Clint Curtis Rebuilds Prototype!! This must get out!!

[KerryReallyWon]

(snip) sorry if it is a dupe...but I have seen nothing of this on DU.
And...it needs to go further than us....

Another Election Held and Another Election Stolen ***


Another election held and another election stolen. In 2000 Bush stole the election by restricting the ability to vote by those people most likely to vote against him. The abuses were wide spread and the Democrats and other groups that believe in each individuals right to vote put together an impressive attempt to make sure that every individual that wanted to vote would not be turned away. Everywhere you went there was booths where new voters could register. Celebrities in commercials were urging voters to get out and vote. Poll watchers were placed in polling stations across the country to guarantee that every voter would not be turned away on any technicality.

What these well meaning groups failed to account for was that they were defending the 2000 election fixing plan and not taking into account that this election would be decided not by voters but by the rise of technology. Every one might be allowed to vote but their vote, and your vote made no difference at all. The programmers had already decided who would win and by how much.

Prior to this election I personally sent out information to the media which should have been provided to the electorate. It was not. The biggest turnout in history had no chance to win this election or any other unless the programmers of the voting machine allowed it. I believe they will allow it less and less as the machines control the elections and the Republicans control the machines.

This is not speculation. It is not a rant designed to make the losers feel better. I speak from first hand information and unless people stand up and act, democracy in this country is ended.

While employed at Wong Enterprises, Congressman Feeney had requested if Wong could write a voting program that could alter the vote and be undetectable. As the technology advisor, I explained that as long as the source code was provided and complied under supervision, code which altered the vote and was undetectable could not be built. Another problem would be that no one would trust a program that provided for no paper trail to substantiate its accuracy. When the vote was flipped the paper trail could easily detect the fraud.

This request was early in my exposure to Congressman Feeney, so I was not familiar with what a total piece of crap he truly was. My assumption was that he was worried that the other side (the Democrats) would introduce voting machines which could manipulate the vote. Mrs. Wong volunteered that we (meaning me) could put together a quick prototype that he could view and show others.

I have recreated that prototype and posted it at http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefraudprogram.htm. It is essentially the same code that I built for the vote fraud demo for Congressman Feeney. You will notice that by clicking on the correct hidden spots on the screen, the vote will flip so that the Republican candidate will receive fifty one percent of the vote. The hot spots make it possible to flip the vote as often as necessary yet it will never fire accidentally so as to avoid detection. My prototype was actually very simplistic. The actual sequence to flip the vote could be as complex as the programmer wished or even to operate automatically. In cases when the Republican is already leading, the vote is left as is. I built the program to demonstrate that with proper supervision that the election machines would be safe. The code would not be able to be hidden.

The next day I complete the prototype and presented it to Mrs. Wong. I stressed how the tampering could be detected. She quickly set me straight as the to true intention. Her exact words were "If we can’t hide the manipulation, we won’t get the contract the program is needed to control the south Florida vote." Another confirmation of why I needed to get a different job. I would not build something that would defraud every voter in this country. Even better, I knew that as long as the election supervisors used proper computer procedures, no one else would or could either.

What I did not anticipate was that this country would allow the placement of voting machines where the source code was not provided. The programs were pre-compiled (you have no idea what is in them or what hidden triggers exist), and where no paper trail would be required to check their accuracy. Any moron could build a voting program that could flip the vote under those circumstances and no amount of testing could discover the deception.

A reproduction of the prototype I developed at Wong for Congressman Feeney can be downloaded at http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefraudprogram.htm. It also includes the instructions for installing the program and manipulating the voting. Under normal circumstances it will accurately record the vote totals. By clicking on the proper hidden triggers the vote is manipulated and without a paper trail becomes altered in such a way as to be untraceable.


http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/
:nuke:

[Tace]

1. Oh Yeah! Excellent!

[tiptoe]

22. Curtis' Video Testimony (from Dec 2004...for many who've yet to see):

:applause:View Clint Curtis KEY 1-Vote Theft 2-Who's TruthIsAll? 3-TIA Exit Poll Analyses 4-3 control 80% US Vote 5-MADNESS Ohio-Smoking Guns -Conyers
Spread the News

[Febble]

2. It's been out since December

I downloaded it then.

[bleever]

6. This story needs repetition to "catapult the propagandists"

into jail where they belong.

[Bill Bored]

3. I'm glad he has come forward but

do you really think one actually has to hack these machines to steal an election with them?

[Time for change]

4. Thank you so much for this. This should be nominated for greatest page

This also brings up so many questions, since it sounds like you know an awful lot about this:

Do you know where the cheating was done and the extent of it?

Do you know whether it was done primarily with individual precinct voting machines, or central tabulators?

Is this related to the so-called "vote switching" episodes that were reported to EIRS, where voters tried to vote for one candidate, and the vote switched to another (almost always Kerry to Bush)?

And, do you know Clint Curtis real well?

[petgoat]

28. This Is Related to Vote Switching Episodes

The touchscreen machines are prepared for an election by a "ballot
definition" program that defines what areas of the screen will respond
to touches and what happens when you touch them.

In an honest ballot definition touching the Kerry button will give a
Kerry vote and touching the Bush button will give a Bush vote and the
buttons will be the same size and touching any area off the buttons will
give no vote.

In a dishonest ballot definition touching anywhere on the screen will
give a Bush vote except part of the Kerry button will give Kerry votes
and part of that button will give Bush votes--it wouldn't do to have
Kerry get no votes at all. This is how the incidents happened--the
picture of the button on the screen did not correspond correctly to
the action triggered by the computer, so people who tried to vote for
Kerry were getting Bush. They called this a "calibration problem".

What Clint Curtis is talking about is having special vote-switching
program routines in the machines, and triggering the programs through
"invisible buttons" on the screen. If you know exactly where to push
(you could easily measure with a 3X5 card or a piece of folded paper)
you could trigger the vote riggiing routines.

[Time for change]

35. Then I guess that Curtis' testimony would explain

this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2020121

And this:

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1032

[KerryReallyWon]

50. Won!!

:toast:

[autorank]

5. Kerry Really One Indeed -- Recommend-- Great Post

[nicknameless]

7. This information is definitely worth reposting. Thanks!

In these "Unites States of Amnesia" the rw propagandists repeat their lies 24-7 for a reason!
PLEASE DON'T LET THIS STORY DIE

Kicked and recommended. :kick:

[LibertyorDeath]

8. 2006 & 2008 are not looking so good from where I sit

Do any Dems own E voting systems.

[cyberpj]

9. Unfortunately, I have to agree. This is our most important issue

and even if we didn't have N.O./Katrina to take over the media, BushCo has managed to continue their shotgun of issues approach that keeps Dems and the public from focusing on one issue at a time that could bring them down.

I'm so sick of it!

Still, nominating and trying to keep hope alive...

[OnTheOtherHand]

10. I will take my chances with Katrina for now

as long as the word continues to get out that the Bush administration has done just about everything wrong -- in some cases has gone out of its way to do things wrong.

And I don't imagine the Republicans will be running on what they've done for Social Security. The glories of Iraq aren't looking too glorious, either. And the Republican social agenda simply isn't all that popular.

The 2004 election was close; Bush ran ahead in most of the polls. How close will 2006 and 2008 be? That partly depends on what we do now.

[cyberpj]

11. Yeah but -

I understand everything you say but I just can't abandon the fact that they have the ability to put their party in power no matter what we do! Seems just about 1/2 the people will always be blindly in support of what he's doing and therefore will vote for whoever Repubs want and therefore will make elections close enough to continue to steal at the tabulators.

If not presidential - than congressional power forever.

Preventing election fraud still tops my to do list.

[OnTheOtherHand]

13. I think this sort of difference in emphasis is healthy

I'm glad that preventing election fraud tops your to do list, because it needs to get done.

(My screen name is "OnTheOtherHand," not "LoppingOffTheFirstHand"!)

Bush has a pretty solid base, but it is far enough below 1/2 that his team is definitely vulnerable. I think it can be dangerous to put ourselves in the frame of mind that a near-majority will "always" blindly support them. Isn't that more or less telling ourselves that democracy can't work? And if that's true, then what the heck are we doing, anyway?

That said, there are lots of reasons why winning back Congress will be very hard.

[cyberpj]

15. The problem with his low numbers is

he seems to be able to bump them up at will whenever there's anything remotely resembing a terror event. And innit funny how they always seem to pop us just when he needs them?

And, for the sake of conversation, I'm afraid it's not far from truth to say "democracy can't work" - when it's this particular American democracy where corporations lobby and bribe and grateful congresspeople take what they want and pass what they're asked to. I'm pretty much ready to side with Bill Moyers who implied that Washington D.C. is a lost cause as to making changes the proper way anymore. The only thing left is a massive uprising by an educated public (and even he admitted that so many of us have been dumbed-down that that may be too hard to accomplish).

[OnTheOtherHand]

29. ok, but...

(I tried to post this earlier, but the board hung, and then I had to leave...)

The prevailing trajectory of Bush's approval ratings since 9/11 has been all downhill -- not that they very well could have gone up, but they haven't really stabilized, either. A big bump from the war, but that subsided and the decline continued. Another one from the capture of Saddam Hussein, ditto. A slight upward drift in late 2004 persisting into early 2005, seemingly driven by Republicans getting pumped by the campaign rhetoric. Currently, possibly the lowest ratings of his presidency. I take the Wag the Dog scenarios seriously, but I think they are often overstated.

(If you don't like that narrative, you can stare at the charts at http://www.pollkatz.homestead.com and come up with your own -- it's subject to interpretation for sure. My speculation about Republicans in late 2004 is based on a party-breakdown plot of CBS/NYT and Gallup approval ratings that appeared in the summer Political Science Quarterly.)

Goodness, I wasn't trying to express confidence in _Washington_. But as far as the dumbing-down rhetoric goes, I guess I'm in the Billy Joel camp: the good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it see-ee-eems. Or, at least, it may not be as bad as it seems. If Bush had 60% approval ratings right now, I would seriously consider seeking asylum somewhere else. But the fact that he doesn't offers no guarantee of a happy ending, this I freely admit.

[Time for change]

12. I echo cyberpj's sentiments

Sure, Katrina is important as a political issue.

But the poster of this thread is saying, from personal experience apparently, that the Republicans have the opportunity now to decide an election regardless of how people vote.

So my question to you, if you feel that Katrina is a bigger issue than this, is: Do you not believe that the Republicans have the capability as described by KerryReallyWon? OR do you think that they would pass up the opportunity to use that capability if it looked like they might lose a Presidential or a Senatorial election?

[OnTheOtherHand]

14. I don't think we know the answer to the question

What Clint Curtis did is trivial. Millions of people could have written that program. The real question is what is finding its way into the machines (and the central tabulators), and Curtis can't answer that question.

I haven't seen grand totals, but my impression is that Bush did better in 2004 than in 2000 on every type of voting equipment. It makes me think that DRE fatalism is misplaced. But that doesn't mean that I am a DRE optimist, either. AFAICT we have no idea what might be on those machines, and the senior executives probably don't really know, either.

I guess I do think that Katrina is a bigger issue, in the sense that having been in NYC on 9/11, I am crushed by the recognition that what happened in New Orleans is orders of magnitude worse. Obviously that isn't a strategic judgment. When I said that I would take my chances with Katrina, I wasn't arguing that we should drop election reform -- we don't have to choose.

[Febble]

16. It struck me (back in December)

that the important thing about Clint Curtis's testimony was not what he did but the fact that he was asked to do it. I'd love to know if this was ever investigated. Also what happened to his dog.

Here's an index from Bradblog in April. I'm not sure what has been followed up since.

As for elections: there will be a point when either Bush will lose or even I will believe the exit polls rather than the vote count. And the last few weeks should keep the Democrats in attack ad material for some time to come.

[Time for change]

17. Yes, it was investigated

This is also from the Brad Blog, so you may have seen it. Unfortunately, the investigator committed "suicide" right in the middle of his investigation. Similar circumstances to J. Hatfield, who was in the midst of writing up a scathing follow-up biography on Bush, when he was beset by a "suicide" (Just a few days or weeks after I had finished reading his first Bush biography):

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001243.htm

[Febble]

20. Yes, I knew the Ray Lemme (sp?) story

I was wondering if any further investigation had gone on into the Feeney allegation since Curtis contacted BradBlog. Or into the death of his dog. Everything seems to have gone quite since May.

[Time for change]

25. Unfortunately, with this Administration in charge

many much needed investigations have gone silent. That is one very important reason why they HAD TO win the 2004 election.

I wish I could address the subjects that you are wondering about.

[Febble]

23. Yes, I knew the Ray Lemme (sp?) story

I was wondering if any further investigation had gone on into the Feeney allegation since Curtis contacted BradBlog. Or into the death of his dog. Everything seems to have gone quiet since May.

[Time for change]

18. Here's what I find to be so important

Curtis told his company that he couldn't write such a program in a manner that would allow the source code to be undetectable if it were examined.

But now, that doesn't even matter, because the source code is proprietary and nobody is allowed to examine it. Given this situation, it seems to me that there would be only two things that might have prevented the Republicans from using central tabulators to rig the election:

1) For some reason they felt that they couldn't get away with it.

2) They knew they could get away with it but decided not to do it because they were too honest to steal a Presidential election.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. And I certainly lack expertise in this area. But for those who don't believe that the election was stolen, I'm truly interested in hearing an explanation as to whether they feel that it was not techically feasible, or that they were too honest to do it. Or perhaps they just didn't want to take the risk?

And yes, Bush did better on every type of voting equipment (except paper ballots, I believe, for which the sample size was too small to know for sure). But that doesn't rule out fraud perpetrated primarily via central tabulators, right?

[Bill Bored]

21. There is a third option:

You wrote:

1) For some reason they felt that they couldn't get away with it.

2) They knew they could get away with it but decided not to do it because they were too honest to steal a Presidential election.

The 3rd option is:

3) They didn't need his code because there are ways of stealing elections with the off the shelf products.

Why does it seem that this is so hard to imagine?

Of course then you still have the choice of whether to do it or not.

[Time for change]

27. I don't disagree

The main point I was trying to make is that at least one method for massive fraud appears to have been available to Republicans in 2004. Given that, I find it difficult to believe that at least one of those methods wasn't used -- massively and successfully.

OTOH thinks very logically and carefully about these things -- and yet there appears to be disagreement on this issue. I'm trying to understand the basis of that disagreement.

[OnTheOtherHand]

30. ah, the resort to cheap flattery (grin)

But these are very serious questions.

I don't at all rule out central tab fraud in 2004, although no one has convinced me yet that it offers the best explanation of any particular result. (As Laplace supposedly said about God, "I have no need of that hypothesis.")

I heartily agree with Febble's point upthread that the most interesting aspect of Curtis's testimony is that he was asked to do what he did. I wish I had made that point myself -- I was in a hurry. I've always found Curtis's story strange (could Feeney really be that stupid?), but if it's true, Feeney should be locked up.

I don't know how one can get from Curtis's testimony to the conclusion that the Republicans had the ability to hack the central tabulators (as in your #18). I can't even get to the conclusion that the DREs were rigged -- although I do agree with your point that we have no way of knowing they weren't, and I think that's utterly unacceptable.

By all accounts election security is a nightmare, so it wouldn't surprise me much if the central tabs had back doors potentially exploitable by anyone who knew about them, regardless of party affiliation.

I think it would be at least somewhat risky to steal an election that one had already won, and I've seen no evidence to convince me that Kerry was winning the popular vote nationally or in either Ohio or Florida.

I don't trust either party to be too honest to steal an election; personally, as a lifelong Democrat (but for several years a registered Green), I trust the Republicans less.

[Time for change]

33. What I get from Curtis's testimony

You say "I don't know how one can get from Curtis's testimony to the conclusion that the Republicans had the ability to hack the central tabulators"

Here's how I get there. Curtis' testimony is in gray block:

I stressed how the tampering could be detected. She quickly set me straight as the to true intention. Her exact words were "If we can’t hide the manipulation, we won’t get the contract the program is needed to control the south Florida vote." Another confirmation of why I needed to get a different job. I would not build something that would defraud every voter in this country.

It seems to me that Curtis is saying here that there is an organized effort to make sure that the Florida vote can be rigged.

Then he goes on to say:

Even better, I knew that as long as the election supervisors used proper computer procedures, no one else would or could either.

What I did not anticipate was that this country would allow the placement of voting machines where the source code was not provided. The programs were pre-compiled (you have no idea what is in them or what hidden triggers exist), and where no paper trail would be required to check their accuracy.

It seems to me that he is saying here that the way this election was run, the scenario he described would have been imminently possible.

He does allude to the possibility that a paper trail could be used to defeat the plan. But of course in Ohio, though a paper trail existed, Blackwell and his subordinates made sure that the paper trail would never be used (Well, the case is still pending in court, but why would they be fighting it tooth and nail if they didn't recognize that a Ohio recount very well might do them in?)

Furthermore, he testified to all this under oath, and Raymond Lemme, who was investigating his case, died under very mysterious circumstances after having told Curtis that he "had tracked the corruption all the way to the top", in Curtis' words.

[OnTheOtherHand]

37. why I don't get there --

but it's important to understand that I'm not vouching for the security of the voting terminals or central tabulators. I'm just explaining the limits of what I learn from Curtis's affidavit.

One problem is some ambiguity about what Li Woan Yang actually said. According to the affidavit, she said, "This program is needed to control the vote in South Florida." According to the Wired News story, "'Her words were that it was needed to control the vote in West Palm Beach, Florida,' Curtis said. 'Once she said, "We need to steal an election," that put me back.'" Unfortunately, I haven't yet found a story that explains what a reference to either "West Palm Beach" or "South Florida" might mean, i.e., what contract Yang was presumably competing for.

Your formulation -- "an organized effort to make sure that the Florida vote can be rigged" -- seems to go beyond the text. We seem to have one member of the Florida House scheming to rig elections in one part of Florida, in cahoots with one company that doesn't seem to be a major industry player.

Also, the program he wrote -- apparently to Feeney's own specs -- was specifically for a voting terminal. It doesn't look to me as if Curtis thinks he is describing a central tabulator hack; his program is designed to alter the totals on a particular terminal, and he seems to envisage that it would be activated by collaborators (voters? workers?) at multiple precincts, per Feeney's specification. Could a voting terminal be used to hack an entire election (i.e., the results from many precincts)? perhaps, but an entire voting system that poorly or corruptly designed could be hacked in quite a few ways. So why Feeney's insistence on hacking via a touch-screen interface? That's just weird. (Curtis's belief that he bolsters the credibility of his account by posting a new version of the touch-screen program on his web site is also weird to me, but maybe he knows his audience.)

We do know, from other sources, ways that elections could be stolen precinct-by-precinct, which wouldn't rely on secret touch-screen interfaces.

[Time for change]

39. It's too bad I don't have more expertise in this area

For right now I just have a few points to make:

1. I have been told by more than one seemingly knowledgeable source on DU (but can't recall who right now) that Curtis' program could be used for central tabulators just as well as regular precinct level voting machines.

2. With regard to the statement about the company not seeming to be a major industry player, my understanding is that there is a great deal of collaboration and mutual interest -- even mutual ownership -- between the various voting machine companies. And I think that Feeney's involvement in this belies the idea of this company not having a major role in this somewhere.

3. I think that the EIRS analyses which show a huge preponderance of electronic vote switching incidents to go in Bush's favor (See posts 28 and 35 above), as well as the fact that a great proportion of these occurred in swing states (predominantly FL and OH) gives added credence to Curtis's testimony (though it's true that this doesn't support the central tabulator theory).

4. I think that the death of Raymond Lemme also adds a lot of weight to this whole thing. People don't generally commit suicide while in the midst of an important investigation.

5. It would be nice if KerryReallyWon, or someone else with a good deal of knowledge in this area, would jump back into this conversation.

[OnTheOtherHand]

40. there is some danger of us talking past each other

and so I will keep saying -- lest anyone get confused -- that I'm not vouching for the security of either the voting machines or the central tabulators. Nor am I discounting Curtis's affidavit; some stories are too weird not to be true, and who am I to speculate about how stupid Tom Feeney is? Quickly on your points --

1) Sure, an interface like that one could be used to hack a central tabulator, if the central tab was 'appropriately' designed. What I may be having trouble conveying is just how little Curtis's prototype adds to that story. Again, as Febble pointed out, Curtis's story is important for its possible insight into particular people's motives, not for its technical revelations.

2) I'm open to instruction here -- I know about the family ties between Diebold and ES&S -- but I have no idea whether Yang fits in. Your last point doesn't cut much ice with me; the fact (let's stipulate it) that a member of the Florida House, who worked for Yang, had meetings at Yang about controlling elections in South Florida (or wherever) doesn't tell me much about what "this" Yang might have had a major role in. Maybe that part of the story has been filled in, and I just haven't found it yet.

3) We're just in different cognitive spaces, or something. Rather a lot is known about the general and specific vulnerabilities of various voting systems and equipment. I just don't see how Curtis's affidavit affects that one way or another. The security experts don't seem to be saying, "Ah hah! that changes everything!" And I'm still stuck where Bev Harris was -- I don't understand how this program, or the concept based on this program, or whatever, is supposed to have gotten into circulation. I don't see why the plausibility of massive fraud depends much, if at all, on what we think of Tom Feeney.

4) Lemme's death is very disturbing, although I'm in no position to assess it. Judging from Curtis's affidavit, Lemme was investigating a lot of different things, and a number of folks may have wanted him dead for various reasons. Lemme's death, in itself, doesn't really convince me that Tom Feeney and Yang Enterprises are likely to have been the epicenter of electoral fraud. Whether they wanted to be, and what other criminal activities they may have engaged in, are separate questions.

[Time for change]

41. On point # 3 and some general point

I'm having trouble thinking about trying to add any specificity to the issues I've already raised. But maybe I didn't state my general feelings about this well enough -- so I'll try again here:

Curtis's testimony makes it clear that the company that he worked for believed that they had to develop a program that would switch votes and be undetectable in order to stand a good chance of getting an important Florida contract to participate in the 2004 elections. In addition, Tom Feeney, who is now a U.S. Congressman, was intimitely involved in this issue. To me, this information, and the fact that it was provided under oath, and probably with significant risk to Curtis's life (IMO), screams of a high level conspiracy to deliver Florida to Bush by fraud (and if it was done in Florida I think we can be reasonably certain it was done in Ohio. I do believe that Bush may have had enough legitimate votes to win Florida without fraud -- but not Ohio).

Remember too that I have talked with Curtis about this. One argument against the above might be that Curtis is just some crackpot. My conversations with him about these issues have, for the most part, not confirmed that theory at all.

With regard to my point number 3, I don't see how you addressed that. It's not so much Curtis's affidavit that I'm pointing to there, but rather the vote swiching analyses that I've done. This occurred on a massive basis in Florida, and a less massive basis in Ohio, undoubtedly related to the fact that Ohio had only one small county that used touch screens, whereas Florida had several big ones. The ratio of incidents that favored Bush to those that favored Kerry (12 to 1), and the relative risk for this phenomenon occurring in swing states (9 to 1) are way too high to be explained easily by anything other than fraud IMO. So I am curious as to what your take on this is.

[OnTheOtherHand]

42. a few things

"Curtis's testimony makes it clear that the company that he worked for believed that they had to develop a program that would switch votes and be undetectable in order to stand a good chance of getting an important Florida contract to participate in the 2004 elections."

It does? I don't see any reference to the 2004 elections in the affidavit. Is this clearer in some other setting?

I don't assume that Curtis is a crackpot, but if he is telling the truth, it does seem to me that Feeney is an idiot. That is perfectly possible, but I'm not inclined to draw strong inferences (one way or another) about the 2004 election.

The EIRS analysis deserves attention in its own right. (It seems quite possible to me that EIRS reports are biased, in that awareness of its existence was by no means universal, and I imagine that more Democrats than Republicans knew about it. On the other hand, the obscurity of the EIRS is a rebuttal, of sorts, to the objection that fewer than 100 reports nationwide of touch screen glitches don't really get us very far toward election theft.) I don't see why you think the EIRS reports buttress Curtis's testimony, although arguably Curtis's testimony infirms the EIRS reports. I've said that I thought it would be rather stupid to program a touch screen to visibly switch votes from one candidate to another, if one could switch the votes invisibly instead -- which, after all, was the whole point of Curtis's prototype. It's possible that someone stupidly programmed some touch screens to change votes visibly, not knowing that someone else had cleverly hacked the central tabs.

[mgr]

43. EIRS database not crystal clear

For evaluation purposes, I think the Kerry switch to Bush is too narrow a frame. There are additional reports indicating the vote for Kerry not being reported; and there is a very odd one from Colorado where several democratic offices selected were switched, but does not name Kerry. IMO, the pattern is too slight and seems to correlate to machine failures to be a sufficient explanation for theft, but I think the records are greater than 100, and apply to battleground states other than Ohio or Florida. But I do not think we have fully analyzed what that data contains.

e.g. for my own purposes, and please PM me on this, can someone explain Delaware County in Ohio? What I mean is that the reports of long lines here seem to exceed anywhere else, and the county is republican, and the voter registration increased by ~200,000. It seems to me to be the counter factual that may explain in part why the DNC did not think voter suppression cost Kerry Ohio, or the pattern may show that it did. I don't recall any discussion of the county past it being part of the greater Columbus area.

I think one of the useful endeavors is to show whether the DNC report has it right on suppression. I've got a more conservative estimate of ~50,000 for Cleveland (not Cuyahoga)that is maybe 30,000 less that Knapp's, but is also applicable elsewhere--but when I looked through EIRS there was this big county (#3 in population) that has had nary a mention.

Mike

[Time for change]

44. I'm unclear what your question is about voter registration

What do the 200 K and 50 K figures refer to, and where did you get them?

With regard to the EIRS analysis, it is true that the "vote switches" did not always occur in the same manner: sometimes it was Kerry to Bush, sometimes Kerry to 3rd party candidate, etc. But in the study I did, I clearly defined (IMO) what I was counting as a vote switch, applied it evenly to both candidates, and still ended up with a 12:1 ratio. And it's true that they didn't all occur in FL and OH, but the rate (per population using electronic voting machines) was 9 times as great in swing states than in other states.

[mgr]

49. Some clairifications, corrections to my previous post are in order

1.) I was not questioning your methodology, the categories selected are apropos for the purposes of your analysis, but it is not an end in itself. In regards to DREs, what I will suggest, ala land shark, is that a single report of such an incident requires further evaluation and assessment. I think possibly that the categories are a little narrow, and that may be why we disagree whether such happened in Colorado, or not. As to the election, the preponderance in battleground states is suggestive, but one of the patterns I have trouble with is that a majority of these appear to be within the period around eight am or earlier, and really might not play a role in vote switching, since the phenomena is not reported throughout the day. Again, it suggests machine problems, and once reported, the errant machines were turned off. And there would be the start for potential long lines.

2.) My analysis is only as good as my sources. My information regarding Delaware County came from the EIRS database, and I did not fully vet the files, 212 in<c>idents of long lines is a bit much, but I took a second gander this morning. I may be confused (and I was the first time), but I cannot tell if the incidents are formally from Franklin County; or reflect a metropolitan area that extends into Delaware from the incorporated City of Columbus. I now think the first, but cannot understand the mis-laid records.

3.) I compounded my error my adding a zero to the total change in registration for Delaware (actually I am not sure what I did). I've been having eyestrain difficulties the last week or so, so it is 20,000 not 200,000, but the registration question still remains. Was this our GOTV or their GOTV? If ours, it takes away much of reported republican gains, since most of the gains on the republican side are in the 20,000 per republican leaning county (Mahoning, Clermont, Delaware, see website below).

4.) The fifty thousand is an estimate that comes from a comparison of voter turnout for Cinncinnati precincts only (which is lower than the overall Hamilton County turnout), and compares it to the voter turnout for Cleveland precincts only. I think we may have good reason to suspect that Hamilton County's BOE ran a clean election--20 machine problems, 12 reports of long lines; and, the recount strategy was sound, and fulfilled as well as may be expected, the randomness criteria. I have some quibbles with minor details, but I think Kiwi Expat and others will agree that it was better than most other counties in Ohio, and may have been the best of the large population counties. What it comes to is about 50,000 votes were suppressed by the long lines in Cleveland.

4a.)You are forcing my hand since I was not ready yet to come forward with formal data, but there are some things to consider with the vote suppression model, and some assumptions that need to be addressed. The most critical is whether issues with long lines were broadcast over local media, thus leading to both democratic and republican voters equally likely to stay home; or were the long lines experienced directly, thus having the effect of suppressing that precinct's voters. Signicant reports of long lines seem to come from democratic leaning counties per (about 33% of reported election incidents for a county)

https://voteprotect.org/epc/index.php?display=EIRMapState&state=Ohio&cat=ALL&tab=ALL

http://www.feminist.org/pdfs/OH_election_precert.pdf

What I am trying to do is to see if a reasonable estimate can bring the determination of the DNC reports into question. Delaware appeared to be the one exception, but OTOH pointed out that Delaware went to Kerry this year. With the EIRS database issue, I am going to have to look at this much more closely that my eyes may bear, since my evaluation was obviously premature.

Mike

Corrected spelling of incidents in item 2

[OnTheOtherHand]

52. whoops!

I think you misread my PM, which would have been easy to do (even without eyestrain), since I talked about two counties in the same short paragraph.

Let me try again. Delaware County, just north of Columbus, is a reliably Republican county; it went Bush about 2:1.

Franklin County, where Columbus is, is pretty evenly balanced between city and suburbs, but seems to be becoming more Democratic (in part, I suspect, because more Republicans are moving to adjoining counties). Franklin went for Bush in 1992 -- in fact, it seems to have gone Republican in every presidential election from 1968 through 1992 -- but has gone Dem in the last three presidential elections. Kerry won Franklin in 2004 something like 53:45.

We've been talking about these two counties because the EIRS interface currently allocates 668 incidents to Delaware and only 281 to Franklin (see https://voteprotect.org/index.php?display=EIRMapState&state=Ohio&cat=ALL&tab=ALL or if that link fails, go via http://verifiedvoting.org )
which is inherently bizarre since Franklin has many more registered voters -- but besides that, when one looks at the reports for "Delaware," most of them actually have a "Columbus, Franklin County" location! It looks like some sort of database bug.

(Edit to fix one typo -- the others, I don't see yet...)

[mgr]

53. Thanks for the correction

I re-read the PM you sent regaring my original confusion, and can see where I made my mistake. Mea culpa.

Mike

[Time for change]

45. Answer to your statements

With regard to whether or not Curtis' testimony referred to the 2004 elections, it just seems to me that that would be a reasonable assumption. I suppose that it could have referred to 2002, but if that was the case, why would such a program be used for 2002 but not 2004?

I don't see why Feeney would have to be an idiot to do what he did. Was Nixon an idiot because he got caught with the W H tapes? Criminals get caught, either because they're careless or for other reasons. And Feeney didn't even get caught (maybe he knew the system would protect him).

I don't know enough about writing vote switching programs to know how to answer your observation that they should have programmed it so that the voter wouldn't see it. Maybe they meant to do that, but it didn't work as well as it was expected to? Maybe that was the best that could be done with those machines. In any event, whatever the case, it seems to me that it must have cost Kerry hundreds, or more likely thousands of votes. And nobody got caught (yet). So it worked (so far).

[OnTheOtherHand]

46. it would be helpful

if someone could tell us whether Yang ever bid on an election contract in Florida (never mind whether they ever won one). Basically, the two of us are just guessing what the heck Curtis might have been talking about.

What Feeney is supposed to have done is right out of Dilbert -- telling the techies what to do when he should have been asking them what they would do. It's perfectly plausible that someone could be idiotic in just that way. I just don't see how much else it could prove.

"Maybe they meant to do that, but it didn't work as well as it was expected to? Maybe that was the best that could be done with those machines." I don't know what to say -- I don't understand the standards of argument here. It is hard to imagine that any program along the line of Curtis's would somehow accidentally display the vote switches. And I thought the premise of much of this argument (a correct premise!) is that the voting systems have known, gaping security vulnerabilities.

[Time for change]

47. You're quite correct that to a large extent we're just guessing

My point is this.

The electronic "vote switching" reported by EIRS, which demonstrated a 12:1 ratio of incidents favoring Bush over those favoring Kerry, were very disproportionately reported from S. Florida:

http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com/2005/08/articles-and-commentary-on-2004.html

Yes, there are numerous things that I can't explain about this, including the things that you mention, such as why many of these incidents were visible to the voter, why Feeney asked Curtis about this in the way that he did, and many other things that I can't explain.

But the coincidence of a 12:1 ratio in favor of Bush and such a great preponderance of these incidents in South Florida (occurring on different brands of machines I should add) also seems IMO to make it very difficult to postulate a non-fraud related hypothesis that is plausible.

So, when you you're left with two general categories of competing hypotheses (fraud vs. non-fraud), one which I can't explain (fraud), but the other which seems highly implausible (non-fraud) to me, then I choose the latter.

[OnTheOtherHand]

48. OK

Is it just coincidence that Curtis talked about South Florida and that many of these reports came from South Florida? Umm, I don't know -- but I certainly can't pound on the table insisting that it must be.

We could go around several more times trying to figure out why our plausibility assessments differ (me, I'd like at least a tenuous account of how some program related-only-not-related to Curtis's prototype would have found its way onto these machines from different manufacturers in South Florida -- and you think probably in Ohio -- but apparently not in many other places), but I think the bottom line will still be that we need more information.

[autorank]

36. I like option number three and any option that will garner votes.

We have a stunned populace, a passive press, and election officials who seem to think that the voting process should be conducted for their convenience. We also have people who just don't want to bother with the issue at all, total denial.

If I'm "them" and I've got their record, I have two powerful reasons to use any and all means to "win:"

1) I don't want any investigations that unearth the big problems (and there are just so many, it's difficult to imagine what we're only marginally or not aware of); and
2) I need to keep delivering to my core constituency--think of the tens of billions of dollars at state in 2006, 2008 and beyond. The corporate constituents (not all corporations but those "invested")will only be around as long as the money flows. Failing them compounds any problems from investigations and risks incurring their wrath as well.

"Whatever it takes to get the job done" is the correct motto. Some places it's DRE's others it's optiscans others it's off the shelf solutions and others still, special products like this code...there is no single method of "enhancing" a vote total and its counterproductive to assume there was/is/will be.

[Bill Bored]

24. Doing better on every type of machine

Better than 2000, or better than the exit polls?

We have to be careful about using data from these polls if we are simultaneously saying they aren't particularly reliable (and please let's not have THAT debate again here).

[Time for change]

26. I believe that comparison of exit polls with official results

showed that Kerry did better in the exit polls than the official results with the use of every type of voting -- except hand counted paper ballots. With these, I believe that the results were closer, but in any event the sample size to too small to say much about it.

[OnTheOtherHand]

32. fair point -- I meant better than 2000

My reading of the James Q. Jacobs Ohio spreadsheet is that the "Bush shift" in Ohio from 2000 to 2004 was 0.9 points overall, 0.6 points in E-Vote counties, 0.5 points in op-scan counties, and 1.0 points in punch counties. (ohio_vote_county.xls, Analysis tab, around cell B118.) I wasn't even intending to raise the exit polls.

I saw numbers from Florida long ago, which I thought turned out similarly, but I can't be sure.

New York is almost entirely lever, and of course Bush did much better in 2004 than in 2000.

I don't know whether I've ever seen nation-wide comparisons by machine type.

[Time for change]

19. Sorry, I realize that I asked you the same question twice

I didn't mean to do that.

I accept that you don't have an answer to that question. But anything you can add to clarify why you don't believe that central tabulators were used to affect the outcome of the election would be appreciated.

[OnTheOtherHand]

31. well, I thought I accidentally skipped the second question

I don't know if they have the capability. I don't really know whether they would eschew using it if they thought they would lose otherwise, but I certainly don't count on it. My other post elaborates on this, somewhat.

[autorank]

34. KerryReallyWon--WELCOME TO DU!!!! We need more of you!!!

Clones lasting at least 3 years will also do.

This is just a first rate post, it contributes to the reality-based anlaysis and is a great contribution to the broader DU base.

Thanks so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[kster]

38. kick.nt

[philb]

51. Recent Clint Curtis statement about vote rigging program

Click on the link to see the video of the testimony.
http://www.iwilltryit.com/fixed1.htm


Computer programmer Clinton Curtis testified at the December 13th, 2004 Congressional hearing in Columbus, Ohio naming Republican Congressman Tom Feeney as the person who hired him to prepare vote-rigging software.

The programmer claims that he designed and built a "vote rigging" software program at the behest of then Florida Congressman, now U.S. Congressman, Republican Tom Feeney of Florida's 24th Congressional District.

Clint Curtis, 46, claims that he built the software for Feeney in 2000 while working at a sofware design and engineering company in Oviedo, Florida (Feeney's home district).

Curtis, in his affidavit, says that as technical advisor and programmer at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) he was present at company meetings where Feeney was present "on at least a dozen occasions".

Feeney, who had run in 1994 as Jeb Bush's running-mate in his initial
unsuccessful bid for Florida Governor, was serving as both corporate counsel and registered lobbyist for YEI during the period that Curtis worked at the company.

Feeney was also concurrently serving as a Florida state congressman while performing those services for YEI. Feeney would eventually become Speaker of the Florida House before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002. He is now a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

At an October 2000 meeting with Feeney, according to the affidavit and BRAD BLOG interviews with Curtis over the past three days, Feeney inquired whether the company could build a "vote fraud software prototype".

At least three YEI employees are said to have been present at that meeting;Curtis, company owner, Mrs. Li Woan Yang, and her executive secretary, Mike Cohen. Two other YEI employees may have come in and out at different points of the meeting according to Curtis.

Curtis says that Feeney "was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program."

"He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be
touch-screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected."

Though there was no problem with the first two requirements, Curtis
explained to the Congressman that it would be "virtually impossible to hide such code written to change the voting results if anyone is able to review the uncompiled source code"

Nonetheless, he was asked at the meeting by Mrs. Yang to build the prototype anyway.

Curtis, "a life-long Republican" at the time, claims that it was his initial belief that Feeney's interest was in trying to stop Democrats from using "such a program to steal an election". Curtis had assumed that Feeney, "wanted to be able to detect and prevent that if it occurred."

Upon delivery of the software design and documentation on CD to Mrs. Yang, Curtis again explained to her that it would be impossible to hide routines created to manipulate the vote if anybody would be able to inspect the precompiled source code.

Mrs. Yang then told him, "You don't understand, in order to get the contract we have to hide the manipulation in the source code. This program is needed to control the vote in South Florida."

Mrs. Yang then took the CD containing the software from Curtis, reportedly for later delivery to Feeney.

In other meetings with Feeny prior to the 2000 elections, it became clear to Curtis that Feeney had plans to suppress the vote in strong Democratic precincts. In the affidavit, Curtis claims that in those meetings Feeney had "bragged that he had already implemented 'exclusion lists' to reduce the 'black vote'." Feeney also mentioned that "proper placement of police patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much as 25%."

Curtis says that he submitted his resignation to YEI effective December 2000, but stayed on until they had found someone to replace him in February of 2001. He eventually became employed by the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) after leaving YEI.

[texpatriot2004]

54. Thanks for sharing this important info. n/t