaganda slip?

[cascadiance]

12. Hmm... I guess it is felt that only folks in California should be

concerned about potential voter fraud issues on an issue that just happened last night...

I'm feeling even moreso now that between the different entities that are shown to be or alleged to be trustworthy, and now less exposure to interested parties, we'll never know if this election was "engineered" or not now.

Sorry for the mention of this story now in two different threads in the California DU group...

[wli]

14. no idea if Jim March is clean

But this is not an encouraging sign for efforts to try to monitor elections for fraud.

[Boredtodeath]

15. HERE'S the problem folks

Jim March was incapable of observing any election work the moment he behaved against the law.

If he's such a hero, why the hell did he get removed from the only place where he MIGHT make a difference?

Why did he call in the press and then take action to ensure that he would not be able to observe the tabulation?

There's wasn't any purpose to this except publicity.

If his intent was to make the process more open, he failed miserably. Now, they'll ensure that NO ONE has the possibility to view the tabulation in the future because they have an example of disruption of the process.

All he did was lock the door tighter.

[harmonyguy]

19. Let's not throw away the key quite yet....

'....the moment he behaved against the law.'

Did he behave against the law?
Here's the booking.
http://www.sdsheriff.net/wij/wijDetail.aspx?BookNum=5132612

Here's the Section of the Statute:
"Any person who in any manner interferes with the officers holding an election or conducting a canvass,... as to prevent the election or canvass from being fairly held and lawfully conducted, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months or two or three years. "

Interference with an election official is not in and of itself a crime unless it prevents the election or canvass from being fairly held and lawfully conducted. Otherwise there would be no need in law to have the clarificaton included in the statute.

The question that needs to be asked is 'In what manner did Mr. March's actions prevent the election or canvass from being fairly held and lawfully conducted?

In order for a conviction on this charge, (and for that matter, in order for there to be sufficient belief or suspicion to lay the charge,) doesn't that by its very definition mean that the profferor of the charge has reasonable belief or suspicion that the election was unfairly held and unlawfully conducted?

If the charge was laid by the police/prosecutor/county attorney then the police/prosecutor/county attorney must reasonably suspect that the election was unfairly held and unlawfully conducted?

If, on the otherhand, the election is declared to be fairly and lawfully conducted, then Mr. March simply cannot be convicted of causing otherwise.

Now I'm no lawyer, and I don't pretend to be one, but before we go and say he behaved against the law, let's be sure.

Your mileage may vary...
HG

[Boredtodeath]

20. He admitted his guilt

He KNEW what he was about to do was illegal and told the reporter he was going to do it.

He has no defense.

[cascadiance]

21. He didn't say he was going to out and "break the law"...

The quote was "he was going to commit an act of civil disobediance". And we're dealing with a third hand quote from another person who may have misquoted him anyway.

Just saying you are going "to do something about" what you perceive to be a problematic set up that prevents one from monitoring this elect, doesn't necessarily imply you are trying to (or admitting to) breaking the law in so doing.

I think we still haven't heard enough to form a judgement, and like someone else said, whether he "broke the law" or didn't, if there was no damage or influence to the counting process to produce inaccurate results, then they really haven't proven that he's broken the law. And likewise if there are problems with a recount *NOT* of his doing, but someone else's, HE is not guilty of influencing vote counts, but the other party that is found to be responsible for the voting inaccuracies would be guilty.

Like I've said before, I think if we do a truely sufficiently sized *randomly selected* precinct hand recount and found that they matched the totals that were entered in earlier, we right things off as no harm done and we move on to the runoff election. No huge harm done at this point, with Donna not pushed out just yet.

[Boredtodeath]

22. Yes, he did

He admitted to the reporter that he was aware his actions were unlawful; that's premeditation.

If he had just done it, without calling the reporter, he could claim "impulse" but that's not what he did. He planned to break the law, and then invited the press to watch.

[MindPilot]

16. OK, Jim March and BBV aside, where do we go from here?

We have a report that "someone"--doesn't matter who--was removed from the central tabulator room. We also know that the counting process was not open to the public.

Is that "security breech" enough to justify asking for a recount? Is the fact that the was not opened to the public enough? I don't really think so, and I also don't dispute the outcome of the election. Donna's vote count pretty much mirrored her polling numbers going in and prop A was a single issue vote for many.

I think at this point we should look to the future and request that the RoV simply put up a couple of extra monitors the public can look at. If they really want to say "hey we're counting in public", add a TV feed of the CT screen.

I think it would be a good idea to ask for a recount simply for an audit; it's a new system, let's make sure it worked right.

[Boredtodeath]

17. Audit the election

Do an open records request and get the following records of the election:

1. For each AccuVoteTS, End of Day Totals from each DRE used in the precinct signed by elections officials including Early Voting Absentee precincts;

2. For each precinct, End of Day Precinct Totals signed by Elections Officials, including Early Voting Absentee precincts and Absentee Ballot Precincts;

3. For each precinct, Direct Record Electronic Voting Machine Recap, signed by Elections Officials, including Early Voting Absentee Optical Scan precincts and Absentee Ballot Precincts;

4. A list of DRE voting machine distribution by precinct. Serial numbers and identifying information are not necessary.

[cascadiance]

18. It may not have been Donna's numbers they were "futzin' with"...

They might have been taking votes from Francis and giving them to Sanders. Polls indicated they were neck and neck and some had Francis ahead.

Why, you ask? They knew that trying to fudge Donna's numbers so that she wouldn't make the runoff would simply not be doable without suspicion. She simply had too high numbers. So given that she was going to win outright or be in the runoff, which candidate would most likely beat her (putting aside which candidate the Rethugs would actually prefer being in there)? The answer to that would be Sanders. Plenty of the voters for Sanders would switch over to her against Francis, and I think she would have been favored to beat Francis. The same couldn't be said for Francis voters to go over to Fry if she were to face Sanders. So if they could jockey some votes over to ensure Sanders won and not Francis, they would have done their "manipulative" duty to try and keep Frye from winning mayor in the least obvious way.

Then again, it could be a completely accurate count and all this suspicion is for nothing. In any case, I'd like to see a hand recount to ensure accuracy, even if it is a *random* (NOTE random is important, so that it isn't "selected" precincts like what was done in Ohio). Heck given that "money bags" Steve Francis was the odd man out that would most likely immediately "benefit" from a recount, perhaps he might help fund it! :)

[Liberty Belle]

23. No candidate's numbers fluctuated more than 1% or so all night,

even from the early returns with just 1-2% of precincts counted. Ordinarily in local elections, results fluctuate significantly as liberal or conservative precincts come in. Possibly a "thresshold" level was set, after which votes were changed or deleted.

I received an e-mail this afternoon from a poll watcher in Ocean Beach, who reports his precinct had over three times as many votes for Frye as for any other candidate. Why didn't the total swing upwards when this precinct came in?

Frye: 282
Sanders: 82
Francis: 62
Everyone else: less than 10 votes each

Perhaps it was countered by a very, very conservative precinct tallied at the same time, but I find this suspicious at the least.

[rinsd]

24. Turnout was low....

I live in Ocean Beach. I went to vote around 5 pm. There were exactly two voters in the entire place.

"Ordinarily in local elections, results fluctuate significantly as liberal or conservative precincts come in."

The results were reported in bunches, hundreds of precincts at once. They also are very close to pre-election polls numbers which saw Frye in the low to mid 40's with Francis and Sanders trading 2nd over the last few days.

[cascadiance]

25. The key is "Francis and Sanders" trading 2nd...

Either of them finishing ahead of each other would be "believable" with the polls, but having Sanders win was very strategic for those who wouldn't want Fry to win. If there was manipulation, ensuring that Sanders had more votes than Francis would be one aspect, and having an upper ceiling for Frye to keep her below 50% would be the other.

Manipulating it so that she would finish third would have triggered recounts, and a lot of questions.

The outcome certainly is possibly the correct one, but I'd still like to find out if they had ways of preventing Francis from winning second or had "controls" in place that would still violate our voting processes. Had the central machine been visible for all to see, I don't think anyone would be questioning things at this point. I think, whether or not Jim was "grand standing" a publicity stunt or not, one really should get the answer as to why the machine wasn't visible. Was there ANY reason it shouldn't have been? It seems that if they have nothing to hide, putting it closer for all to see would do so much more for helping restore citizens' confidence that we were getting a fair election with so much doubt building up in us over the last few years.

Had Francis won, unless he had some other thing up his sleeve for trying to push down Frye later in the runoff election, then I wouldn't have been as suspicious, as the outcome wouldn't have been favoring the Republicans.

[rinsd]

26. Understandable...

...but maybe just maybe we as a city wanted to see someone decent as mayor and Francis's slime tactics backfired. I think Sanders made a bigger push in the polls the last few days than Francis(who did make some intial gains when he started his Frye & Sanders will raise taxes schtick). I also saw more Sanders volunteers out with signs than Francis. Granted that's anecdotal but going in I was sure it would be Sanders vs. Frye.

[Liberty Belle]

28. Check this thread for more info on problems with SD's election:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=141&topic_id=12946&mesg_id=12946

This is my article that ran today in the East County Californian.
Hundreds of pollworkers were allowed to take home voting machines with programmable memory cards, protected only by a flimsy seal that can be taken off with pliers and reapplied without a trace.

In Leon County, FL, BBV security experts proved that a single memory card could be used to infect one machine, groups of machines, or the entire system via the central tabulator.

I've also read today that the tabulator was hooked up to the Internet, a violation of state election law.

Bev Harris told me in an interview yesterday that she suspects the election results here are "very fishy" and that a thresshold may have been set.

Interestingly, there were members of San Diego's Grand Jury present during the vote-counting. A local activist and computer expert, Bruce Sim, has filed a complaint with the Grand Jury over Diebold voting equipment but hasn't received a reply. Sounds like the GJ may be initiating an investigation.

One added twist: the new acting mayor, Toni Atkins, appointed by council following successive resignations of Zucchet and Murphy, is a Democrat. Could this be a window of opportunity to educate an official in a position to speak out and call for change in our election procedures? Does anyone know what if anything the City Council could do, when the County Board of Supervisors and the Registrar continue to keep their heads in the sand or worse, actively obstruct election reform?

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. Erases memories?

Com'on who are they kidding? I actually had a nice talk with the poll workers, the place was empty, about the problems wtith the GEMS database. They went you don't expect paper ballots after florida? I went sure, I don't expect paper ballots after Ohio... paper ballots is not what those in control wnat, even if that is what the people want

Oh they relucntanctly agreed by the way

[roody]

29. BBV

So the folks from BBV are not perfect. I'm sure that they do need some income for their work. If they are not watching out for the vote count, who will?