URGENT! June 9 deadline on CA showdown with Diebold/ES&S!!!

[Peace Patriot]

Californians and ALL AMERICANS and ALL CITIZENS OF THE WORLD have an opportunity to comment on Diebold and ES&S's inherently fraudulent voting systems--the ones that placed the Bush Cartel back in the White House against the wishes of the American people--and which are being proposed for California, currently the most anti-Bush state in the union...

DEADLINE FOR WRITTEN COMMENT: This Thursday, June 9, by 5:00 pm
HEARING IN SACRAMENTO: Next Thursday, June 16, 10:00 am.

The California Secretary of State Voting Systems and Procedures Panel (VSPP) is meeting June 16 to consider the following agenda:

1. Diebold Election Systems

a. GEMS central tabulation software
b. AccuVote TSx (touchscreen) DRE system
c. Spyrus voter card encoder
d. Key Card Tool software
e. VC Programmer software
f. AccuVote-OS optical scan system (& AccuFeed)

2. Election Systems & Software

a. Unity election management system
b. Model 100 precinct scanner
c. Model 550 central scanner
d. Model 650 central scanner
e. AutoMARK Voter Assist Terminal
f. AutoMARK Information Management System

3. Federal Qualification Process Report

-------

This hearing is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT! As California goes, so goes the nation! STOP DIEBOLD AND ES&S IN CALIFORNIA!

-------

Send written comments to:

Voting Systems and Procedures Panel (VSPP)
Office of the California Secretary of State
Attn. Bruce McDannold
FAX [phone] - Tel. [phone],
or mail to: 1500 11th St, 5th Floor, Sacramento, CA 95814
or email to: Bruce McDannold at [e-mail]

Notify VSPP of intention to speak or present information, call Bruce McDannold, at [phone], or email [e-mail]

--------

For pointers for your letters and more information/discussion, go to Amaryllis' post at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x374848

For info on CITIZEN RALLY and updates on VSPP agenda:

Marc Keenberg: [e-mail]
Sherry Healy: [e-mail]

The California Election Protection Network (CEPN) has information in pdf form at:

http://www.dfa-marin.org/June16HearingPressRelease.pdf

-------

FLOOD THE VSPP WITH LETTERS saying NO to these Bush-installing companies with their secret, proprietary programming code, their lobbying for paperless voting, their central electronic tabulators, their donations to Bush-Cheney, and their utter corruption of U.S. elections!

CEPN has a detailed list of demands for verifiable electronic voting systems at the pdf listed above--helpful in composing letters to the VSPP--but I believe in also addressing the heart of the problem: WHO these companies are, WHO they want to put into office (and HAVE put into office), and WHY we had an UNVERIFIABLE election in 2004.

These companies should be BANISHED from California--and from ALL U.S. elections!

Secret programming code, for godssakes! What a number they have pulled on us! Get rid of them and all such companies!

------

ANOTHER REASON WHY THIS HEARING IS SO IMPORTANT:

The Bush Cartel drove our vigilant, popularly elected, Democratic Secretary of State Kevin Shelley out of office (Shelley fought Diebold, sued them, and decertified their election fraud machines), and have replaced him with a Schwarzenegger patsy appointee!

So, we need all the help we can get to rid us of Diebold & co. and to help insure honest, transparent, verifiable elections in California. A flood of letters may at least make them cautious about undoing Shelley's reforms. The state legislature passed a law requiring a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), for instance--but I believe that an assault on that law (or exemptions or delays of implementation) may be planned. (Diebold shills have lobbied for delays that would prevent VVPAT from kicking in before the Schwarzenegger Special Election this fall! They want to be able to fiddle that election! With Schwarzenegger "re-districting" the state, and overriding the Democratic legislature on budget cuts, via an untimely and expensive Special Election, it will be all over for the Democratic majority power in California.)

Public sentiment is vitally important. Help put the pressure on!

[Zinfandel]

1. This MUST be posted in the General Discussion Forum & for 'Greatest Page'!

This has to be seen by as many people as possible.

[Panda1]

2. I second!

.

[Peace Patriot]

22. *IMPORTANT NOTICE*: Yes, McDannold's email IS working, and YES, the...

...public CAN submit comment on the VSPP Agenda BY EMAIL!!!!

I just got word DIRECTLY from the Secretary of State's office, in answer to these two questions (which arise in the thread below, and in the linked DU thread).

So...get your comments in by June 9, at 5 pm, and they will be included in the VSPP members packet (for the June 16 meeting), whether you can attend or not.

And if you are able to attend the June 16 meeting, email your comments by June 9, 5 pm, to be included in the members' packet.

(I do not know the VSPP policy for accepting longer written comments at the hearing itself, but we do know they're going to try to limit each speaker to two minutes, and are disallowing giving your speaking time to anyone else for longer presentations.)

[Peace Patriot]

3. Thanks for the kicks! Let's get the word out on this!

And thanks to Amaryllis for the original post!

Send to all lists!
Send to all election reform groups!
Send to political action groups!
Post everywhere!
Blast the media!

MEDIA BLASTER (easy to use) at:

http://www.independentmediasource.com/voteintegrity2_12.htm

Tell people to flood the CA VSPP with letters! Post your letters here--as samples for others to use.

[Amaryllis]

10. Thank you for making it more prominent. I got it one morning & recognized

the importance but didn't have time to adaquately read it thru and figure it all out. Tried to pick an eye-catching title, but you know how it is with thread titles...sometimes you score and sometimes you don't.
But I have always tried to support these CA issues, because these are no longer state issues; we are all in this one together.

[Peace Patriot]

16. Absolutely, we are all in this together! And California has been on the..

...Bush Cartel's target list at least since spring 2001, when Schwarzenegger met with Ken Lay in Los Angeles to plot the Recall coup, Cheney had recently met with Enron and the Oil Cabal to plot the Iraq invasion, and Enron was meanwhile stealing $9 billion from our state.

Democrats make budget surpluses (i.e., Davis; Clinton). Bush fascists steal them!

-----

Kerry beat Bush by a 10% margin in California! And Californians elected Senator Boxer by a 20% margin in the same election! (Therein may lay a tale of vote stealing from Kerry in Republican-controlled counties, but that's another story.) This is a very Democratic state--a bulwark against the Bush coup--and that's very clearly why certain things have happened here and are planned, having to do with Diebold/ES&S controlling our election results, and Schwarzenegger grabbing more and more control over the levers of government, just as the Bushites are doing nationally. They don't NEED popular support if they have control over elections and redistricting.

Schwarzenegger's approval rating has plummeted--and is now on a par with Bush's which has been consistently bad for at least a year, and is hovering in the mid- to low 40s.

See this google search on Schwarz's ratings:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Schwarzenegger+approval+poll&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

And check out this story from the Sydney Morning Herald (April 29, 2005):

"Schwarzenegger's Approval Ratings Plummet"

"What once seemed unthinkable has now become a reality: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's approval ratings have tumbled.

"In 90 days, Schwarzenegger's opinion poll rating has tumbled by 20 points.

"Potential voters are now voicing doubt about the state spending restrictions that the Republican governor and former action hero wants them to approve in a referendum later this year.

"Just 40 per cent of Californians think Schwarzenegger is doing a good job and half say he's faring poorly, according to the non-partisan survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

"Some Republican strategists are suggesting that Schwarzenegger consider abandoning the ballot, known as a special election.

"'When the governor's advisers laid out the special election based on reform, they were counting on a very popular governor to carry a load of fairly complicated ballot measures across the finish line,' said Republican strategist Dan Schnur. 'In this context, it may be hard for him to pull off an initiative load this fall.'"....

"The governor's 20-point slide is more precipitous than the 2001 tumble by his predecessor former Democrat Governor Gray Davis."

-------

They think they can proceed WITHOUT public approval, in the confidence that elections can be fixed. And the more power they grab, the more they are able to fix elections with impunity. That's what this meeting of the VSPP is about, really. How much can they get away with in California, with Kevin Shelley gone, and Schwarz's appointee now in place?

Yes, the legislature has to approve the election system rules, but it doesn't approve every purchase of election equipment or individual companies. And our rules are better than some places, but not that great. There is no law against secret, proprietary source code, for instance--or debarring companies who insist upon it--and no law against Bush partisans owning and controlling portions of our election system. There is plenty of wiggle room to steal elections, even with a VVPAT required. And so what is needed is vigilance--someone like Kevin Shelley on them every minute. That's why they got rid of him.

[Amaryllis]

21. kick

[Amaryllis]

37. kick

[stickdog]

4. Shelley's persecution & removal was certainly meant to "send a message."

There's a war going on against anyone who has the power, will and guts to fight to protect free and fair elections.

[SteveIrving1]

5. Can't the legislature do something?

I mean isn't there a law already in place and that already took effect?

[doodadem]

6. This email for McDannold not working

Help!

[Peace Patriot]

7. I got McDannold's email from their official VSPP meeting notice.

I will re-check it right now and see if I can find the problem.

[Peace Patriot]

11. The email address for McDannold is correct as depicted by the VSPP...

...meeting notice for June 16.

Here's the web site:

http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_vs.htm

Scroll down to
Voting Systems and Procedures Panel:
Public Meeting Notice and Agenda

click on this red underlined item

"2005 Meeting Notices (Updated 3/10/05)"

It opens a pdf of the meeting notice. McDannold's email is provided in the small type paragraph at the bottom.

I don't know why it isn't working. I'll call the Sec of State's office tomorrow and try to find out. (They're closed for the day.)

It seems an omen, doesn't it? First, they restricted how we can use OUR two stinking minutes--can't give them to another speaker! No, first, they postponed this meeting from May to June (and might do so again, to foil public input?). THEN they put this new restriction on. Now we can't get McDannold's email to work. Well, we'll see what's what tomorrow.

Can you use the FAX number, and fax them your letter?

-----

I'm going to test the McDannold email address myself and see what happens. Be right back.

[Peace Patriot]

12. Well, I just sent a test email and a query to McDannold's email...

...address

[e-mail]

...and it has not bounced back to me. So that's one indication that it's working. If I get a reply, that will be confirmation.

DOODADEM, check your typing of the email address.

And please let me know if you made a mistake!

[doodadem]

17. I just did a cut and paste from your last email

in the address this time, and it looks like it went. I think the first one, which I just clicked on when you first posted, may have an extra space?

[pauldp]

8. Kick it !!! n/t

[Amaryllis]

9. kick

[Fiendish Thingy]

13. Comment sent- didn't bounce; nominated! N/T

[snot]

14. kick! n/t

[Imagevision]

15. This is urgent to get the word around > just fax them...!

[Peace Patriot]

33. The Bruce McDannold EMAIL is okay--AND, yes, you can send your...

...comments to this email address to be included in the VSPP packet. Deadline (for inclusion in packet) is TOMORROW, Thurs., June 9, by 5 pm. (Meeting is June 16.)

EMAIL TO: [e-mail]

[LightningFlash]

18. The governator is really out of control....

Trying to require these machines, shows what's really going on in this mans mansion...

[EFerrari]

19. ...

[senseandsensibility]

20. kick

Thanks for this!

[Peace Patriot]

23. Advice for content of your letters:

Here is a SUMMARY of California Election Protection Network (CEPN) positions for the current VSPP Agenda:

NO to vendors who use convicted felons for writing software, and who permit convicted felons access to election information.

NO to proprietary and/or secret computer components of any kind.

NO to remote access of any kind (such as modems or wireless--no "open back doors").

NO to private maintenance of machines.

NO to paper trails or ballots that are NOT archival.

NO to paper trails or ballots read by private entities.

NO to cash register roll type paper trails or ballots (can destroy secrecy of the ballot by tracing sequence of voting).

NO to vendors who have installed illegal voting equipment in CA.

NO to equipment that doesn't meet CA and Fed certification standards for all equipment.

NO to overly complex voting equipment that requires extra training or expense.

NO to modular data components vulnerable to exchanges with malicious data.

Additional CEPN positions:

CEPN affirms the goals of HAVA--the Help America Vote Act (Note: I do not support HAVA--I think HAVA was a deliberate setup of a fraudulent election; it may have beneficial stated goals, but it did not work out that way!)

CA's HAVA budget (hundreds of millions of dollars) should not be squandered on new equipment that doesn't meet all common sense and open election standards.

Don't spend that money if no acceptable equipment is presented at the June 16 meeting.

CEPN will vet the equipment to be presented, prior to the meeting
(contact LARA SHAFFER, Open Voting Consortium, at: [e-mail]
or tel [phone]).

CEPN supports accessible, voter-verified, paper ballots on archival paper that can be shuffled to retain secrecy of the ballot, and

Five Star Audit

--mandatory audits of ALL elections
--genuine random sampling
--minimum 5% sampling of paper ballots (or paper audit trails) and ALL provisional and absentee ballots
--hand-counted
--non-partisan oversight in a public forum

----

CEPN'S Announcment re: June 16

The California Election Protection Network ("CEPN") invites all citizens to join us in attending the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel ("VSPP") hearing on June 16, 2006.

This VSPP hearing will feature Diebold and Election Systems & Software ("ES&S") voting equipment manufacturers, seeking approval of their wares.

Thurs., June 16

9:00 am -- convene at Sec of State building: 1500 11th St., 1st Floor (Auditorium), Sacramento, CA 95814

10:00 am - the hearing; upon adjournment, go to citizen forums

If VSPP hearing is postponed (a trick they often pull), then citizen rally and lobby of the legislature. For further info.:

MARC KEENBERG: [e-mail]
SHERRY HEALY: [e-mail]

[Peace Patriot]

24. California Election Protection Network (CEPN)

CEPN Steering Committee:

Judy Bertelsen
Carolyn Fowler
Ferris Gluck
Anna Givens
Don Goldmacher
Jenny Hammond
Sherry Healy
Karen Indreland
Marc Keenberg
Mimi Kennedy
Cheryl Lilienstein
Sarah Rath
Sherry Reson
Eve Roberson
Maureen Smith
Marcy Winograd

CEPN includes reps from the following:

51st AD Delegate LA CA DEM PARTY
51CapitalMarch
Blackboxvoting.org
CA 6th Assembly District, Executive Committee
CA 77 Assembly District Democratic Committee
CitizenAct
City of Alameda Democratic
Code Pink
Democracy for America of Los Angeles
Democracy for America-Marin
Democracy for America, San Francisco
Dean Democrats of Silicon Valley
Election Board LA County Central Committee
GrassrootsWest.org
Left.org
New Frontier Democratic Club
Ojai Democrats
Progressive Democrats of America
Progressive Democrats of Sonoma County
Progressive Democrats, Los Angeles
San Diego for Democracy/DfA
Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee
Southern California Grassroots
United for Secure Elections
Ventura County Progressives
VOTERR
Voting Rights Task Force
Paul Wellstone Democratic Forum - L.A.
Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club - East Bay

[Helga Scow Stern]

25. ACTION SUMMARY and important findings from records request

ACTION SUMMARY

" I would urge that interested parties contact the Secretary of State
and urge that the upcoming VSPP meeting to consider the Application
currently before them regarding Diebold be postponed until the legal
issues be addressed. It appears that the entire certification process
in California is in violation of both California law and HAVA.

It is very important that defective voting systems not be certified in
the first place than trying to de-certify them later. That is what
happened in November, 2003 with the Diebold TSx at that time.

It is also important that letters be written to SoS Bruce McPherson
asking the following:

What are the regulations and specifications used to evaluate and test
proposed voting systems?
Specifically what are the security requirements that voting systems
must pass to meet the requirement that they are safe from fraud and
manipulation?

Why does the State of California continue to use the services of one
consultant (Steve Freeman) for doing the testing and evaluations of
voting systems? Especially in light of the law authorizing 3 to be
employed, and at no expense to the taxpayer.

Why has Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (DESI) been given special
dispensation in their efforts to have their voting systems certified in
California?
Why are known defects and bugs being allowed to continue in both
currently deployed Diebold voting systems, but even in this next
generation.

There also needs to be letters written to both the Elections
Division and Bruce McPherson asking

why parliamentary procedure is being violated by the new VSPP rules
limiting all speakers to two minutes each, with no transfer of minutes.

This is also in violation of the VSPP Procedures themselves which allow
for oral public comment and for expert testimony.
It appears that the Elections Division, and specifically the VSPP, does
not want public input into these matters.
If ever there was a fundamental interest of the public that should
warrant full public input and participation,
it should be regarding our right to elect our governmental
representatives with full confidence that they serve at the pleasure of
the people.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
FULL TEXT

On Friday, June 3, 2005 I picked up documents from the California
Secretary of State's Election Division in response to my Public Records
Act request of May 5, 2005. There is some dispute if the records are
complete, and many records were claimed to be proprietary. This despite
the clear language contained in the Application form from the SoS
stating that "Please note that all information you submit, once
received by the Secretary of State's office, will be considered a
public document." The legal counsel I have been working with at the
Elections Division was not aware of that language nor evidently of the
pertinent EC 19207 *see below. There will be a followup letter.

I received over 40 pages of emails, but they were almost
exclusively from the last several months. They denied my request for
records related to federal qualification issues going back to
September, 2003, even though I was specific. That also will be
addressed in a follow-up letter. The emails I did receive raise many
issues and do provide additional insight both into the certification
process, and the close relationship between Diebold and the Elections
Division. A case in point is illustrative: David Jefferson wrote an
email to the Elections Division, specifically Michael Wagaman, John
Mott-Smith, and Tony Miller suggesting they contact Linda Schade of
TruVoteMD regarding their press release issued in March regarding the
widespread problems in Maryland's November election that were
suppressed by the state from media reporting. It appears that instead
of contacting TrueVoteMD for further information or documentation, the
email from David Jefferson was sent directly to Marvin B. SIngleton of
Public Strategies, Inc., the lobbyist/ public relations person for
Diebold. His response to the inquiry from the SoS was to fax back a
copy of a staff report addressing the TrueVoteMD issues that was
presented to the Maryland State Board of Elections by Elections Board
staff. I will be interested in finding out if anyone from the SoS
contacted TrueVoteMD regarding their press release.

In California there are multiple problems with the entire
certification process, including; an ambiguous and outdated Election
Code; failure of the SoS to develop and adopt regulations authorized by
existing law; failure to do thorough testing and review by a team of
experts paid for by the vendors themselves (current law authorizes that
a maximum of 3 technical experts may be utilized at the vendors expense
for testing and evaluation), failure to develop and adopt a clear
certification process that addresses the minimum requirements needed to
insure that every voting system certified in this state meets EC
19205(a)(b)(c) *see below (suitable for its designed purpose, preserve
the secrecy of the ballot, and safe from fraud and manipulation);
failure to have truly "public hearings" and viewings during the
certification process; failure to develop regulations and procedures to
insure that the ballot of every voter in the State of California has an
equal opportunity to be treated the same (this is based upon the lack
of a uniform procedure for conducting the legally required 1% manual
audit), and other areas that will not be addressed in this email.

One area of great concern is the method by which the Diebold DRE
voting system will be audited during the 1% manual count. It appears
from one of the emails (see "Email 040805SF" attached) that the 1%
manual count will be machine counted by utilization of a bar code that
will be imprinted on the paper receipt. So a "machine" will "manually
count" the "paper receipts" to conform to the requirements of the
Election Code. The EC (336.5) states the manual recount "procedure is
conducted during the official canvass to verify the accuracy of the
automated count." I would like to know how an automated count of an
automated count qualifies either as a manual count or a verification of
the authenticity of an "automated count"?

The Certification process also requires that the proposed
procedures for the submitted voting system be submitted at least 45
days prior to the VSPP meeting. As happened in October, 2003 the first
time they tried to get the TSx certified, this requirement was not met
again. In addition, the entire certification and evaluation process is
not to be started until the Application is complete. Again, this
requirement was ignored by the SoS as it was in October, 2003. The
evaluation and testing was begun prior to the Application being
complete. Is Diebold being given special dispensation that is not
available to other vendors? Who is responsible for making exceptions to
the stated requirements of the SoS in conducting certification
evaluations of voting system Applications?

The emails reveal that there are many bugs and problems that it is
acknowledged will not be addressed until even later versions of GEMS
1.18.22. It appears from the Executive Summary (see attached) that the
Diebold TSx with Accuview Printer Module has critical deficiencies both
as a product and in security, yet it continues to be marketed.
Increasingly the evidence mounts that the major DRE manufacturers
market their voting systems as finished products, when in fact they are
at a poorly designed and implemented "beta" stage. The taxpayer and
voter is supposed to pay for the ongoing refinement of these defective
and insecure products. In fact, it appears it is at the expense of the
integrity of our democratic processes.

I would also like to point out that the Application submitted by
Diebold on March 18 (see attached) contains some areas that appear to
intentionally mislead. For example, on pages two through four they give
a description of each component or feature they are submitting. In some
areas, when referring to the Voting System Standards they are explicit
in citing the particular standards. Yet in other areas they are not.
Regarding GEMS 1.18.22 they refer to it having passed the requirements
of the "Voting System Standards" but fail to identify which ones. Yet
in the next paragraph they refer to the component meeting the 2002
Voting System Standards. Notice on page three regarding the AccuVote-OS
Opticval Scan with version 1.96.4 firmware the NASED number given it
appears to be referring to it meeting 1990 Voting System Standards.
This appears to violate HAVA requirements that voting systems currently
being submitted for qualification be qualified to the 2002 Voting
System standards in their entirety.

Given the preliminary review of these Public Record Act obtained
documents it appears that not only is the Diebold TSx and related
components not ready for use in California, but the Secretary of State
should develop, adopt, and then implement the law so the citizens of
California can have confidence that the voting systems certified and
used in this state are suitable for the purpose they were intended for,
provide for a secret ballot, and are secure from fraud and manipulation.

There is another email that reveals that some of Kevin Shelley's
Directives have been changed. Inquiry needs to be made to the SoS to
establish exactly what has been changed, and why.

It is also noteworthy that the Application for California
certification of the Diebold voting system and related components was
classified by Diebold themselves as a "new" voting system, not a
"modification" of a prior system. As John and Ellen of VotersUnite
recently pointed out in their excellent article, HAVA itself requires
that the entire voting system being federally qualified requires
testing to the 2002 Voting System Standards, not a hodgepodge of Voting
System Standards of both 1990 and 2002.

The documents I scanned and made into PDFs. They are quite large so
I have uploaded them to my "public folder" at my .Mac account. Click
on the Diebold Copy folder and then download them as you wish. They can
be accessed at:

http://www.mac.com/WebObjects/HomePage.woa/6/wo/9v3HRXKwb8ssv2pg.1/ 2.0.1.3

In my original request I had asked for any legal opinion or finding
that an evaluation and testing of a submitted voting system could be
begun prior to a "complete" application being submitted as required by
the published requirements ofr California state certification. The SoS
could not find any document of any such opinion or finding. This is
significant because Diebold has once again submitted an incomplete
Application and once again the Elections Division start testing and
evaluations, contrary to their own stated procedures. You can read my
Requests and the SoS Responses at:

http://www.mac.com/WebObjects/HomePage.woa/6/wo/9v3HRXKwb8ssv2pg.1/
7.0.1.0.4.2.15.0.3.33.97.1.35.0.1.3.0

I would urge that interested parties contact the Secretary of State
and urge that the upcoming VSPP meeting to consider the Application
currently before them regarding Diebold be postponed until the legal
issues be addressed. It appears that the entire certification process
in California is in violation of both California law and HAVA. It is
very important that defective voting systems not be certified in the
first place than trying to de-certify them later. That is what happened
in November, 2003 with the Diebold TSx at that time.
It is also important that letters be written to SoS Bruce McPherson
asking the following:
What are the regulations and specifications used to evaluate and test
proposed voting systems?
Specifically what are the security requirements that voting systems
must pass to meet the requirement that they are safe from fraud and
manipulation?
Why does the State of California continue to use the services of one
consultant (Steve Freeman) for doing the testing and evaluations of
voting systems? Especially in light of the law authorizing 3 to be
employed, and at no expense to the taxpayer.
Why has Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (DESI) been given special
dispensation in their efforts to have their voting systems certified in
California?
Why are known defects and bugs being allowed to continue in both
currently deployed Diebold voting systems, but even in this next
generation.
There are more questions but they will have to wait.

There also needs to be letters written to both the Elections
Division and Bruce McPherson asking why parliamentary procedure is
being violated by the new VSPP rules limiting all speakers to two
minutes each, with no transfer of minutes. This is also in violation of
the VSPP Procedures themselves which allow for oral public comment and
for expert testimony. It appears that the Elections Division, and
specifically the VSPP, does not want public input into these matters.
If ever there was a fundamental interest of the public that should
warrant full public input and participation, it should be regarding our
right to elect our governmental representatives with full confidence
that they serve at the pleasure of the people. The pertinent part of
the VSP hearing procedures are:

"906. Witnesses
Applicants may arrange for witnesses and expert testimony in support of
an application. Opponents of an application may also arrange for
witnesses and expert testimony. Testimony or information may be
provided in writing prior to or at the time of a hearing."

It is important to act immediately on this issue. The VSPP hearing
on the Diebold submission is scheduled for June 16.
Regards,
Jody Holder

PS: Please pass this on as oppropriate.

Election Code:
19205. The Secretary of State shall establish the specifications
for and the regulations governing voting machines, voting devices,
vote tabulating devices, and any software used for each, including
the programs and procedures for vote tabulating and testing. The
criteria for establishing the specifications and regulations shall
include, but not be limited to, the following:
(a) The machine or device and its software shall be suitable for
the purpose for which it is intended.
(b) The system shall preserve the secrecy of the ballot.
(c) The system shall be safe from fraud or manipulation.

It would appear that the following section of the Election Code was
written to provide the public an opportunity to provide "informed
comment" to the SoS regarding voting system submitted for
certification. The historical and current practice of issuing a staff
report just a few days prior to the actual VSPP hearing appears to be
against both the spirit and letter of the law.

19207. Within 30 days after completing the examination of any
voting system, the Secretary of State shall place on file a report
stating whether in his or her opinion the kind of voting system
examined can safely be used. The report shall also contain a
written or printed description and drawings and photographs clearly
identifying the machine or device and its mechanical operation.

The complete VSP Procedures can be found here:
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_w.htm

[emlev]

26. I asked my colleague at TrueVoteMD if they'd heard from CA SOS

The reply was, "We have not heard from the SOS -- however the Montgomery County IT report is on-line at TrueVoteMD.org so they could have just gone there to get the info."

Thanks, everyone, for all this great info and work!

[Peace Patriot]

27. Wow! Thanks, Ojai Person! I'll be back here tomorrow (Wed.) for...

...further updates and discussion.

[JRob]

28. DONE... recommended

[emlev]

29. Have you seen this (old) animation of The Governator?

It's maybe two minutes long. I just happened across it.

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/votingmachines.htm

[Einsteinia]

30. This is our prime opportunity!

n/t

[emlev]

31. Here's the call to action I sent to my email list

This is cut and pasted from DU posts, with a couple of additions of my own. I offer it in case you haven't emailed your personal list yet and want to.



Hi, friends. I hope you'll read this, take action, and forward this post to your email list as quickly as possible. If you can go to Sacramento on Thursday the 16th (that's next week), please do. Fair elections in California are really at stake here.

The California Secretary of State Voting Systems and Procedures Panel (VSPP) is meeting June 16 to consider turning California's elections over to privately owned, Republican controlled, electronic voting companies. If you wouldn't trust a private company to take all the ballots into a back room, count them and then tell you the results, it's important to take action now, because that's what they're trying to do. My colleagues in the election reform movement who are working on this issue and have been lobbying legislators in Sacramento are stunned at how little many of the legislators know about these issues. We really need to let them know that these issues are of grave importance to us. The public doesn't usually show up en masse at meetings of the VSPP; the more of us attend, the bigger our splash will be.

The following is excerpted from a call to action written by a colleague of mine:

Californians and ALL AMERICANS and ALL CITIZENS OF THE WORLD have an opportunity to comment on Diebold and ES&S's inherently fraudulent voting systems--the ones that placed the Bush Cartel back in the White House against the wishes of the American people--and which are being proposed for California, currently the most anti-Bush state in the union...

This hearing is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT! As California goes, so goes the nation! STOP DIEBOLD AND ES&S IN CALIFORNIA!

FLOOD THE VSPP WITH LETTERS (see talking points below) saying NO to these Bush-installing companies with their secret, proprietary programming code, their lobbying for paperless voting, their central electronic tabulators, their donations to Bush-Cheney, and their utter corruption of U.S. elections!

DEADLINE FOR WRITTEN COMMENT: This Thursday, June 9, by 5:00 pm
HEARING IN SACRAMENTO: Next Thursday, June 16, 10:00 am.

Send written comments to:
Voting Systems and Procedures Panel (VSPP)
Office of the California Secretary of State
Attn. Bruce McDannold
FAX [phone] - Tel. [phone],
or email to: Bruce McDannold at [e-mail]
Notify VSPP of intention to speak or present information, call Bruce McDannold, at [phone], or email [e-mail] (comments limited to two minutes per speaker)
-------

Talking points from the California Election Protection Network (CEPN):
Here is a SUMMARY of California Election Protection Network (CEPN) positions for the current VSPP Agenda:
NO to vendors who use convicted felons for writing software, and who permit convicted felons access to election information.
NO to proprietary and/or secret computer components of any kind.
NO to remote access of any kind (such as modems or wireless--no "open back doors").
NO to private maintenance of machines.
NO to paper trails or ballots that are NOT archival.
NO to paper trails or ballots read by private entities.
NO to cash register roll type paper trails or ballots (can destroy secrecy of the ballot by tracing sequence of voting).
NO to vendors who have installed illegal voting equipment in CA.
NO to equipment that doesn't meet CA and Fed certification standards for all equipment.
NO to overly complex voting equipment that requires extra training or expense.
NO to modular data components vulnerable to exchanges with malicious data.
-------
If you'd like to go to Sacramento for the meeting, here's the info:

The California Election Protection Network ("CEPN") invites all citizens to join us in attending the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel ("VSPP") hearing on June 16, 2006.
This VSPP hearing will feature Diebold and Election Systems & Software ("ES&S") voting equipment manufacturers, seeking approval of their wares.
Thurs., June 16
9:00 am -- convene at Sec of State building: 1500 11th St., 1st Floor (Auditorium), Sacramento, CA 95814
10:00 am - the hearing; upon adjournment, go to citizen forums
If VSPP hearing is postponed (a trick they often pull), then citizen rally and lobby of the legislature. For further info.:
MARC KEENBERG: [e-mail]
SHERRY HEALY: [e-mail]

To my friends outside of California:
I encourage you to write to the CA-VSPP even though you're not in the state. This issue really affects the whole country. If California's electoral votes are to be permanently delivered to the Republican Party by companies the likes of Diebold and ES&S, we might as well paint the whole map red right now!

[MindPilot]

32. Here's what I sent:

Voting is far too important to trust entirely to a machine. Computer code is not flawless as anyone who’s ever used a Microsoft product can attest. Sometimes a certain combination of inputs can return the wrong answer.

What if that wrong answer was your vote? What if that wrong answer was the total count for your candidate, or your party?

There is no anonymity guaranteed for the voter. The voter is identified, and given a card with encoded ballot information. The card is inserted in the voting machine and the voter’s choices are recorded to the card. The card is then returned to the poll worker who inserts the card into another device which reads the ballot selections into the master database. How does a voter know her name, address or other personal information wasn’t just linked to her vote?

The manufacturer, Diebold, most certainly claims this is not the case, but how would we, the voters, know? Diebold won’t allow anyone outside their company to look at the programming code.

Votes are unverifiable. There is no receipt, no hard copy, and no paper trail. The gold standard of electoral integrity—the hand count of paper ballots--is removed. Once the vote is recorded electronically, that’s it. If something goes wrong, if the count comes into question, if the data is suddenly “bad”, there is no recourse. There is nothing to recount. At that point the outcome of the election is whatever Diebold says it is and they won’t allow anyone outside their company to look at the programming code.

There is no guarantee that the programming of the voting machines doesn’t have a built-in bias. Voters assume their ballot selections displayed on-screen will be written to the data card. But that can’t be verified because Diebold won’t allow anyone outside their company to look at the programming code.

With voting in the hands of a private company, citizens may be at the mercy of that company’s political leanings. In Diebold’s case, their Board of Directors and top executives are heavy contributors to the Republican party, having recently donated tens of thousands of dollars to the RNC and individual Republican candidates. Would Diebold’s senior management use their power to influence the outcome of an election? One would hope not, but we can never know because Diebold won’t allow anyone outside their company to look at the programming code.

Because of the obvious conflict of interest and potential for corruption, companies and their officers should be prohibited from making political contributions or lobbying in any form.

Because of the necessity for election processes to remain politically neutral, the companies involved with election processes and voting counting should be nationalized to avoid partisanship. The CEO of Diebold promised to deliver Ohio’s 2004 electoral votes to the GOP, and as we all know he made good on that promise.

There must be laws to prohibit election officials from campaigning for a particular candidate. In the past two presidential elections, the Secretaries of State were also George Bush’s state campaign chairs; Harris in Florida and Blackwell in Ohio. It should surprise no-one that these two states became the flashpoint for voting irregularities and controversial recounts.

While “e-voting” may be the wave of the future, voting is not something that can be entirely paperless. Anyone who works with computers understands the necessity of backups and fall-backs. Our votes are far too important to ignore this simple fact of life regarding electronic data.

There must be a hard copy of every ballot available for a hand recount if that should become necessary. There must be consistent standards and regulations for both the companies and the people charged with implemented the voting process.

[Peace Patriot]

35. Great letter, MindPilot! I love your reiteration of...

..."Diebold won’t allow anyone outside their company to look at the programming code."

Same is true of ES&S. It is outrageous!

The VSPP should immediately recommend to the state legislature that all voting system programming code be open source!

[Peace Patriot]

34. The ACTION part of Judy Holder's communique (provided by Ojai Person,

above) can be summarized as follows:

Postpone these Diebold and ES&S applications for the following reasons:

--there are many legal issues that have not been addressed
--the certification process is in violation of California law and HAVA (federal election reform law)
--defective voting systems should not be certified; decertifying them after they have malfunctioned is too difficult, expensive and disruptive (as happened with Diebold TSx in November 2003)
--there are many questions that have yet to be answered, including:

What are the regulations and specifications used to evaluate and test proposed voting systems?

What are the security requirements that voting systems must pass to meet the requirement that they are safe from fraud and manipulation?

Why is the State of California using only one consultant (Steve Freeman) for the testing and evaluations of voting systems when the law authorizes 3 consultants at no expense to the taxpayer? (Note: Not the same Steve Freeman as the one with USCountVotes.)

Why is Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (DESI) being given special treatment in their voting system applications, considering that this company has already lied to the Secretary of State, has been sued by the Secretary of State, and has caused expense and disruption in the past due to defective systems that had to be decertified?

Why are known defects and bugs being allowed to continue in both currently deployed Diebold voting systems, and in next generation systems?

Why is the VSPP violating parliamentary procedure, and violating its own procedures for obtaining oral public comment and expert testimony, by changing the rules for public comment and limiting all speakers to two minutes each, with no transfer of minutes?

There is no more important public issue than the integrity of our elections. The VSPP should be encouraging full public input and participation, and full fact-finding from all interested parties, rather than discouraging in-put!

(See Ojai Person's post for rule citations.)

------

Some additional points (from me):

NO SECRET, PROPRIETARY PROGRAMMING CODE OR SECRET, PROPRIETARY COMPUTER COMPONENTS OF ANY KIND.

DEBAR ALL VOTING MACHINE COMPANIES THAT HAVE, a) previously broken the law, and have caused disruption, expense and decertifications; and b) with CEO's and owners who are major Republican donors and political operatives.

NO, NO, *NO* to GEMS!!!! (central electronic tabulators run on secret, proprietary programming code!!!!)

NO, NO, *NO* to touchscreens that changed Kerry votes to Bush votes in 86 out of 88 reported incidents in 2004 (see Congressional Election Incident Reports--EIRs).

NO "revolving door" employment between election officials and electronic voting companies. (This is a huge problem, and includes former Sec of State Bill Jones, who authorized purchase of these fraudulent election systems and then went to work for Sequoia!)

Some of the above will require legislative action--but the VSPP and the Sec of State can RECOMMEND such action, and can slow down the application of these inherently fraudulent systems in the meantime (if they have any interest in the integrity of our elections).

My personal view is that electronic voting systems have been used to hijack our democracy--and all of them must go! There is no patching up these inherently fraudulent systems. They are hopelessly corrupt. It's my opinion that Tom Delay's goals with regard to HAVA were to cripple this legislation and specifically to corrupt our election system by pouring vast amounts of money (over $4 billion) into the states, and thence into the pockets of the Bush partisans who own, control and promulgate electronic voting systems. Secret, proprietary programming code and paperless voting are an outrage!!! We should be riding these companies out of our state tarred and feathered and on a rail! We must go back to paper ballots and hand counts NOW.

End of rant. But they're already here. We have Diebold and ES&S optiscans and central tabulators already in place. The matter before VSPP next week is whether or not they are going to make it worse, by certifying touchscreens and GEMS. And Schwarzenegger has everything set up to do just that--with his own appointee as Sec of State!

The interim solution is PAPER BALLOTS and ABSENTEE BALLOTS. Absentee voting is easy in California--it must be provided at the will of the voter (no other requirement). And former Sec of State Shelley also provided Californians with a paper ballot option at the polling place (but many corrupt county officials obstructed that requirement by providing only provisional ballots or making it difficult in other ways).

We need to pressure the Sec of State, the VSPP, local county officials and our STATE LEGISLATORS to protect and promote these paper ballot options--and to educate the public on their use.

(I would like to see a statewide initiative to end electronic voting, with the requirement that the initiative vote be conducted entirely on paper ballots! How to accomplish this I do not know--through the CA courts?--but that is what is needed!)

[PsyOpsRunsOurCountry]

36. HERE IS AN ARTICLE ABOUT BBV COUNTING BACKWARDS IN FL!!

Pile on with your BBV fraud documents here to throw BBV out of California.

http://www.news4jax.com/politics/3890292/detail.html
>snip<

Broward Vote-Counting Blunder Changes Amendment Result 11/4/04

"The software is not geared to count more than 32,000 votes in a precinct. So what happens when it gets to 32,000 is the software starts counting backward," said Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman.

That means that Amendment 4 passed in Broward County by more than 240,000 votes rather than the 166,000-vote margin reported Wednesday night. That increase changes the overall statewide results in what had been a neck-and-neck race, one for which recounts had been going on today. But with news of Broward's error, it's clear amendment 4 passed.

Officials said the glitch did not affect the outcome of any other races. The vote-counting error did affect totals for amendments 4 through 8. But amendment 4 was the only race for which the corrected numbers changed the result.

Lieberman admits that the error is an embarrassing mistake.

"I think the people have a right to expect that when the numbers come up on screen that those numbers in fact the actual total numbers at each step of the process and not just after the final vote has been certified," Lieberman said.

[Peace Patriot]

38. The following items need to be placed in the record.

And I'm not sure what Bruce McDannold's policy may be on attachments (gov't entities often don't allow them for public comment). So--use urls, quote portions of documents, or include whole docs within the body of the email (unless you can hand deliver by tomorrow, June 9 by 5 pm--deadline for written comment to be included in VSPP packets).

Election Incident Reports (EIRs), especially those relating to electronic voting (like the touchscreens changing Kerry votes to Bush votes).

The Conyers report.

The Johns Hopkins report on the insecurity of electronic voting (analysing Diebold systems).

Myth Breakers.

Various studies--ignatzmouse (DU), Baiman, Freeman, USCV, UC Berkeley, Hayes--on weird anomalies favoring Bush in electronic voting.

TIA's whole series, "To believe Bush won, you have to believe..."

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

Here's my annotated list of selected election fraud/reform material:

California machine malfunctions and other voting problems:
http://www.flcv.com/californ.html

---

"Emerging Scandal on MD Voting Machine Performance"
"MD Election Group Calls for Independent Investigation and De-Certification of Machines (TruevoteMD.org); All MD Diebold Machines on Lockdown, Under Investigation for Widespread Statewide Election Day 2004 Failures
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/17/02212/3566

---

"Final Tallies Minus Exit Polls = A Statistical Mystery!," Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/24/04, by John Allen Paulos

http://www.math.temple.edu/~paulos/exit.html

Dr. John Allen Paulos: Professor of mathematics at Temple University; winner of the 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science award for the promotion of public understanding of science; author of several best-sellers, including Innumeracy and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market. Monthly "Who's Counting" columnist for ABCNews.com as well as a monthly column for The Guardian.

---

"It is my professional opinion that these numbers are fraudulent, and that this election has been hacked." (precinct level study of Miami County, Ohio).
Hacking the vote in Miami County
by Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
December 25, 2004
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1038

---

"Kerry won Ohio: Just Count the Ballots at the Back of the Bus"
In These Times
Friday, November 12, 2004
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=393&row=0

The Ballots at the Back of the Bus 11/14/05 Greg Palast
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1686/

-------

Exit poll analysis: astronomical odds against Bush win

Dr. Steven Freeman: Professor, Center for Organizational Dynamics, Univ. of Penn.; Karel Steuer Chair for entrepreneurship, Univ. de San Andreas, Buenos Aires; Professor of Management, Central Amer. Inst. of Business Administration (INCAE),
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm
"The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," and "Hypotheses for Explaining the Exit Poll-Official Count Discrepancy in the 2004 US Presidential Election"
"The Corrupted Election" (2/15/05) with Dr. Josh Mitteldorf
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1970

---

Dr. Ron Baiman: Economist/Statistician - senior research specialist, Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago; teaches at the University of Chicago.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/997

Baiman: "I conclude that, based on the best exit sample data currently available, neither the national popular vote, or many of the certified state election results, are credible and should not be regarded as a true reflection of the intent of national electorate, or of many state voters, until a complete and thorough investigation…."
The United States of Ukraine?: Exit Polls Leave Little Doubt that in a Free and Fair Election John Kerry Would Have Won both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote
by Ron Baiman
December 19, 2004

---

Dr. Webb Mealy: http://www.selftest.net/redshift.htm (Bush vote skewed to the Electoral Votes that were needed to win.)

---

The first USCount Votes report, which says, 1) Kerry won the Exit Polls (by 3%); 2) the Exit polls were skewed to Bush, so Kerry's margin was likely even higher; 3) there is evidence of electronic fraud at the precinct level, and 4) call for investigation of the 2004 Election:

http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/USCountVotes_Re_Mitofsky-Edison.pdf

Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D. - Temple University Statistics Department
Steven F. Freeman, PhD - Center for Organizational Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania
Brian Joiner, PhD - Prof. of Statistics and Director of Statistical Consulting (ret), University of Wisconsin
Frank Stenger, PhD in mathematics - School of Computing, University of Utah
Richard G. Sheehan, PhD - Department of Finance, University of Notre Dame
Elizabeth Liddle, MA - (UK) PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham
Paul F. Velleman, Ph.D. - Department of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University
Victoria Lovegren, Ph.D. - Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University
Campbell B. Read, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Statistical Science, Southern Methodist University
Kathy Dopp, MS in mathematics - USCountVotes, President
Also Peer Reviewed by USCountVotes’ core group of statisticians and independent reviewers.

Article:
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=30826&ntpid=1

---

Florida: 130,000 to 230,000 phantom votes for Bush--paper vs. electronic voting—in Florida's 3 biggest Democratic counties (Miami-Dade, Brower and Palm Beach); calls for investigation:
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu
Report issued 11/18/04, by Dr. Michael Haut, & U.C. Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team; Haut is a nationally-known expert on statistical methods and member of the National Academy of Sciences and the U.C. Berkeley Survey Research Center

"UC Berkeley Research Team Sounds 'Smoke Alarm' for Florida E-Vote Count
Statistical Analysis - the Sole Method for Tracking E-Voting - Shows Irregularities May Have Awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or More Excess Votes to Bush in Florida
Research Team Calls for Investigation"
Press release: http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1118-14.htm

---

Democratic Underground (ignatzmouse):
(North Carolina: absentee ballot vs. electronic, inexplicable 9% edge to Bush in electronic:)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x45003
(also at:) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/12/233831/06

---

TV networks alteration of the Exit Polls to fit the "official tally" (& Zogby prediction of Kerry win):
http://www.exitpollz.org/

---

Johns Hopkins report on insecurity of electronic voting: "Analysis of Electronic Voting System" http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00196.htm#5
by Tadayoshi Kohno, Adam Stubblefield, and Aviel D. Rubin of the Information Security Institute, Johns Hopkins University, and Dan S. Wallach, Department of Computer Science, Rice University
July 23, 2003

From the Abstract:

"Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts.

"We highlight several issues including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. For example, common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered without the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable. We conclude that, as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk."

---

Easy demo of how insecure voting machines are, by Republican hacker Chuck Herrin:
http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htm

---

"Myth Breakers: Facts About Electronic Elections" (2nd edition): www.votersunite.org

---

Ohio vote suppression: http://www.bpac.info

---

Documentation of widespread machine fraud and dirty tricks in over 20 states: http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.html

---

57,000 machine malfunction/vote suppression complaints to Congress:
http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=3961

---


Democratic Underground (TruthIsAll): "To believe Bush won, you have to believe…"

Part 1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=22581

Part 2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=53398

Part 3b
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=204891

Part 4
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=348022

All four parts compiled at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x368702

Democratic Underground (TruthIsAll): The Time Zone Discrepancy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x318693

---

Here's a great compilaton site for 2004 election fraud

http://www.solarbus.org/election/archives.shtml

---

In progress compilations of various articles and materials on 2004 Election Fraud:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x311105

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=304579

---------

And here's a new resource: one of the briefs in Land Shark's lawsuit on secret, proprietary programming code running our elections:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x376034

See my comment (#11) for quotes and summary of this lawsuit brief.

LET THE CA VSPP KNOW THAT THEY MAY BE SUED FOR VIOLATING OUR RIGHT TO KNOW HOW OUR VOTES ARE COUNTED!!!

[Peace Patriot]

39. Read Land Shark's lawsuit:

See: http://www.votersunite.org/info/lehtolawsuit.asp

From the Introduction to the Lawsuit:


"1.4 Access to Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. information is essential to insure the transparency and verifiability of elections at the precise nexus of the exercise of the voting franchise (vote counting) and the essential legitimacy of government (i.e. election results). Accordingly, the court must apply strict scrutiny to all acts or contracts tending to impair the right of the people to supervise and review their elections in order that public confidence is sustained respecting the accuracy, integrity, transparency, and verifiability of voting systems. Such scrutiny supports the public policy of Washington State, as stated in RCW 42.30.010:


'The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.'


"1.5 This action seeks to vindicate the proposition that no contract, public or private, shall be permitted to undermine Article I, Section 1 of the Washington Constitution: “all political power is inherent in the people”. Plaintiffs seek relief herein based upon past damages sustained and the threat of future injury."

[Peace Patriot]

40. It was ES&S! That Broward electronic voting mess on the Amendment...

...cited by PsyOps, above, goes on to state:

"Putney said there is a lot of finger-pointing going on in the elections department. Lieberman blames ES&S Systems, which manufactures the software in question. She says they've known about the problem for at least two years because there was a Broward County mayoral race in which the same thing happened. She said nothing was done about it."

[PsyOpsRunsOurCountry]

44. AP-12/17/03 Computer felon writing software for Diebold: Jeffrey Dean

This is an AP story of 5 convicted felons at Diebold's GES subsidiary, most notably Jeffrey Dean who used computers to steal. !!!!

'Con Job at Diebold Subsidiary'

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html

>snip<

The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems, or GES. Diebold purchased GES in January 2002.

According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."

[Peace Patriot]

41. Two email addresses for Bruce McDannold

I sent my query about submitting comments to VSPP by email to

[e-mail] (the email listed in the official meeting notice)

and he replied from the following email address:

"McDannold, Bruce" <[e-mail]>

I'm sending my letter to both addresses--probably not necessary, but I don't want him to miss it. (He said yes, the public can submit comment to be included in the VSPP packet by email.)

[Peace Patriot]

42. Kick this! Deadline tomorrow Thursday, June 9, by 5 pm, for written...

...comments to be included in the VSPP members' packets.

[Peace Patriot]

43. KICK! Come on, DUers! Here's your chance to sound off about Diebold...

...and ES&S to public election officials! I hope you're all busy writing letters tonight! We've made it easy, by providing the email address, and finding out that the public can submit comment by email. It's EASY! Go for it!

[JunkYardDogg]

45. Peace Patriot & Ojai Person-THANKS for Helping

Great Posting
Thanks for EVERYBODY'S support
Been so swamped I haven't even had time to come to DU
BUT
it looks like GREAT MINDS think alike
Keep it up
This helps so much

[Peace Patriot]

47. Darn tootin', JunkYardDogg! Figured you were up to your eyeballs! n/t

[Amaryllis]

46. kick

[Peace Patriot]

48. Here's my letter to the California VSPP!

It's 7 pages. I had a lot of points and information to convey--items that I want them to be fully informed of (and have no deniability with regard to). And I tend to be wordy! Yours doesn't need to be as lengthy or detailed. Volume of letters is important--to let them know the public is watching--and, indeed, the WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING! So...two sentences will do! Or ten or twenty. Feel free to use any of these citations or bullet points.

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

To: Voting Systems and Procedures Panel and California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson
Re: June 16, 2005 Agenda – Diebold and ES&S election systems
From: XXXX
Date: June 9, 2005

Dear VSPP Members and Secretary of State McPherson:

California voters have lost confidence in electronic voting machine companies that

--have major Republican donors/partisan activists as company executives, owners and board members
--insist that their election software and other election components be secret, proprietary information
--require the state to collude with them in withholding information from the public on how our votes are counted
--lobby for paperless voting (unauditable, unrecountable elections)
--employ convicted felons
--lied to our Secretary of State about the security and certification of their machines
--have caused major disruptions and expense due their shoddy, insecure, malfunctioning machines
--require expensive long term servicing contracts that make their voting machines even more insecure
--require expensive training and re-training of election personnel

The companies that are now peddling their worst wares to California—namely Diebold and ES&S--are guilty of some or all of the above. These companies should not only be rejected by you out of hand, but also their other election systems, such as the optical scan voting systems, should be banished from the state.

The electronic voting machine companies have sold us a lemon! It is up to you to get rid of them and to return our elections to the public venue. Secret, proprietary programming code in the counting of our votes is outrageous. Banish these companies from California!

THE VSPP JUNE 16 AGENDA SHOULD BE POSTPONED FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS:

1. Important legal and certification questions have not been addressed. See below for details.

2. Vital principles required for honest, transparent elections are not being followed. See below for details.

3. VSPP members, the Secretary of State, and other election officials are insufficiently informed on the perils of electronic voting and on the evidence of extremely serious electronic voting and other problems in the 2004 election. See the reading list below.

4. The VPSS and the Secretary of State should investigate state and county legal liabilities before proceeding with the Diebold and ES&S applications – the Washington Lawsuit. See below for Lawsuit quotes and citations.


EXPLANATION OF THE REASONS THAT POSTPONEMENT IS REQUIRED:

1. Important legal and certification questions have not been addressed.

Regarding the Diebold and ES&S applications listed in the June 16 Agenda:

--the certification process is in violation of California law and HAVA (federal election reform law)
--defective voting systems should not be certified; decertifying them after they have malfunctioned is too difficult, expensive and disruptive (as happened with Diebold TSx in November 2003)
--there is no staff report, or the staff report has not been provided to the public in a timely manner
--there are many questions that have yet to be answered, including:

What are the regulations and specifications used to evaluate and test proposed voting systems?

What are the security requirements that voting systems must pass to meet the requirement that they are safe from fraud and manipulation?

Why is the State of California using only one consultant (Steve Freeman) for the testing and evaluations of voting systems when the law authorizes 3 consultants at no expense to the taxpayer?

Why is Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (DESI) being given special treatment in their voting system applications, considering that this company has already lied to the Secretary of State, has been sued by the Secretary of State, and has caused expense and disruption in the past due to defective systems that had to be decertified?

Why are known defects and bugs being allowed to continue in both currently deployed Diebold voting systems, and in next generation systems?

Why is the VSPP violating parliamentary procedure, and violating its own procedures for obtaining oral public comment and expert testimony, by changing the rules for public comment and limiting all speakers to two minutes each, with no transfer of minutes?

There is no more important public issue than the integrity of our elections. The VSPP should be encouraging full public input and participation, and full fact-finding from all interested parties, rather than discouraging in-put!


2. Vital principles required for honest, transparent elections are not being followed.

The VSPP should recommend implementation of the following principles to the Secretary of State and to the State Legislature, which have been developed by the California Election Protection Network:

NO to vendors who use convicted felons for writing software, and who permit convicted felons access to election information.

NO to proprietary and/or secret computer components of any kind.

NO to remote access of any kind (such as modems or wireless--no "open back doors").

NO to private maintenance of machines.

NO to paper trails or ballots that are NOT archival.

NO to paper trails or ballots being read by private entities.

NO to cash register roll type paper trails or ballots (can destroy secrecy of the ballot by tracing sequence of voting).

NO to vendors who have installed illegal voting equipment in CA.

NO to equipment that doesn't meet CA and Federal certification standards for all equipment.

NO to overly complex voting equipment that requires extra training or expense.

NO to modular data components vulnerable to exchanges with malicious data.

In addition:

CA's HAVA budget (hundreds of millions of dollars) should not be squandered on new equipment that doesn't meet all common sense and open election standards.

Don't spend that money if no acceptable equipment is presented at the June 16 meeting.

All California voters should be provided with accessible, voter-verified, paper ballots on archival paper that can be shuffled to retain secrecy of the ballot, and

A Five Star Audit should be required, including: a) mandatory audits of ALL elections; b) genuine random sampling; c) minimum 5% sampling of paper ballots (or paper audit trails) and ALL provisional and absentee ballots; d) hand-counted; and e) non-partisan oversight in a public forum


3. VSPP members, the Secretary of State, and other election officials are insufficiently informed on the perils of electronic voting and on the evidence of extremely serious electronic voting and other problems in 2004.

I hereby attach and incorporate in their entirety the following documents, which are of vital concern to the integrity of California elections, and should be reviewed in their entirety by the members of the VSPP, by the Secretary of State and by all California public officials:

a) Johns Hopkins report on insecurity of electronic voting: "Analysis of Electronic Voting System"
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00196.htm#5
by Tadayoshi Kohno, Adam Stubblefield, and Aviel D. Rubin of the Information Security Institute, Johns Hopkins University, and Dan S. Wallach, Department of Computer Science, Rice University - July 23, 2003

From the Abstract:
"Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts.// "We highlight several issues including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. For example, common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered without the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable. We conclude that, as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk."

b) Easy demo of how insecure voting machines are, by Republican hacker Chuck Herrin:
http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevote.htm

c) "Myth Breakers: Facts About Electronic Elections" (2nd edition): http://www.votersunite.org

d) "Emerging Scandal on MD Voting Machine Performance"
"MD Election Group Calls for Independent Investigation and De-Certification of Machines (TruevoteMD.org); All MD Diebold Machines on Lockdown, Under Investigation for Widespread Statewide Election Day 2004 Failures
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/17/02212/3566

e) USCount Votes report summary: 1) Kerry won the Exit Polls (by 3%); 2) the Exit polls were skewed to Bush, so Kerry's margin was likely even higher; 3) there is evidence of electronic fraud at the precinct level, and 4) call for investigation of the 2004 Election:

http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/USCountVotes_Re_Mitofsky-Edison.pdf

Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D. - Temple University Statistics Department
Steven F. Freeman, PhD - Center for Organizational Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania
Brian Joiner, PhD - Prof. of Statistics and Director of Statistical Consulting (ret), University of Wisconsin
Frank Stenger, PhD in mathematics - School of Computing, University of Utah
Richard G. Sheehan, PhD - Department of Finance, University of Notre Dame
Elizabeth Liddle, MA - (UK) PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham
Paul F. Velleman, Ph.D. - Department of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University
Victoria Lovegren, Ph.D. - Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University
Campbell B. Read, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Statistical Science, Southern Methodist University
Kathy Dopp, MS in mathematics - USCountVotes, President
Also Peer Reviewed by USCountVotes’ core group of statisticians and independent reviewers.

Article: http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=30826&ntpid=1

f) Florida: 130,000 to 230,000 phantom votes for Bush--paper vs. electronic voting—in Florida's 3 biggest Democratic counties (Miami-Dade, Brower and Palm Beach); calls for investigation:
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu
Report issued 11/18/04, by Dr. Michael Haut, & U.C. Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team; Haut is a nationally-known expert on statistical methods and member of the National Academy of Sciences and the U.C. Berkeley Survey Research Center

"UC Berkeley Research Team Sounds 'Smoke Alarm' for Florida E-Vote Count
Statistical Analysis - the Sole Method for Tracking E-Voting - Shows Irregularities May Have Awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or More Excess Votes to Bush in Florida
Research Team Calls for Investigation"
Press release: http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1118-14.htm

g) Democratic Underground (ignatzmouse):
(North Carolina: absentee ballot vs. electronic, inexplicable 9% edge to Bush in electronic:)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x45003
(also at:) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/12/233831/06

h) "Final Tallies Minus Exit Polls = A Statistical Mystery!," Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/24/04, by John Allen Paulos

http://www.math.temple.edu/~paulos/exit.html

Dr. John Allen Paulos: Professor of mathematics at Temple University; winner of the 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science award for the promotion of public understanding of science; author of several best-sellers, including Innumeracy and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market. Monthly "Who's Counting" columnist for ABCNews.com as well as a monthly column for The Guardian.

i) Richard Hayes Phillips: "It is my professional opinion that these numbers are fraudulent, and that this election has been hacked." (precinct level study of Miami County, Ohio). --"Hacking the vote in Miami County"
by Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. - December 25, 2004
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1038

j) "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," and "Hypotheses for Explaining the Exit Poll-Official Count Discrepancy in the 2004 US Presidential Election"
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm

"The Corrupted Election" (2/15/05) with Dr. Josh Mitteldorf
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1970

Dr. Steven Freeman: Professor, Center for Organizational Dynamics, Univ. of Penn.; Karel Steuer Chair for entrepreneurship, Univ. de San Andreas, Buenos Aires; Professor of Management, Central Amer. Inst. of Business Administration (INCAE),

k) Dr. Ron Baiman: Economist/Statistician - senior research specialist, Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago; teaches at the University of Chicago.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/997

Baiman: "I conclude that, based on the best exit sample data currently available, neither the national popular vote, or many of the certified state election results, are credible and should not be regarded as a true reflection of the intent of national electorate, or of many state voters, until a complete and thorough investigation…."
The United States of Ukraine?: Exit Polls Leave Little Doubt that in a Free and Fair Election John Kerry Would Have Won both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote
by Ron Baiman - December 19, 2004

l) Documentation of widespread machine fraud and dirty tricks in over 20 states: http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.html

m) 57,000 machine malfunction/vote suppression complaints to Congress:
http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=3961

n) California machine malfunctions and other voting problems:
http://www.flcv.com/californ.html

o) "Broward Vote-Counting Blunder Changes Amendment Result" 11/4/04
"'The software is not geared to count more than 32,000 votes in a precinct. So what happens when it gets to 32,000 is the software starts counting backward,' said Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman....// "Putney said there is a lot of finger-pointing going on in the elections department. Lieberman blames ES&S Systems, which manufactures the software in question. She says they've known about the problem for at least two years because there was a Broward County mayoral race in which the same thing happened. She said nothing was done about it."
http://www.news4jax.com/politics/3890292/detail.html

p) TV networks alteration of the Exit Polls to fit the "official tally" (& Zogby prediction of Kerry win):
http://www.exitpollz.org/

q) Ohio vote suppression: http://www.bpac.info

r) "Kerry won Ohio: Just Count the Ballots at the Back of the Bus"
In These Times - Friday, November 12, 2004
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=393&row=0
The Ballots at the Back of the Bus 11/14/05 Greg Palast
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1686/

s) Democratic Underground (TruthIsAll): "To believe Bush won, you have to believe…"

Part 1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=22581
Part 2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=53398
Part 3b
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=204891
Part 4
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=348022
All four parts compiled at:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x368702

Democratic Underground (TruthIsAll): The Time Zone Discrepancy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x318693

t) A compilaton site for the 2004 election
http://www.solarbus.org/election/archives.shtml


4. The VPSS and the Secretary of State should investigate state and county legal liabilities before proceeding with the Diebold and ES&S applications – the Washington Lawsuit.

Please see: http://www.votersunite.org/info/lehtolawsuit.asp
Paul Lehto and John Wells vs. Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. and Snohomish County (Superior Court of King County, State of Washington, and United States District Court Western District of Washington at Seattle)

The lawsuit sets forth the illegality of the state colluding with a private entity to deny the public the right to know how its votes are being counted.

From the Introduction to the Lawsuit:

"1.4 Access to Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. information is essential to insure the transparency and verifiability of elections at the precise nexus of the exercise of the voting franchise (vote counting) and the essential legitimacy of government (i.e. election results). Accordingly, the court must apply strict scrutiny to all acts or contracts tending to impair the right of the people to supervise and review their elections in order that public confidence is sustained respecting the accuracy, integrity, transparency, and verifiability of voting systems. Such scrutiny supports the public policy of Washington State, as stated in RCW 42.30.010:

'The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.'

"1.5 This action seeks to vindicate the proposition that no contract, public or private, shall be permitted to undermine Article I, Section 1 of the Washington Constitution: “all political power is inherent in the people”. Plaintiffs seek relief herein based upon past damages sustained and the threat of future injury."

From the conclusion to the Lawsuit:

“The evident collaboration between a governmental entity, Snohomish County, and a private contractor, Sequoia, in this case against citizens and voters ought, itself, to give one pause. The fundamental rights of Washington citizens are at stake and it is clear that their County government charged with the responsibility of enforcing voting laws are poorly situated to be their guardian where, as here, they have bound themselves contractually to support proprietary methods of counting the vote in opposition to the public’s right to know.

The Lawsuit makes the following additional points (in opposing a motion to dismiss):

Sec. III, part A, para 2:

(Plaintiff's Complaint is set forth quite simply...)

"May a government 'outsource' core governmental functions to a private company such that both the government and the private company are freed from the Constitutional and statutory limitations on their freedom of action as would be imposed upon the government itself?"

"Specifically, may Snohomish County delegate the conduct of its elections to Sequoia such that the transparency of elections is concealed beneath private claims of 'trade secret' and proprietary information, elections are rendered inaccurate and unverifiable, plaintiffs are deprived of access to information to which they are entitled, thereby resulting in injury to plaintiffs?"

(The brief then sets forth the law that answers the above questions, for instance:)

"The right to vote is...too vital to be delegated. As the United States Supreme Court held in Wesberry v. Sanders (citation): "No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.”

(The brief then cites Washington State law--the Legislative Declaration RCW 42.30.010:)

"The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created."

(The brief further states:)

"Article I, §19 of the Washington State Constitution provides: 'All elections shall be free and equal, and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage.' The Supreme Court has held that Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution 'gives persons qualified to vote a constitutional right to vote and to have their votes counted.' Wesberry v. Sanders (citation). It follows directly from the above that, under the Washington State Constitution, no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere with the free and proper counting of the vote, in the absence of which the right of suffrage is rendered illusory."

(Sec III, para 13, which begins, "Ironically, although misunderstanding the basis of plaintiff's standing...," has a conclusion, as follows:

"...of what matter is it whether trade secrets have been waived or not, where the vindication of Sequoia’s desire for secrecy (even if not waived) unconstitutionally contravenes public’s right to a transparent and verifiable election? **Can an electoral regime which eliminates Constitutional requirements of reviewability, transparency, and verifiability of elections by the public, be defended simply by eliminating election officers and election boards and stating that the Open Meetings Act (citation) is inapplicable because all meetings have been replaced by secret electronic transactions?"** (emphasis added)

(Sec. III, part B, then sets forth the specific actions that violated the transparency of the election...)

"Plaintiff Lehto has been specifically damaged by the contract’s secrecy provisions because in the course of investigating and publishing regarding the electronic voting process, he has been denied any and all direct data on the operation of the counting process itself.... Instead of the County sharing information about vote counting procedures, such information is now literally owned by Sequoia under the claim of trade secrecy – a property interest claim. Snohomish County, based upon its contract with Sequoia, justifies a lack of transparency in the election process by its provision to a private contractor, Sequoia, of a monopoly on the information respecting vote counting."

"Snohomish County actually pledged under (item) 34 of its Contract with Sequoia to join with Sequoia to resist production of information Sequoia regards as proprietary. This uniquely impacts Lehto’s ability to publish and complete papers on electronic voting, forcing him to undertake more expensive, time-consuming and circuitous routes using indirect data, and dilutes his fundamental right to vote...."

"Lehto has also been denied direct copies of even the limited computer audit log files that have been released, with the County providing files in a .pdf form that strips the file of any meta-data such as editing information and much other forensically useful information, even though original file formats were specifically requested."

For further information on the Lawsuit: Randolph I. Gordon, WSBA #8435, Attorneys for Plaintiffs, GORDON EDMUNDS ELDER PLLC, 1200 112 th Avenue, NE, Suite C110, Bellevue, WA 98004 - [phone] Fax [phone] - Email: [e-mail]

Sincerely,

XXXXX

[Peace Patriot]

49. EMAIL BRUCE MCDANNOLD BY 5 PM TODAY (JUNE 9) TO GET YOUR...

...letter into the VSPP official packet for the June 16 meeting.

TO: [e-mail]

I don't know what will happen to letters submitted after today--they may be discarded, or disregarded; they may not be. Today at 5 pm is the official deadline for inclusion in the packet. If you are going to attend and speak, you will want some version of your remarks in the written record--and I don't know their policy about accepting written comments at the meeting. You will be limited to only two minutes speaking time at the meeting.) (--a complete outrage, in my opinion--but you will likely risk being removed from the meeting, and even arrested, if you insist on speaking longer--I know this from expereince of Sacramento agency meetings). They have already altered the rules to forbid signed-up speakers from giving their two minutes to other, more knowledgeable activists--and so, they are clearly bent upon severely limiting public in-put on this, the most vital issue in our democracy!

Get those letters in!!!

[Peace Patriot]

50. You can still write letters to the VSPP, the Secretary of State AND to

CA state legislators, even though the deadline for inclusion in the VSPP packet for the June 16 hearing is now past (it was yesterday, June 9). You can also attend the June 16 hearing (if possible) and rally with other citizens.

Also, WRITE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR!!! And call radio shows! SHOW THEM THAT THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING! Put the spotlight on this Panel and the Sec of State!

The secret, proprietary programming code is outrageous!
Unauditable, unrecountable elections are outrageous!
Diebold's and ES&S's rightwing political activities are outrageous!
Diebold behavior in California has been outrageous!

[evolvenow]

51. Thanks Peace, you rock! Here is the letter I sent,

bit of a mess, but I had to make the deadline, so I rounded up a bunch of articles I collected right after the 2004 STEAL-ection happened, again. Fantastic work, thanks!


Date: Thu Jun 9, 2005 3:48:35 PM US/Pacific
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Attn. Bruce McDannold - NO secret, proprietary software or computer components -The Election was Stolen, again.

Voting Systems and Procedures Panel (VSPP)
Office of the California Secretary of State
Attn. Bruce McDannold

Dear Bruce McDannold,

Privately owned voting machines, including Diebold GEMS central tabulation software must be considered illegal. This is likely where votes were rearranged, with Kerry votes tossed or re-assigned to Bush, etc., in small percentages here and there across the country, giving Bush his phony popular 'majority' (also done by the touchscreen voting machines and Op-scan). CA Sec of State Kevin Shelley was trying to get Diebold's secret, proprietary software disclosed.
NO secret, proprietary software or computer components of any kind. Also, throw Diebold out of this state! Period. And ES&S as well. Both are run by rightwing Bush partisans. Thousands and thousands of complaints were reported, recorded and verified across the country. Treason has taken place and the machines must be discarded immediately.

Thank you for your attention to these urgent points:

NO to vendors who use convicted felons for writing software, and who permit convicted felons access to election information.

NO to proprietary and/or secret computer components of any kind.

NO to remote access of any kind (such as modems or wireless--no "open back doors").

NO to private maintenance of machines.

NO to paper trails or ballots that are NOT archival.

NO to paper trails or ballots read by private entities.

NO to cash register roll type paper trails or ballots (can destroy secrecy of the ballot by tracing sequence of voting).

NO to vendors who have installed illegal voting equipment in CA.

NO to equipment that doesn't meet CA and Fed certification standards for all equipment.

NO to overly complex voting equipment that requires extra training or expense.

NO to modular data components vulnerable to exchanges with malicious data.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The worlds know the truth, California knows the truth, thank you for your commitment to a true Democracy in which votes actually count.

Thank you for your valuable time.

Sincerely,
Evolvenow


"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

     -- Albert Einstein


Here are excerpts of articles describing the copious reasons why these machines must be banished.

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

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=259&row=2

Professor Dill and the dissenting academics are hardly Luddites opposed to progress. They have seen the first elections with computers produce vote-count horror shows that make one yearn for hanging chads. In 2002, Comal County, Texas, tried out new computer voting machines—and three Republican candidates each won their respective offices, each with exactly 18,181 votes. “Isn’t that the weirdest thing?” County Clerk Joy Treater asked at the time. “We noticed it right away, but it is just a big coincidence.”
------------------------------------------------

2004 Election

-------------------------------
http://www.bushpresident2004.com/republican-electrons.htm
Republican Electrons Deserve Right to Vote
Satire by Ian Watson

Approximately 80 percent of all votes cast for president this year will be counted by voting machines made by two companies - Diebold and Election Systems & Software (ES&S). <1> And in every Diebold and ES&S voting machine, there live thousands of tiny electrons that are sick and tired of having their voting rights assaulted by liberals. In addition to coursing through wires to power the voting machines, these patriotic electrons are known to consistently support Republican candidates in elections across the country where Diebold and ES&S voting machines are used. For this reason, liberals are doing everything they can to shut them out of the electoral process.

This assault on the voting rights of electrons is led by anti-electron bigot Bev Harris, who authored the book Black Box Voting: Ballot-tampering in the 21st Century. Harris is also behind the website blackboxvoting.com which levels a constant assault on these freedom-loving electrons and their parent companies with reckless charges and half-baked conspiracy theories.

Attacking their right to vote

During the disputed Florida election in 2000, the liberal media focused on human beings that encountered voting problems, but paid no attention to thousands of electrons that had similar difficulty.

In Volusia County for instance, thousands of electrons that live in a Diebold memory card tried to cast their vote for Bush by registering 16,022 negative votes for Al Gore. <2> The human election officials corrected this error, but effectively threw out the votes of over 16,000 electrons whose voting intent was clearly to elect Bush. While thousands of people complained that their own human voting mistakes were not corrected (e.g. the famous butterfly ballot, etc.), nobody seemed to care about these electrons who had their votes disqualified. Thankfully, many Republican electrons across the state of Florida most likely had their votes counted without the meddling of humans.

Later, internal memos from Diebold employees show their attempt to explain the error:

I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb". <3>

In April of this year, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified all electronic voting machines in the state, primarily as a result of behavior by Diebold, which Shelley described as "deceitful tactics" and " a fast one on the voters of California." <4> Shelley's decision will most likely leave thousands of electrons trapped in unused voting machines, unable to support the president this November.

Before the 2000 election in Florida, thousands of people were incorrectly removed from the voter rolls under the direction of Florida Governor Jeb Bush and denied their right to vote for president. Liberals have been jumping up and down about this for three and a half years. But they don't seem particularly concerned about the rights conservative-leaning Diebold electrons may lose under similar circumstances at the hands of Shelley in California.

In Comal County, Texas, electrons in ES&S voting machines and scanners gave Republicans in three different races the exact same vote totals in 2002. They elected State Senator Jeff Wentworth with 18,181 votes, elected State Representative Carter Casteel with 18,181 votes, and elected conservative Judge Danny Scheel with 18,181 votes. <5>

Liberals present the Comal County results as a possible incident of faulty vote counting, not caring for an instant that these 18,181 electrons were simply exercising their right to take part in our democracy. And I'm quite sure the liberal assault against them has nothing to do with the fact that they elected Republican candidates. Thankfully, these vote counts have never been investigated.

Fighting back

But our tiny friends are fighting back. One of their most beloved ideological leaders, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, wrote in a Republican fundraising letter in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." <2> By 'electoral', he surely meant 'electronic'.

In 1996, electrons in ES&S machines elected their former leader Chuck Hagel to the U.S. Senate. Hagel was the chairman of ES&S when he resigned eight months before the election. ES&S machines counted approximately 85 percent of the votes in the 1996 and 2002 Nebraska races that elected Hagel. <6>

This was Chuck Hagel's first run for public office. It was also the first time in 24 years that Nebraska sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate. Get-out-the-vote drives could have been what tipped the scales in Hagel's favor. Electrons in ES&S machines all over the state were willing to take a few nanoseconds out of their busy schedule to visit other electrons in circuits and motherboards and convince them to go to the polls and support Hagel.

In Hagel's second run for the Senate in 2002, his tiny supporters reelected him with a landslide victory of 83 percent. This is the largest political victory in Nebraska's history. Aside from being the company's former chairman, Hagel has a financial stake in the McCarthy Group, the parent company of ES&S, worth 1-5 million dollars.

In the 2002 elections, patriotic electrons defied opinion polls and political predictions and elected Republicans in several upsets. The biggest upsets occurred in Georgia, the state using the most electronic voting machines, where polls and final results showed a swing of 9-16 points in favor of Republicans Saxby Chambliss and Sonny Perdue. <7>

A similar swing of 8-11 points in Minnesota put Republican Norm Coleman over the top to take the Senate seat formerly held by liberal Democrat Paul Wellstone. A partial analysis of the 2002 election showed that where computer voting machines counted votes, the great majority of unexpected swings favored Republican candidates. <8> This last minute shift in voting attitudes - and electron turnout - helped solidify Republican control of Congress.

Voting machine corporations are protecting the privacy rights of their electron friends from nosy election supervisors. Diebold, ES&S, and the third largest voting machine manufacturer, Sequoia, all claim their vote-counting computer code is nobody's business but their own, and may not be inspected by election officials, independent computer scientists, or anyone else. <9>

They are also resisting calls for their voting machines to produce paper records for recounts. These companies are obviously trustworthy, and any demand to have a record of the votes is a thinly veiled attempt by liberals to infringe on the right of electrons to cast a confidential vote, free from coercion. In Ohio, where Republican electron leader Walden O'Dell expressed his commitment to deliver Ohio's votes to Bush, Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell insists there is no need for a paper record. <2>

Liberals love to dream about a rising liberal majority. But they can't deny the power of this new subatomic constituency in America that opposes their radical agenda. Electrons believe in tax cuts for the rich, preemptive wars to defend America, and are pro-family in their opposition to gay families and family planning.

Electrons are people too. They deserve the right to vote without constant harassment. They deserve the right to support who they choose. And they deserve better than the discrimination they suffer under liberal assaults on their liberty. Every Vote Counts! Every Vote Counts! Every Vote Counts!

Ian Watson is a working stiff and creator of www.bushpresident2004.com.

Sources:

<1> Electronic Voting: Risky Business Indeed, by Ed Partridge, Utah Politics, May 04, 2004

<2> Diebold's Political Machine, by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Mother Jones, March 5, 2004

<3> The Diebold Memos' Smoking Gun, by Alastair Thompson, The Scoop, October 24, 2003

<4> California Bans E-Vote Machines, by Kim Zetter, Wired News, April 30, 2004

<5> The Theft of Your Vote Is Just a Chip Away, by Thom Hartmann, AlterNet, July 30, 2003

<6> Hagel's ethics filings pose disclosure issue, by Alexander Bolton, The Hill News, January 29, 2003

<7> All the President's Votes?, by Andrew Gumbel, The Independent UK, October 13, 2003

<8> American Coup: Mid-Term Election Polls vs Actuals, by Alastair Thompson, The Scoop, November 12, 2002

<9> E-Vote Software Leaked Online, by Kim Zetter, Wired News, October 29, 2003


Bushpresident2004.com Home Page
-------------------------

http://forum.suedeonline.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5588
*Posted - 04 Nov 2004 :  16:21:36      
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...in another Texas anomaly, Republican state Senator Jeff Wentworth won his race with exactly 18,181 votes, Republican Carter Casteel won her state House seat with exactly 18,181 votes, and conservative Judge Danny Scheel won his seat with exactly 18,181 votes – all in Comal County. Apparently, however, no poll workers in Comal County thought to ask for a new chip."

"MICHIGAN REPUBLICAN CANDICE MILLER BEAT HER DEMOCRATIC OPPONENT - SHE GOT 18,181 VOTES AND REPUBLICAN MICHAEL SMIGIEL FROM MARYLAND BEAT HIS CHALLENGER - CAN YOU GUESS HOW MANY VOTES HE GOT? YOU GUESSED IT - 18,181."

http://www.opednews.com/hartmann_theft_of_your_vote_just_a_chip.htm

this is a small example of the bullshit that is the US election, where the electronic voting machines were corrupted by the republicans before the election began. seeing as the head of Diebold, one of the companies to make the machines (including the OHIO MACHINES) made comments earlier this year about wanting to help the president get into office, i wouldnt trust a single machine.

"Diebold is one of the top two firms in the electronic voting field, and is a heavy contributor to the Republican party. Diebold's CEO is Walden O'Dell, The Konformist Beast of the Month. O'Dell is a major fund-raiser for the Bush 2004 election campaign. He recently wrote a letter declaring he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president (sic) next year." When a controversy ensued in the Buckeye State over his statement, he explained he wasn't talking about rigging the state's machines. For some reason, his explanation doesn't sound particularly reassuring."

last election bush was 500k votes behind gore in the popular vote. in 4 years he has become the most hated president in US history. how the hell, therefore, does he win the popular vote by 3.5million this year? he GAINED 4 million people when he's practically satan on a chair (well, the puppet at least). it's all lies and the mainstream media wont go near the truth cos they are neck-deep in lies.

how have people become so apathetic to freedom and genuine democracy (although let's be serious, 51% telling 49% what to do was never freedom in the first place)?

in 1776, the US was created by freemasons (by their own admission...george washington - 33 degree freemason). from then till now, the US has been controlled by elite freemasons and other secret societies. why are 33 of the US presidents genetically related to two people, Alfred the Great, King of England, and Charlemagne, the most famous monarch of France? totally true, totally pathetic.

stranger than fiction.

"There is nothing to practise. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don't disturb your mind with seeking." - Nisargadatta

www.geocities.com/polaroidmigraine

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


 
http://www.opednews.com/scoop_110904_bigger_than_watergate.htm
Bigger Than Watergate

by scoop.co.nz


*** NEW *** FOLLOW UP STORY
Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines
and
The Truth About the Rob-Georgia File



See Also Companion Article For Detail And Screenshots Of An Election Hack
Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm


Sludge Report #154

Bigger Than Watergate!

The story you are about to read is in this writer's view the biggest political scandal in American history, if not global history. And it is being broken today here in New Zealand.

This story cuts to the bone the machinery of democracy in America today. Democracy is the only protection we have against despotic and arbitrary government, and this story is deeply disturbing.

Imagine if you will that you are a political interest group that wishes to control forevermore the levers of power. Imagine further that you know you are likely to implement a highly unpopular political agenda, and you do not wish to be removed by a ballot driven backlash.

One way to accomplish this outcome would be to adopt the Mugabe (Zimbabwe) or Hun Sen (Cambodia) approach. You agree to hold elections, but simultaneously arrest, imprison and beat your opponents and their supporters. You stuff ballot boxes, disenfranchise voters who are unlikely to vote for you, distort electoral boundaries and provide insufficient polling stations in areas full of opposition supporters.

However as so many despots have discovered, eventually such techniques always fail often violently. Hence, if you are a truly ambitious political dynasty you have to be a bit more subtle about your methods.

Imagine then if it were possible to somehow subvert the voting process itself in such a way that you could steal elections without anybody knowing.

Imagine for example if you could:

- secure control of the companies that make the voting machines and vote counting software;
- centralise vote counting systems, and politicise their supervision;
- legislate for the adoption of such systems throughout your domain, and provide large amounts of money for the purchase of these systems;
- establish systems of vote counting that effectively prevent anybody on the ground in the election at a booth or precinct level - from seeing what is happening at a micro-level;
- get all the major media to sign up to a single exit-polling system that you also control removing the risk of exit-polling showing up your shenanigans.

And imagine further that you;

- install a backdoor, or numerous backdoors, in the vote counting systems you have built that enable you to manipulate the tabulation of results in real time as they are coming in.

Such a system would enable you to intervene in precisely the minimum number of races necessary to ensure that you won a majority on election night. On the basis of polling you could pick your marginal seats and thus keep your tweaking to a bare minimum.

Such a system would enable you to minimise the risks of discovery of your activities.

Such a system would enable you to target and remove individual political opponents who were too successful, too popular or too inquisitive.

And most importantly of all, such a system would enable you to accomplish all the above without the public being in the least aware of what you were doing. When confronted with the awfulness of your programme they would be forced to concede that at least it is the result of a democratic process.

How To Rig An Election In The United States

So how would such a system actually work?

Well one way to run such a corrupt electoral system might look like this.

- Each voting precinct (or booth) could be fitted with electronic voting systems, optical scanning systems, punch card voting systems or the more modern touchscreen electronic voting machines;

- At the close of play each day the booth/precinct supervisor could be under instructions to compile an electronic record of the votes cast in their booth;

- They might print out a report that contains only the details of the total votes count for that precinct/booth, and then file via modem the full electronic record of votes through to the County supervisor;

- The County Supervisor could be equipped with a special piece of software and a bank of modems that enables all these results to be received and tabulated in the internals of the computer;

- The County Supervisors themselves could be assured that their system was bullet proof, certified and contained tamper-protection mechanisms par excellence;

- The Country Supervisor could be given a range of tools for looking at the data within this software, but nothing to enable them to directly manipulate the results;

- But unbeknownst to the County Supervisor the software could actually create three separate records of the voting data;

- Meanwhile - also unbeknownst to the County Supervisor - these three tables of voting data could be in fact completely insecure and accessible simply through a common database programme, say Microsoft Access;

- Having the three tables would enable you to keep the real data in place so the system could pass spot tests on individual precincts and booth results (should a precinct supervisor be particularly astute) -while simultaneously enabling you to manipulate the bottom line result;

- Finally you might also enhance the election hacker's powers by including within the software a utility to enable them to cover their tracks by changing the date and time stamps on files and remove evidence of your tampering.

Fantasy Becomes Reality

The above description of a corrupt voting system is not the result of an overactive imagination. Rather it is the result of a extensive research by computer programmers and journalists working around the globe. Principally it is the work of investigative Journalist Bev Harris, author of the soon to be published book " Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century "

And most important of all it is the result of research focussed on investigating the actual software distributed by one of the largest voting systems companies operating in the recent U.S. Elections.


However it is the considered opinion of all those involved in this investigation that it is not up to us as journalists or programmers to prove that elections were rigged, rather it is a responsibility of the electoral system itself to prove its integrity.

What you read here amounts to revelation of evidence of motive, opportunity, method, prior conduct , and a variety of items of, consistent unexplained circumstantial evidence .

How We Discovered The Backdoor

The story of how this story emerged is a great tale in itself, most of which has already been told in this report by Bev Harris.

SYSTEM INTEGRITY FLAW DISCOVERED AT DIEBOLD ELECTION SYSTEMS
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0302/S00052.htm

The short version of the story is relatively simple.

In the course of investigating the issue of the integrity of new electronic voting machines Bev Harris learned that people around the world had been downloading from an open FTP site belonging to Diebold Election Systems one of the leading manufactures of voting systems.

This website contained several gigabytes of files including manuals, source codes and installation versions of numerous parts of the Diebold voting system, and of its vote counting programme GEMS.

Realising we had stumbled across what might be the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers for elections, the full contents of this website have been secured around the world at several locations. The original website was itself taken down on January 29th 2003.

We can now reveal for the first time the location of a complete online copy of the original data set. As we anticipate attempts to prevent the distribution of this information we encourage supporters of democracy to make copies of these files and to make them available on websites and file sharing networks.

http://users.actrix.co.nz/dolly/

As many of the files are zip password protected you may need some assistance in opening them, we have found that the utility available at the following URL works well:

http://www.lostpassword.com

Finally some of the zip files are partially damaged, but these too can be read by using the utility at:

http://www.zip-repair.com/

At this stage in this inquiry we do not believe that we have come even remotely close to investigating all aspects of this data. I.E. There is no reason to believe that the security flaws discovered so far are the only ones.

Therefore we expect many more discoveries to be made. We want the assistance of the online computing community in this enterprise and we encourage you to file your findings at the forum HERE

Finally, for obvious reasons it is important that this information is distributed as widely as possible as quickly as possible. We encourage all web bloggers, web publishers and web media to re-publish and link to this article and to its companion article by Bev Harris which contains detailed descriptions of how to use the GEMS software to rig an election.:

To conclude this overview article I will make a few more comments on the evidence we have thus far that the U.S. election system has been compromised. As stated earlier we do not at this stage have proof that it has in fact been been compromised through this method, just a great deal of circumstantial evidence that it could have been.

If this was Watergate, we are effectively at the point of discovering evidence of a break-in and have received the call from deep-throat telling us that should dig much deeper.

Proof will follow in time we expect, but only if the work we have begun is completed and this inquiry is taken into every corner of the U.S. electoral system.

Evidence Of Motive

This is probably the easiest part of this puzzle to get your head around. The motivation of the Republican Party in general and the current administration in particular to gain ever greater amounts of power - by whatever means possible and damn the consequences - is evidenced most recently in the Supreme Court's partisan appointment of George Bush Jr. as President, the attempt to recall California Governor Gray Davis, and the Ken Starr investigation and attempted impeachment of President Clinton.

Evidence Of Opportunity ,

Republican connected control over the major election systems companies in the United States has been thoroughly researched.

Bob Urosevich, CEO of Diebold Election Systems is also the founder of ES&S, a competing voting machine company. Together these two companies are responsible for tallying around 80% of votes cast in the United States. Also significant, from what we can determine about the architecture of the software, is that its basic structure was specifically a creation of Mr Urosevich's company I-Mark.

For more background on Diebold Systems connections to the Republican Party see:

Diebold - The Face Of Modern Ballot Tampering
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00081.htm

Meanwhile Presidential wannabee and Republican Party United States Senator Chuck Hagel has been directly connected to ES&S via his campaign finance director, Michael McCarthy, who has admitted that Senator Hagel still owns a beneficial interest in the ES&S parent company, the McCarthy Group.

Senate Ethics Director Resigns; Senator Hagel Admits Owning Voting Machine Company
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0301/S00166.htm

Evidence Of Method

The evidence of method has been detailed in a companion article by Bev Harris, author of the soon to be published block-buster Black Box Voting.

Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm

In this article which contains screenshots from the software and detailed instructions on how one might rig an election - Bev Harris explains security flaws thus:


The GEMS election file contains more than one "set of books." They are hidden from the person running the GEMS program, but you can see them if you go into Microsoft Access.

You might look at it like this: Suppose you have votes on paper ballots, and you pile all the paper ballots in room one. Then, you make a copy of all the ballots and put the stack of copies in room 2.

You then leave the door open to room 2, so that people can come in and out, replacing some of the votes in the stack with their own.

You could have some sort of security device that would tell you if any of the copies of votes in room 2 have been changed, but you opt not to.

Now, suppose you want to count the votes. Should you count them from room 1 (original votes)? Or should you count them from room 2, where they may or may not be the same as room 1? What Diebold chose to do in the files we examined was to count the votes from "room2."


Evidence Of Prior Conduct

It is a recorded fact that every system of balloting established in America has been gamed and rigged. I.E. America's political practitioners have a very long history of ballot rigging and vote tampering. This is nothing new and evidence of the sort we have uncovered has been long predicted by computer scientists such as Dr Rebecca Mercuri.

In more recent history investigative Journalist Greg Palast has documented in detail Katherine Harris's use of electronic data matching technologies to disenfranchise thousands of Florida voters in advance of the 2000 Presidential election.

We highly recommend readers purchase a copy of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast to read much more about this.

A compendium of links on Palast's investigations can be found via a Google search on:
"greg palast florida katherine harris"

Consistent Unexplained Circumstantial Evidence

During the 2002 Mid-term there were numerous reports of unusual happenings in counties throughout the United States.

Among the phenomena reported were voting numbers suddenly fluctuating in the middle of the counting process, something you might expect to see if the backdoor identified above were used clumsily.

An organisation called Votewatch was set up during the 2002 elections to record unusual happenings and its archives can be viewed here.

http://pub103.ezboard.com/bsoldiervoice

It will suffice here to cite a couple of specific examples these are excerpts from the soon to be published " Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century". These examples of actual events are consistent with the existence and use of an electronic vote counting hack described above.

November 1990, Seattle, Washington - Worse than the butterfly ballot, some Democratic candidates watched votes alight, then flutter away. Democrat Al Williams saw 90 votes wander off his tally between election night and the following day, though no new counting had been done. At the same time, his opponent, Republican Tom Tangen, gained 32 votes. At one point several hundred ballots added to returns didnt result in any increase in the number of votes. But elsewhere, the number of votes added exceeded the number of additional ballots counted. A Republican candidate achieved an amazing surge in his absentee percentage for no apparent reason. And no one seemed to notice (until a determined Democratic candidate started demanding an answer) that the machines simply forgot to count 14,000 votes.

November 1996, Bergen County, New Jersey - Democrats told Bergen County Clerk Kathleen Donovan to come up with a better explanation for mysterious swings in vote totals. Donovan blamed voting computers for conflicting tallies that rose and fell by 8,000 or 9,000 votes. The swings perplexed candidates of both parties. For example, the Republican incumbent, Anthony Cassano, had won by about 7,000 votes as of the day after the election but his lead evaporated later. One candidate actually lost 1,600 votes during the counting. How could something like that possibly happen? asked Michael Guarino, Cassanos Democratic challenger. Something is screwed up here.

November 1999, Onondaga County, New York - Computers gave the election to the wrong candidate, then gave it back. Bob Faulkner, a political newcomer, went to bed on Election Night confident he had helped complete a Republican sweep of three open council seats. But after Onondaga County Board of Elections staffers rechecked the totals, Faulkner had lost to Democratic incumbent Elaine Lytel.

April 2002, Johnson County, Kansas - Johnson Countys new Diebold touch screen machines, proclaimed a success on election night, did not work as well as originally believed. Incorrect vote totals were discovered in six races, three of them contested, leaving county election officials scrambling to make sure the unofficial results were accurate. Johnson County Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt checked the machines and found that the computers had under- and over-reported hundreds of votes. The machines performed terrifically, said Bob Urosevich, CEO of Diebold Election Systems. The anomaly showed up on the reporting part.

The problem, however, was so perplexing that Schmidt asked the Board of Canvassers to order a hand re-count to make sure the results were accurate. Unfortunately, the touch screen machines did away with the ballots, so the only way to do a hand recount is to have the machine print its internal data page by page. Diebold tried to re-create the error in hopes of correcting it. I wish I had an answer, Urosevich said. In some cases, vote totals changed dramatically.

November 2002, Comal County, Texas - A Texas-sized lack of curiosity about discrepancies: The uncanny coincidence of three winning Republican candidates in a row tallying up exactly 18,181 votes each was called weird, but apparently no one thought it was weird enough to audit. Conversion to alphabet: 18181 18181 18181 ahaha ahaha ahaha

November 2002, Baldwin County, Alabama - No one at the voting machine company can explain the mystery votes that changed after polling places had closed, flipping the election from the Democratic winner to a Republican in the Alabama governors race. Something happened. I dont have enough intelligence to say exactly what, said Mark Kelley of ES&S. Baldwin County results showed that Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state of Alabama. All the observers went home. The next morning, however, 6,300 of Siegelmans votes inexplicably had disappeared, and the election was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was requested, but denied.

November 2002, New York - Voting machine tallies impounded in New York: Software programming errors hampered and confused the vote tally on election night and most of the next day, causing elections officials to pull the plug on the vote-reporting Web site. Commissioners ordered that the voting machine tallies be impounded, and they were guarded overnight by a Monroe County deputy sheriff.

November 2002, Georgia - Election officials lost their memory: Fulton County election officials said that memory cards from 67 electronic voting machines had been misplaced, so ballots cast on those machines were left out of previously announced vote totals. No hand count can shine any light on this; the entire state of Georgia went to touch-screen machines with no physical record of the vote. Fifty-six cards, containing 2,180 ballots, were located, but 11 memory cards still were missing two days after the election: Bibb County and Glynn County each had one card missing after the initial vote count. When DeKalb County election officials went home early Wednesday morning, they were missing 10 cards.


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

the transmission was interrupted--exclusion of about 12,000 early votes

http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=3861
 Gaston investigates election tally errors

Maker of vote-counting machinery asked to check equipment

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM  Charlotte Observer   16 November 2004

GASTONIA - Gaston Elections Director Sandra Page said for the first time Monday that her office is investigating why more than 13,000 votes were excluded from the county's unofficial election results.

Page said the investigation so far pointed to an interrupted download as the likely cause of the exclusion of about 12,000 early votes. She said human error by poll workers probably resulted in the omission of 1,200 votes from a Dallas precinct.

The Gaston elections office has faced mounting criticism for its initial failure to count the votes and because almost a week passed after the Nov. 2 election before the errors were corrected. The errors were caught before the county submitted its official results to the state, and they did not change the outcome of any local race.

Monday was Page's first day at work since last Tuesday she has been home sick and she said she moved quickly to find out what went wrong.

Page said she has asked the company that manufactured Gaston's vote-counting machines, Diebold Election Systems of McKinney, Texas, to review the operation of its equipment. A spokesman for Diebold confirmed that the company is doing so.

The county pays a technician from Diebold to operate its systems on Election Day. That person was in charge of transferring early votes from electronic storage to the counting computer. Diebold believes the transmission was interrupted, said spokesman David Bear.

"It's understood that it was an interruption, and now the question is why didn't we" catch it, Bear said.

Page said she was also planning to speak with poll workers at the Dallas precinct about the possibility that they transmitted their votes incorrectly to the elections office on Election Day.

The laptop computer used to transmit results from the Dallas Civic Center recorded only a single vote from each of the precinct's voting machines, Page said.

The votes are transferred from the machines to the laptop by disk. Page believes the error occurred because poll workers removed the disks from the laptop too quickly.

"These aren't computer people," she said.
-----------------------------

http://blog.democrats.com/node/430

This might be old history for some, but is intriguing that no representative of the DNC ever actually pursued legal action based on the facts.
In November of 2002, Max Cleland lost to Sambliss in Georgia. All the exit polls were "wrong" and, without explantion, Cleland lost. Machines were part of the issue, of course.
But, also, in 5 different minor races that year, 5 Republican candidates won their elected positions with the same number of votes, machines "counting" the ballots.
Final result of ALL these 5 races for the Republican "winner":
18181 votes.
Some of you will understand the "joke". The binary code assigns letters to numeric characters, is a form of basic "computer coding", let's say that. Where 1 is "a", 8 would be "h"...you guessed that right!, the result of the translation then would be:
18181 = ahaha
18181 = ahaha
18181 = ahaha
------------------------------
Tue Nov-16-04 07:26 PM
Original message
Volusia County election records just got put on lockdown
Dueling lawyers, election officials gnashing teeth, Votergate.tv film crew catching it all.
Here's what happened so far:
Friday Black Box Voting investigators Andy Stephenson and Kathleen Wynne popped in to ask for some records. They were rebuffed by an elections official named Denise. Bev Harris called on the cell phone from investigations in downstate Florida, and told Volusia County Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe that Black Box Voting would be in to pick up our Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request, or would file for a hand recount. "No, Bev, please don't do that!" she exclaimed. But this is the way it has to be, folks. We didn't back down.
Monday Bev, Andy and Kathleen came in with a film crew and asked for the FOIA request. Deanie Lowe gave it to us with a smile, but I noticed that one item, the polling place tapes, were not copies of the real ones, but instead were new printouts, done on Nov. 15, and not signed by anyone.
I asked to see the real ones, and they told us for "privacy" reasons we can't have copies of the signed ones. I insisted on at least viewing them (although refusing to give us copies of the signatures is not legally defensible, according to our attorney). They said the real ones were in the County Elections warehouse. It was quittin' time and we arranged to come back this morning to review them.
Lana Hires, an employee who gained some notoriety in a Diebold memo, where she asked for an explanation of minus 16,022 votes for Gore, so she wouldn't have to stand there "looking dumb" when the auditor came in, was particularly unhappy about seeing us in the office. She vigorously shook her head when Deanie Lowe suggested we go to the warehouse.
Kathleen Wynne and I showed up at the warehouse at 8:15 this morning. There was Lana Hires looking especially gruff, yet surprised. She ordered us out. Well, we couldn't see why because there she was, with a couple other people, handling the original poll tapes. You know, the ones with the signatures on them. We stepped out and they promptly shut the door behind us.
There was a trash bag on the porch outside the door. I looked into it and what do you know, but there were poll tapes in there. They came out and glared at us. We drove away a small bit, and then videotaped the license plates of the two vehicles marked 'City Council' member. Others came out to glare and soon all doors were slammed.
So, we went and parked behind a bus to see what they would do next. They pulled out some large pylons, which blocked the door. I decided to go look at the garbage some more. Kathleen videotaped this. A man came out and I immediately wrote a public records request for the contents of the garbage bag, which also contained ballots -- real ones, but not filled out.
A brief tug of war occurred, tearing the garbage bag open. We then looked through it, as Pete looked on. He was quite friendly.
We collected various poll tapes and other information and asked if they could copy it for us, for our public records request. "You won't be going anywhere," said Pete. "The deputy is on his way."
Yes, not one but two police cars came up and then two county elections officials, and we all stood around discussing the merits of my public records request.
They finally let us go, about the time our film crew arrived, and we all trooped off to the elections office. There, the plot thickened.
We began to compare the special printouts given to us with the signed polling tapes from election night. Lo and behold, some were missing. We also found some that didn't match. In fact, in one location, precinct 215, an African-American precinct, the votes were off by hundreds, in favor of George W. Bush and other Republicans.
Hmm. Which was right? Our polling tape, specially printed on Nov. 15, without signatures, or theirs, printed on Nov. 2, with up to 8 signatures per tape?
Well, then it became even more interesting. Lana Hires took it upon herself to box up some items from an office, which appeared to contain -- you guessed it -- polling place tapes. She took them to the back of the building and disappeared.
Then, voting integrity advocates from Volusia and Broward, decided now would be a good time to go through the trash at the elections office. Lo and behold, they found all kinds of memos and some polling place tapes, fresh from Volusia elections office.
So, we compared these with the Nov. 2 signed ones and the "special' ones from Nov. 15 given to us, unsigned, and we found several of the MISSING poll tapes. There they were: In the garbage.
So, Kathleen went to the car and got the polling place tapes we had pulled from the warehouse garbage. My my my. There were not only discrepancies, but a polling place tape that was signed by six officials.
This was a bit disturbing, since the employees there told us that bag was destined for the shredder.
By now, a county lawyer had appeared on the scene, suddenly threatening to charge us extra for the time we took looking at the real stuff they had withheld from us in our FOIA. Other lawyers appeared, phoned, people had meetings, Lana glowered at everyone, and someone shut the door in the office holding the GEMS server.
Andy then went to get the GEMS server locked down. He also got the memory cards locked down and secured, much to the dismay of Lana. They were scattered around unsecured in any way before that.
We then all agreed to convene tomorrow morning, to further audit, discuss the hand count that Black Box Voting will require of Volusia County, and of course, it is time to talk about contesting the election in Volusia.
Bev Harris
Executive Director
Black Box Voting

http://www.blackboxvoting.org

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/995
Columns
Bob Fitrakis
How the Ohio election was rigged for Bush
November 22, 2004
Following four community public hearings in Ohio about election irregularities and voter suppression – two in the capitol, Columbus, and one each in Cincinnati and Cleveland – a clear pattern and practice of voter disenfranchisement is emerging.
In order to understand the extent of the voter suppression in the inner city of Columbus and Franklin County, overwhelmingly Democratic wards, start with the phrase: “Machines Placed By Close Of Polls” on the last page of the county’s 17-page voting machine allocation report.
This phrase at the end of the spreadsheet may be the key in unraveling a deliberate and unprecedented plan to repress African American and poor central city voters. In statistics, when you see a bizarre definition or measurement, it sends up red flags. Why doesn’t the Franklin County Board of Elections have a number for “Machines Placed By Opening Of Polls”?
It now appears that the Franklin County BOE placed scores of machines too late in the day to alleviate the long lines of voters who gathered to vote before work and at lunchtime.
To better understand what the BOE did on Election Day, consider the following analogy. The near east side of Columbus needs four buses to move the population to the downtown business district. Each bus will move 100 people. At the start of the business day at 6:30am, there are only two buses running and another one with a dead battery. After a few hours, the third bus is put into use. Finally, towards the close of the work day at 6pm, a fourth bus is deployed. The Central Ohio Transit Authority then reports it had four buses operating by the end of the business day. What matters is not how many buses, or voting machines, were operating at the end of the day, but rather how many were there to service the people during the morning and noon rush hours.
Questions remain as to where these machines were placed and who had access to them during the day.
Pacifica reporter Evan Davis reported that a county purchasing official who was on the line with Ward Moving and Storage Company, documented only 2,741 voting machines delivered through the November 2 election day. The county’s own documents reveal that they had 2,866 “Machines Available” on Election Day. This would mean that amid the two to seven hour waits in the inner city of Columbus, at least 125 machines remained unused on Election Day. Ward holds the exclusive three-year contract to deliver voting machines in Franklin County.
If the BOE only had 2,741 placed initially, this would explain the long lines in Columbus and voters leaving the polls during the morning voting rush. According to the Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE), in the city of Columbus, where voters waited in the heavily Democratic wards between 2-7 hours to cast the vast majority of their votes for John Kerry, voter turnout was 52.7%. In the affluent white suburbs of Columbus, with far more voting machines available, the turnout figure was 76.15%.
By contrast, 66.31% of registered voters went to the polls in Cincinnati and turnout was 76.82% in the suburbs. In Cincinnati, where more voting machines were available, the difference between the city and suburbs was only 10.5% compared to 23.45% in the Columbus area. Cincinnati and Columbus have similar demographics.
The Franklin County Board of Elections reported that 68 voting machines were never placed on Election Day. In addition, Franklin County BOE Director Matt Damschroder admitted on Friday, November 19, that 77 machines malfunctioned on Election Day.
Franklin County Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy criticized Damschroder for calling the elections “well-funded and well-planned and that problems could not have been averted, . . .” according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Damschroder, the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party, told the Franklin County Commissioners, “From our perspective, this election was a success.”
Despite an increased registration of more than 167,253 new voters, Damschroder admits he ran the election with a “fixed and exhausted” pool of voting machines, the Dispatch reported. Kilroy pointed out that Damschroder and Franklin County election officials told her “We’re fine, we’re fine” and never requested additional money over the initial allocation.
The Washington Post reported “Franklin is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Control’s ELECTronic 1242, an older-style touchscreen voting system.” Franklin County’s voting machine allocation report shows that Damschroder deployed his Danaher (formerly Shooptronics) voting machines, which have been in use since 1992, in a formula that favored Bush over Kerry.
In precinct 55-B on Columbus’ near east side, there were 1,338 registered voters and, according to Franklin County Board of Elections estimates, 956 active voters who had voted in the last two federal elections. Despite voter registration being up 17%, and by the BOE’s own guidelines the polling place requiring ten machines (one per 100 voters), the polling site had only three machines, one less than for the 2000 elections.
The Election Protection Coalition that visited the voting site between 7:30-8:30 a.m. documented a dozen people leaving the polls, six to go to work and six who were either elderly or handicapped. But things were worse in other areas of Columbus.
In precinct 1-B where there were 1,620 registered voters, a 27% increase in voter registration, the precinct had five voting machines in 2000 and only three in 2004. Where did they go? Out to Republican enclaves like Canal Winchester, where two machines were added since 2000, for a total of five to service 1,255 registered voters? Or were they re-routed to Dublin 2-G where 1,656 registered voters apparently needed six machines, twice the number of Columbus’ 1-B?
Nearby in Dublin precinct 3-C, 910 registered voters were allocated four voting machines. No doubt machines were shifted from precincts like Columbus 44-G with 1,620 voters and registration up 25%, which lost one machine from the 2000 elections to 2004.
In Cleveland, where a public hearing was held on Saturday, November 20, there was a different pattern of voting irregularities. These include heavily Democratic wards with abnormally low reported rates of voter turnout, three under 20%. In Precinct 6-C where Kerry beat Bush 45 votes to one, allegedly only 7.1% of the registered voters cast ballots. In precinct 13-D where Kerry received 83.8% of the vote, only 13.05% reportedly voted. In precinct 13-F where Kerry received 97.5%, the turnout was reported to be only 19.6%.
One explanation comes from Irma Olmedo, who provided the Free Press with a written statement of her activities in the heavily Hispanic ward 13, which contained the three low voter turnout precincts.
“Ohio does not have bilingual ballots and this disenfranchises many Latino voters who are not totally fluent in English . . . there were 13 poll workers at the school and none knew Spanish. Some could not even find the names of the people on the list because they couldn’t understand well when people said their names. . . . Some people put their punch card ballots in backwards when they voted and discovered that they couldn’t punch out the holes. They had not read the instructions which were in English, that they had to turn the card around in order to vote,” Olmedo stated.
Olmedo translated at precinct 13-O, where 90% of the votes were for Kerry and only 53 votes were counted. The turnout of 21% was due to the lack of Spanish instructions and the misspelling of names: “I noticed that one named Nieves was misspelled as Nieues and the pollworkers were not able to find his name, these people were told to complete a provisional ballot because their names were not on the list.”
In Cuyahoga County, according to the Secretary of State’s website there are 24,788 provisional ballots, most of them from the city of Cleveland, not its surrounding suburbs. Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell served as Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney Ohio reelection committee.
There also seems to be an abnormally high vote count for third party candidates who received less than one-half of one percent of the statewide vote total combined. For example, in precinct 4-F, the right-wing Constitutional Law candidate Peroutka received 215 votes to Bush’s 21 and Kerry’s 290. In this precinct, Kerry received 55% of the vote where Gore received 91% of the vote in the year 200. These numbers suggest that Kerry’s votes were inadvertently or intentionally shifted to Peroutka.
In Cincinnati, sworn testimony was taken on vote buying, the lack of machines in African American neighborhoods and the deliberate destruction of new voter registration cards by a private company hired to process the forms.
Exit polls on Election Day from both the polling firm Zogby International and CNN projected John Kerry winning the state of Ohio. University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven Freeman calculated the odds that the exit polls in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania all being wrong are 250,000,000 to one. Pollster John Zogby, President of Zogby International, is quoted as telling the Inter Press Service of Stockholm that “something is definitely wrong.”
Zogby commented that he was concerned about the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote tallies stating “We’re talking about the free world here.”
The Alliance for Democracy-Ohio is preparing a lawsuit challenging the outcome of Ohio’s election results due to the massive voting irregularities that have emerged in sworn testimony and affidavits.
--
Bob Fitrakis has a Ph.D in Political Science and a J.D. He is a lawyer working with the Alliance for Democracy-Ohio and the Editor of the Columbus Free Press. Reporting in this article also came from Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D and Joe Knapp (). For additional documentation, visit http://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/900.
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Diebold May Face Criminal Charges  By Kim Zetter
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63191,00.html
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63191,00.html
08:55 AM Apr. 23, 2004 PT
SACRAMENTO, California –- After harshly chastising Diebold Election Systems for what it considered deceptive business practices, a California voting systems panel voted unanimously Thursday to recommend that the secretary of state decertify an electronic touch-screen voting machine manufactured by the company, making it likely that four California counties that recently purchased the machines will have to find other voting solutions for the November presidential election.
The panel also voted to send the findings of its recent Diebold investigation to the state's attorney general for possible criminal and civil charges against the firm for violating state election laws.

Following a contentious six-hour hearing during which the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel grilled Diebold president Bob Urosevich about his company's business practices, the panel voted to recommend decertifying the Diebold AccuVote-TSx machine, which was used for the first time in California during the March primary in Kern, San Joaquin, Solano and San Diego counties.
The decision was based partly on the fact that a peripheral device for the machine performed poorly in the March primary and partly on the fact that Diebold had marketed and sold the TSx to counties before it was certified by the state. The panel also said Diebold misled the state about issues pertaining to the federal certification of the system.
The state had conditionally certified the TSx in December so that counties that had already purchased the machines could use them in the March primary. But the company installed a last-minute peripheral device in several California counties that was still being de-bugged days before the March primary. The device, a smart card encoder that programmed voting cards to be used with the TSx, malfunctioned and produced major problems in San Diego and Alameda counties the morning of the primary. Several hundred precincts failed to open on time, thus disenfranchising voters who were turned away from the polls.
The decertification recommendation goes to California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who has until April 30 to decide how to act on it, a date that falls within the six-month advance notice that the state must give counties to take machines out of commission before an election.
The panel also recommended that Shelley ask the state attorney general to examine the possibility of bringing civil and criminal charges against Diebold for violating California election codes, which state that vendors cannot change software without notifying the secretary of state's office. The codes also say that no vendor can install uncertified software on voting systems.
Last November, the state discovered that Diebold had installed uncertified software on its voting machines in 17 counties without notifying state officials or, in some cases, even county officials who were affected by the changes.
Diebold voting system developer Tab Iredale, who answered the panel's technical questions about the voting system during the hearing, said he was not surprised by the decertification recommendation. "We knew it was a possibility," he said. But the recommendation for criminal charges was unexpected.
"This doesn't solve the problems," Iredal said. "It just sets a tone of confrontation at a time when we should be working together to address issues with the certification process."
Diebold said it was not entirely responsible for the installation of uncertified software and systems in California because changes in certification practices at the federal level had caused delays with certification and that state rules about certification were confusing.
But state undersecretary and panel chairman Mark Kyle said the company's excuses rang "hollow" and that the state's rules were extremely clear. He expressed anger that Diebold had been deceptive about advance knowledge of problems with its smart card encoder before the March primary. He also accused the company of "switch-and-bait" tactics in trying to pass off uncertified software as certified software and suggested that the company might have colluded with the federal testing lab, Wyle Laboratories, to get its system through the California investigation.
Panel member Marc Carrel, assistant secretary of state for policy and planning, said that Diebold's "spin" on the issues left him dizzy. He said that Diebold's repeated apologies were "belied by their actions and their statements."
"I keep hearing apologies. I keep hearing misleading statements. I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day -- it keeps repeating and repeating and repeating," he said. "I'm disgusted by the actions of this company."
Carrel said the "bait-and-switch" on software had resulted in the disenfranchisement of voters in various counties and resulted "in a reduction in the confidence not only in (touch-screen machines) but in voting in general. And that's very disturbing to me."
Carrel and the panel expressed frustration that the secretary of state's office did not currently have authority to levy sanctions and fines against voting companies for violating election laws. They urged legislators to back state Senate Bill 1376, which would provide the secretary of state's office with the power to levy such punishment in the future.
If Shelley acts on the panel's recommendation to decertify, which he is expected to do, four counties will likely have to replace 15,000 TSx machines with optical scan machines before November.
The decertification would not affect Diebold's optical scan machines or an older version of its touch-screen machine, called the AccuVote-TS, which the company no longer sells.
Deborah Hench, San Joaquin County's registrar of voters, expressed surprise at the panel's move. She said she had no idea what her county would do if instructed not to use its 1,600 TSx machines in the November election.
For the March election, the county had borrowed some optical-scan machines from other counties and from Diebold. If the secretary of state agrees to decertify the TSx, the four counties will have to scramble to find optical-scan machines, and there might not be enough to go around, Hench said, noting that the counties would not want to switch to machines manufactured by another vendor at such a late date.
Diebold spokesman David Bear said the company intends to resubmit the TSx machines for state certification before the November election. Although a spokesman for the secretary of state said Diebold will not be barred from resubmitting for certification, members of the voting-systems panel had said they no longer wanted to certify voting systems under the pressure of an impending election.
Carrel expressed doubts that the company could fix problems with the machine before November. "I say good luck. Because if it's taken them a year and a half to fix the problems and they haven't fixed them, who knows how long it will take?" he said.
In light of the panel's harsh criticism of Diebold, some audience members expressed surprise that the panel didn't recommend decertifying all Diebold systems and bar the company from selling to the state. The panel suggested in December that it might consider barring Diebold from California for a year.
Carrel said the panel wanted to focus first on the TSx because it had a defection that caused problems in the March primary and the company had failed to meet the conditional certification requirements that the state had set in December.
Carrel also said that no one should consider the panel's move a mere slap on the wrist for Diebold.
"If we're not allowing (the sale of) their newest voting system -- which is what they're banking on (because) they don't make the TS anymore -- it's a freeze of their business in California, essentially," he said.
Carrel said the panel could still decertify the older TS model as well, since the panel plans to rule next week on whether to recommend decertifying all touch-screen voting machines in the state.
In March, two state legislators called on Shelley to decertify all touch-screen voting machines in the state before the November presidential election and keep them decertified until the state can obtain machines that produce a voter-verified paper audit trail.
Carrel said the panel could also single out Diebold and just decertify all of its touch-screen machines. As for barring the company from selling systems to the state, Carrel said that decertification of the TSx would cut substantially into any sales the company would have in California, since the TSx is the main model the company markets now.
Carrel called the decertification "a huge embarrassment" for the company, which will have to defend its actions in California any time it tries to sell systems to other states and counties in the future.
"Four of their (California) clients have to deal with finding another system because of their mistakes. That's major," Carrel said. "If we had done nothing, they would have said, 'See, we're vindicated.' They clearly weren't vindicated."
Diebold's CEO said at a shareholders meeting yesterday, however, that what happened in California won't hurt the company.
Chairman and CEO Walden W. O'Dell told the Associated Press that "whatever goes on in California is separate from what goes on in other states. Each state will make their own decisions."
After the news in California, Diebold's shares on the New York Stock Exchange fell $1.10 to close at $48.95.
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The Case of the Diebold FTP Site

Part of the Voting and Elections web pages
by Douglas W. Jones
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Department of Computer Science

Copyright © 2003. This work may be transmitted or stored in electronic form on any computer attached to the Internet or World Wide Web so long as this notice is included in the copy. Individuals may make single copies for their own use. All other rights are reserved.

Contents

1. Background
2. What We Already Knew
3. What Can We Learn from the Diebold FTP Site
4. A Warning
5. Some Disturbing Answers
6. Rebuttals
7. Retractions and Reactions
8. Conflicts of Interest
9. The SAIC (and other) Risk Assessments
10. Consequences
------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a summary of this story, as of Aug. 6, 2003, see . The Diebold AccuVote TS Should be Decertified.
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[evolvenow]

52. Kick the Mock out of Democracy!

[Peace Patriot]

54. That is just awesome information, evolvenow! I would like to see our

combined info posted in some permanent place--for use by others in the continuing, long term fight for transparent elections. I haven't seen this compilation of articles before (yours). I will look around, and think about this.

DUers, see above for California Action NOW--pressuring media, CA legislators and others to put the spotlight on this VSPP hearing June 16--to magnify the impact of what I'm sure will be fabulous speakers at the hearing!

[LightningFlash]

53. Kicked