When I mentioned that the GOP has been stealing the past few elections with rigged machines and lots of other dirty tricks, he looked at me as if I had antennae and green skin. He asked "How come I haven't seen this in any "normal" media?" I said "Because you didn't want to." I sent him this by e-mail:
_______________________________________________
Here is a tiny sampling of articles from reputable organizations on election problems. At the bottom is the official GAO report confirming some of the problems. I have not even included anything on the crooked secretaries of state such as Blackwell in Ohio (committed numerous offenses to manipulate the 2004 election in which, by the way, he was also the Bush Ohio campaign chair).
Be sure to look at the original web page; the graphic contains some important information.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2006/03/16/GR2006031600213.htmlHow To Steal an Election
It's easier to rig an electronic voting machine than a Las Vegas slot machine, says University of Pennsylvania visiting professor Steve Freeman. That's because Vegas slots are better monitored and regulated than America's voting machines, Freeman writes in a book out in July that argues, among other things, that President Bush may owe his 2004 win to an unfair vote count. We'll wait to read his book before making a judgment about that. But Freeman has assembled comparisons that suggest Americans protect their vices more than they guard their rights, according to data he presented at an October meeting of the American Statistical Association in Philadelphia.
Here's another:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/21/AR2006012101051_pf.htmlAs Elections Near, Officials Challenge Balloting Security
In Controlled Test, Results Are Manipulated in Florida System
By Zachary Goldfarb
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, January 22, 2006; A06
As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho's job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself.
Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.
Sancho's most recent demonstration was last month. Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland, manipulated the "memory card" that records the votes of ballots run through an optical scanning machine.
Then, in a warehouse a few blocks from his office in downtown Tallahassee, Sancho and seven other people held a referendum. The question on the ballot:
"Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?"
Two people marked yes on their ballots, and six no. The optical scan machine read the ballots, and the data were transmitted to a final tabulator. The result? Seven yes, one no.
"Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not have the elections administrator find out?" Sancho asked. "The answer was yes."...
And another:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12vote.html?ex=1305086400&en=5b3554a76aad524a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssNew Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems
By MONICA DAVEY
Published: May 12, 2006
CHICAGO, May 11 — With primary election dates fast approaching in many states, officials in Pennsylvania and California issued urgent directives in recent days about a potential security risk in their Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machines, while other states with similar equipment hurried to assess the seriousness of the problem.
"It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania, where the primary is to take place on Tuesday.
Officials from Diebold and from elections' offices in numerous states minimized the significance of the risk and emphasized that there were no signs that any touch-screen machines had been tampered with. But computer scientists said the problem might allow someone to tamper with a machine's software, some saying they preferred not to discuss the flaw at all for fear of offering a roadmap to a hacker.
"This is the barn door being wide open, while people were arguing over the lock on the front door," said Douglas W. Jones, a professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, a state where the primary is June 6.
The latest concern about the touch-screen machines was only the newest chapter in an emerging political and legal fight around the country over voting machines. While some voting officials defend the ease of touch-screens (similar to A.T.M.'s), some advocacy groups argue that optical scan machines, using paper ballots, are far more secure.
The wave of high-tech voting machines was prompted by the 2000 election in Florida, which spotlighted the problems of old-fashioned punch card ballots. But the machines that soon followed have spurred division. Here in Chicago, where voters used both touch-screen and optical-scan systems in a March primary, it took officials a week to tally all the votes because of technical problems and human errors, touching off a flurry of criticism over the Sequoia Voting Systems equipment...
And another:
http://www.eurekareporter.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?ArticleID=6504Area voting machines could have flaws
by Shane Mizer, 12/16/2005
AccuVote machines used in Humboldt County elections may be vulnerable to hacking, according to a recent test in Florida.
The machines succumbed to security expert tampering in a Leon County, Fla., test observed by elections supervisor Ion Sancho.
In a Wednesday press release from Sancho following a Tuesday test hack demonstration by Finnish security expert Harri Hursti and security expert Herbert Thompson of Diebold’s voting system, Sancho said Leon County will no longer use voting machine systems from Diebold Inc., “due to contractual nonperformance and security design issues.”
“I don’t know why any election official would allow anyone to have access to their voting system,” Humboldt County Elections Manager Lindsey McWilliams said, criticizing the Leon County test.
One of the nation’s leading vendors of voting machine systems and automatic teller machines, Ohio-based Diebold also supplies many of California’s counties, including Humboldt County, with its voting software and machines.
A similar hack test demonstration was scheduled in California for Nov. 30, but was postponed after security expert Hursti announced he could not attend. Although California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has not provided an exact date, the California test will most likely occur before Jan. 1, his staff said.
McPherson had no comments with regard to the Leon County voting system hacking demonstration.
“We’ll be evaluating our voting system on a case-by-case basis,” Secretary of State Press Secretary Jennifer Kerns said.
According to the Leon County press release, Diebold’s built-in security failed to prevent Hursti from tampering with the AccuVote-Optical Scan memory card installed in AccuVote machines.
The memory card, which retains voting results, is used in transferring the votes to the Global Election Management System central tabulator.
After Hursti doctored the outcome of the simulated test, the GEMS central tabulator was unable to recognize that a security breach had occurred.
Witnesses at the Leon County demonstration included Florida Fair Elections Coalition Director Susan Pynchon, security expert Thompson and Black Box Voting investigators Bev Harris and Kathleen Wynne.
Black Box Voting, a nonpartisan election watchdog headquartered in Seattle, has been monitoring the security of voting systems, specifically Diebold, since founder Harris stumbled onto an unprotected Diebold Web site in 2003 and proceeded to download approximately 40,000 of their documents and files...
another:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/national/01VOTE.html?ex=1398744000&en=322af40499b8657e&ei=5007&partner=USERLANDHigh-Tech Voting System Is Banned in California
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: May 1, 2004
California has banned the use of more than 14,000 electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc. in the November election because of security and reliability concerns, Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, announced yesterday. He also declared 28,000 other touch-screen voting machines in the state conditionally "decertified" until steps are taken to upgrade their security.
Mr. Shelley said that he was recommending that the state's attorney general look into possible civil and criminal charges against Diebold because of what he called "fraudulent actions by Diebold."
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/323/1/36GAO report documents how easy it is to hack the vote
by Bob Fitrakis
in Journal issue November-December 2005
November 15, 2005
Nearly a year after senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers of Michigan asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate malfunctioning voting machines during the November 2, 2004 presidential election, the nonpartisan agency’s report reveals serious flaws with electronic voting. The House Judiciary Committee received “more than 57,000 complaints” following Bush’s re-election, according to CNN.
The GAO report found that, “some of
concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.”
From the actual GAO report:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05956.pdf
efficient election process, numerous entities have raised concerns about
their security and reliability, citing instances of weak security controls,
system design flaws, inadequate system version control, inadequate
security testing, incorrect system configuration, poor security
management, and vague or incomplete voting system standards, among
other issues. For example, studies found (1) some electronic voting
systems did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was
possible to alter both without being detected; (2) it was possible to alter the
files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one
candidate could be recorded for a different candidate; and (3) vendors
installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level. It
is important to note that many of the reported concerns were drawn from
specific system makes and models or from a specific jurisdiction’s election,
and that there is a lack of consensus among election officials and other
experts on the pervasiveness of the concerns. Nevertheless, some of these
concerns were reported to have caused local problems in federal
elections—resulting in the loss or miscount of votes—and therefore merit
attention.
Many more articles:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/21/AR2006012101051_pf.html
http://www.failureisimpossible.com/agenda/votingmachines.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/fc/us/us_elections/news_stories/6
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