Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Wed 11/1/06 Happy Post-Halloween Edition

[kpete]

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Wed 11/1/06 Happy Post-Halloween Edition


In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.
~George Orwell





A VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO MY GOOD FRIEND LAND SHARK FOR INSPIRING ME TO TAKE THIS BOLD STEP -
Kpete Leads Way: Sues Repub Elections Official for SLOW-COUNTING paper ballots
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2526737&mesg_id=2526737





VOTE TAMPERING
REALLY SCARY VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX8JvlqBRa4&eurl=

Electronic Voting Machines
Years ago when I worked at a big bank, one of the hot issues was that many customers didn’t trust our new-fangled ATM machines. Amazingly, this fear had almost nothing to do with the fact that I worked in the ATM department. Indeed, my suggestion to include a paper shredder hole right next to the deposit hole was barely even considered. In the end, ATMs rarely stole anyone’s money and kept it for long. Now most people trust ATMs.

I think about the history of ATMs when I hear all the nervous Nellies wetting their pants over electronic voting machines. I believe those worries are totally misplaced. Now don’t get me wrong – there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?

Statistically speaking, any hacker who is skilled enough to rig the elections will also be smart enough to select politicians that believe in . . . oh, let’s say for example, science. Compare that to the current method where big money interests buy political ads that confuse snake-dancing simpletons until they vote for the guy who scares them the least. Then during the period between the election and the impending Rapture, that traditionally elected President will get busy protecting the lives of stem cells while finding creative ways to blow the living crap out of anything that has the audacity to grow up and turn brownish.

The important thing with democracy – and this has always been the case – is that the citizens a) Believe the election result is based on the common sense and voting rights of the citizens, and b) Have enough handguns to wax any politicians who gets too seriously out of line (also known as a “check and balance”).

And here the definition of “seriously out of line” would not include humping interns and stealing from taxpayers. Those things should be allowed, even encouraged, so we can attract the most capable candidates from private industry.

Call me an optimist, but electronic voting machines make me feel good about my country.

Is it too late to start selling bumper stickers that say “I think I voted”?

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/10/electronic_voti.html

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.
1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.
2. Post stories using the "Election Fraud and Reform News Sources" listed here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...
3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.
4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.
Please

"Recommend"

for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

[kpete]

1. UConn: Diebold AccuVote Optical Scan Is Vulnerable to Serious Attacks

UConn VoTeR Center Report: Diebold AccuVote Optical Scan Is Vulnerable to Serious Attacks
By Avi Rubin, Johns Hopkins University
October 31, 2006
Download the University of Connecticut Security Assessment of the Diebold Optical Scan Voting Terminal

Avi Rubin posted this overview of the UConn Review on his blog. It is reposted here with permission.

A powerful new report was released yesterday about the Diebold AccuVote Optical Scan voting terminal (AV-OS). This is a thorough and independent security analysis of the machines that will be used in Connecticut to count votes on November 7. It is based on hands-on experimentation with the system, and is thus more like the Princeton study of the Accuvote TS than my team's earlier source code analysis. Like the Princeton team, the UConn researchers had no access to any internal documentation from the vendor, no source code, or any other information that would have given them an advantage over a random attacker who happened to get access to the machine. Everything they needed to know to perform the attacks was done by reverse engineering the system and observing its behavior. The evaluation was done as part of an evaluation on behalf of the state of Connecticut. They should be commended for not only allowing, but for requesting this study. The report published on their web site explains the attacks in enough detail to be convincing, but some low level details are reserved for another copy of the paper that is only available from the authors by request.



The authors show that "even if the memory card is sealed and pre-election testing is performed, one can carry out a devastating array of attacks against an election using only off-the-shelf equipment and without having ever to access the card physically or opening the AV-OS system box." The attacks presented in the paper include manipulating the count so that no votes for a particular candidate are counted, swapping votes for two candidates, and reporting the results incorrectly based on biases that are triggered under certain conditions.

The attacks in this paper are cleverly designed to make a compromised machine appear to work correctly when the system's audit reports are evaluated or when the machine is subjected to pre-election testing. Besides manipulation of the voting machine totals and reports, the authors explain how any voter can vote an arbitrary number of times using (get this), Post-it notes, if the voter is left unattended.

The attacks are possible because of serious security vulnerabilities that could have been prevented with proper security design. For example, if a serial cable is connected to the AV-OS, an attacker with a laptop can easily obtain a dump of the memory card contents. The dump is obtained in cleartext because the system performs no authentication of any computer that is connected on that port. The dump can be very useful for an attacker, for example, to reconstruct the password and audit records associated with the memory card. The communication between the voting machine and the GEMS tabulation system is unencrypted and unauthenticated. Instead, they use a CRC as a checksum. In our 2003 report, we identified this as a weakness in the Diebold Accuvote TS because CRCs are easily broken. The authors of the new report show how to spoof the GEMS server to the AV-OS, which forms the basis of many of their attacks.

MORE AT:
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1946&Itemid=51

[Bill Bored]

27. Discuss here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x455954

[kpete]

2. How to: Do Election Fraud, Steal Elections or Fix a Vote

How to: Do Election Fraud, Steal Elections or Fix a Vote
Part 2 Targets and Methods for manipulating elections.
DRAFT, NOT YET FINISHED

Here is an analysis of vote manipulation for stealing elections as a security process, this is part two, Who does vote fraud and motivation is part 1. A real life example of holes in optical scanner voting is described in Ramsey County Minnesota Public Elections Test.

As described by Bruce Schneier in the book "Secrets and Lies" security has at least two sides, the attacker and the defender, and the attacks can be analyzed by target selection, analyze target, access target, attack target, avoiding detection and escape. On the other side is protection, attack detection, reaction to attack and remediation of damage. In this section I am looking at the election process as targets of security penetration with the goal of compromise of fair elections.

Distribution vs Centralization in Elections
An election is complex in the USA, there are no set ways of conducting elections, every state has different laws and rules, equipment and social processes. In fact, almost every county can have differing methods of voting and is a locus of decision making for large parts of the election process. One result is a lack of standards for elections including voting eligibility, counting procedure and recounts, district mapping, absentee balloting, provisional balloting, election equipment and procedure, reporting results, etc. As with any security problem with a myriad of target types the methods of manipulation are many and varied and can be fine tuned to a few critical units. This lack of standards has serious security implications. There are over three thousand counties in the USA and many voting process targets, such as counting absentee ballots, can be attacked differently in many locations which makes detection of attacks and protection from attack very difficult. Add to this that target selection has been made easy with the application of cheaply available technology and equally cheap public data. A simple PC and a database program or spread sheet is enough technology to sort targets by vulnerability or effectiveness for attack. Public available data files such as public voting records from the Secretary of State, ( about $45 for the data set from the State of Minnesota, ) and the US Census are enough data to fine tune a set of targets figure out vulnerabilities and organize subsets of targets by method of attack. Lack of standards and cheap availability of target selection technology points to an increase in vote manipulation in the USA.

On the plus side is that the distributed responsibility and processes of the elections makes it difficult to control or attack centrally. 100% voted for the ruling party is an unlikely scenario with over 3000 counties and 50 states counting the vote totals, setting voting eligibility and procedures. Of course, no one needs 100%, just 50% plus one vote. The centralization of voting lists under state vs county control, the counting of votes with electronic voting procedures is eroding the distributed nature of voting and inserting many central points of attack in the process.

A possible solution is an improvement to standards for such things as voter eligibility, registration, counting, recounting, voting procedure, reporting results, district mapping, and other issues while keeping the distributed responsibility for implementation and counting at the county level. This may drop the target variability for similar processes, making protection and detection of attack on the voting process easier with fewer types of targets available, yet keep widely distributed powers in the process, making central manipulation difficult. Supposedly HAVA, the Help America Vote Act was ment to be a means of setting some national standards, yet as now implemented seems to add some very nasty compromises to the voting process.

MORE AT:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hause011/article/Vote2.html

[kpete]

3. Dorothy Fadiman's "Stealing America: Vote by Vote"

October 31, 2006 at 17:36:47
Dorothy Fadiman's "Stealing America: Vote by Vote"
by Joan Brunwasser

http://www.opednews.com


Dorothy Fadiman's Stealing America: Vote by Vote
By Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity Editor, OpEdNews

This is a film that is more than simply the sum of its parts. It combines powerful content, high-quality camerawork, effective graphics, and a haunting musical score. The film is clearly the work of someone with extensive experience in the field. In fact, Dorothy Fadiman has been making documentaries for the last 30 years, and has many awards to her credit.

Stealing America is a quiet film, and most of the action takes place away from the bombast of politicians. Floundering democracy is the true protagonist here. The corporate media do not come out well – film clips of commentators on Election Day remarking on how smoothly everything went are interspersed with long lines of voters standing in the dark for hours, waiting for a turn to vote. When the networks began to call the election for Bush, inner city voters were still in line – some standing there for as long as thirteen hours – trying to take part in an election that had already been declared.

The use of close-up camerawork diminishes the distance between the viewers and the figures onscreen. We are drawn into their conversations, and almost feel like participants in them. The mood is very intimate and intense, and achieves so much more than conventional, staged interviews. People talk frankly and emotionally, they cry, and they get angry. The result is very effective. I have watched this movie three times, and I always get teary and choked up.

Erika Luckett, who has collaborated with Fadiman on a number of past projects, is responsible for the haunting background music. Her renditions of American patriotic classics in a sadder, minor key dovetail seamlessly with the film, subtly underlining and enhancing the content. The use of the repeated percussive sound is a musical analogy for actions and consequences, the stone thrown in a pond that creates multiple ripples. While it has sinister ramifications in the "What Happened" section, it begins to take on a note of hope in the "Taking Action" segment, mirroring the film's message that citizens' action can succeed in bringing about change. After every viewing of the film, snippets of the soundtrack bounce around in my mind for hours and even days, maximizing its impact far beyond the initial viewing.

MORE AT:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_joan_bru_061031_dorothy_fadiman_s__22s.htm

[kpete]

4. Pentagon Warned on Security Issues for Overseas Ballots

E-Mail Voting Comes With Risks
Pentagon Warned on Security Issues for Overseas Ballots

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; Page A19

Time was when soldiers, if they wanted to vote, had to request ballots by snail mail, fill them out and return them the same way.

The process typically took weeks.

This year, thousands of soldiers around the world have the opportunity to vote in the Nov. 7 elections by e-mail. It's part of a Pentagon effort to make it easier for overseas military personnel to cast ballots in federal and state elections, and it reflects how the Internet has changed life in the combat zone.

But computer security experts inside and outside the government warned that the Pentagon's Federal Voting Assistance Program ignores the risks associated with unencrypted e-mail: interception, hacking and identity theft.

"E-mail traffic can flow through equipment owned and operated by various governments, companies and individuals in many countries," Joel Rothschild, a Navy Reserve captain, said in an August report prepared for the Pentagon. "It is easily monitored, blocked and subject to tampering."

MORE AT:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001062.html

[mod mom]

15. '04: 24% Disenfranchisment rate for Military Absentee Voters

In 2004, the National Defense Committee found at least a 24% disenfranchisement rate for military absentee voters. In fact, that is probably an ...
www.eac.gov/docs/ National%20Defense%20Committee%20St%20Louis%20Testimony.doc -

and...
Mark Crispin Miller's "Fooled Again" gives an astonishing tale of disenfranchisement among expat's voting in '04 (which of course extremely effected votes for the Dems) another coincidence?

[kpete]

5. UpDated: From an election judge re: Texas "vote flipping"

UpDated: From an election judge re: Texas "vote flipping"
by anna
Tue Oct 31, 2006 at 01:48:13 PM PST
I'm not sure how to start this diary, but I felt compelled to write it after reading both of the recommended diaries about supposed "vote flipping" in Texas.

I am an election judge in Texas, so I thought I could provide some insight.

anna's diary :: ::
First of all, with all due respect to Jules, that diary was thin on facts and thick on speculation. It speaks to the paranoia of this community that it shot up the rec list. Now I'm not saying we shouldn't be paranoid, but I do think we should be fact-based rather than fact-esque.

Whiskey Sam tried to lay out some anecdotal evidence regarding the sensitivity of touch screen voting in his diary. I commend him for weighing in because, well, he's basically right. I'll elaborate on that momentarily.

First let me add a disclaimer: I would prefer paper ballots. The chairman of my county Democratic party is in the process of filing a lawsuit against Hart Intercivics and the Tarrant County Elections Administrator demanding a paper trail (aka "audit trail") for our voting machines. This is a huge issue in my county and is of concern to both party officials and election judges like me. We also passed a Verified Voting resolution at our Democratic state convention over the summer. So before you slam me, realise that this is an issue of great concern to me.

But I didn't write this diary to defend myself or to make you feel better about electronic voting in Texas. I'm writing it to give you some facts.

MUCH MORE AT:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/31/164813/94

[kpete]

6. NV: Voter Fraud Alert in Nevada

Voter Fraud Alert in Nevada

A Jack Carter voter in North Las Vegas has reported that she cast her vote for Jack Carter and the machine would not register her vote for Jack Carter. Instead, her vote was cast for the None of the Above option.

The Election Protection lawyers are following up on this report now.

It is of vital importance to our democracy and the future of our nation that each and every citizen be vigilant and aware of the potential for voter fraud.

If anybody hears of any incident of voter fraud,intimidation, telephone, e-mail or any difficulties WHAT-SO-EVER with casting a vote, WHETHER in, at or around a POLLING PLACE or ANY OTHER PLACE as we continue through early voting and lead up to election day, please do the following:

* Get the full name and phone number, polling place, time and as detailed a description of the facts of the incident as you know them.

* Call the Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-737-3367 and pass on the report to the lawyers on call as soon as possible. DO NOT DELAY! Any delay in reporting could prevent effective action from being taken and could disenfranchise more voters.

http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/2006/10/voter-fraud-alert.html

[kpete]

7. Statistical Issues in Elections

Statistical Issues in Elections
By Sallie Keller-McNulty, PhD, President, American Statistical Association
October 31, 2006

Between races for the U.S. House of Representatives, Senate and governorships there will be over 500 major elections this fall, and thousands more local and state races. On November 8th, many Americans will wake up not knowing whether a candidate they voted for won. Projecting from past experience, we can expect between five to twenty federal elections and dozens of local elections to be within plus or minus 2% – too close to call given current technology. Procedures for resolving the uncertainty should be thought about now, before partisans start arguing for methods that seem likely to benefit them. Statisticians can help develop credible procedures.

Trustworthy elections require transparent processes with limited opportunity for error or abuse. Elections entail many steps, from determining voting eligibility, to casting, recording, tallying and reporting the vote. To improve the quality of complex processes, America has often called on statisticians such as Walter Shewhart in the 1920s or W. Edwards Deming in the 1970s and 1980s.

The starting point to thinking statistically is to identify all the steps, especially those most susceptible to problems. As we complete our third Federal election cycle since the difficulties of the 2000 elections, we know there are some big problems. For example, a team funded by the National Science Foundation tested the 5 commercially-dominant voting systems and a University of Maryland prototype, asking each of 1,540 participants to “vote” for an assigned candidate. No system got better than 98.5% correct votes, leaving a 1.5% margin of error!



In this brief letter, I address only the accuracy of the votes to be cast next month, although for the future, improvements to other parts of the process may matter more. Here are two things, neither easy, but largely doable, and important, to work on for this November:
• Only real recounts (cross-checking paper records against official tabulations), not just re-reading machine totals, will resolve close elections.
• Conducting random audits in all localities will help maintain honesty, enable a factual description of this election’s accuracy, and provide the data needed for doing better in 2008.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1950&Itemid=26

[kpete]

8. The theft of American elections is a media issue

Departments
Media Watch

The theft of American elections is a media issue
by Andi Novick, Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media
October 31, 2006

The loss of our right to vote (or have it counted) is a media issue which is why you are all getting this email. I've talked a lot about the effects of media ownership consolidation on the destruction of democracy by permitting a few corporations to fail to report the essential information we need to be a self-governing people. Not only does the main stream media refuse to investigate and report on the impossible discrepancies between the 'official' count and the exit polls, but they are actively complicit in this fraud. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the AP own the exit polls and have defied John Conyers' request for the raw data, keeping that data secreted from even qualified independent researchers.

We are all trying to take optimism from the lead democrats have in the polls going into the election. Keep in mind that they had these leads in 2002, when the Republicans got themselves total control, and they had even greater promise going into the 2004 elections. If you are still not convinced of the massive fraud that is going on, you can look at my 'cliff notes' version about the theft, which I wrote thinking people might read a few pages as opposed to an entire book (http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/16/2006/1865) .

Exit polls have historically been seen as the gold standard of reliability and are still considered as such everywhere in the world, except here. How is it that exit polls were relied on for a half century in this country and then suddenly they were wrong in 2000, and again in 2002 and again in 2004? Steven Freeman, author of Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, (http://www.electionintegrity.org/book) had analyzed the exit polls of the swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida in 2004 and concluded that the odds of the exit polls being as far off as they were are 250 million to one! And still the media utterly failed to question the evidence before its eyes.

MORE AT:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/16/2006/2205

[kpete]

9. Millions spent on political ads - and most of them are negative

Millions Spent on Negative Political Ads
Millions spent on political ads - and most of them are negative

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31, 2006
By JIM KUHNHENN Associated Press Writer
-

(AP) So far this campaign, the political parties have exposed voters to nearly $160 million in ads attacking congressional candidates. How much spent painting a positive image? About $17 million.

That's just over $1 of nice for every $10 of nasty.

The message ingrained in such a disparity in numbers: Don't vote for a candidate; vote against the opponent.

Negative ads are the coin of the realm in politics. With one week left in the campaign, voters will continue to be bombarded on television, in the mail and over the phone as political strategists make their closing arguments to a shrinking pool of those who haven't made up their minds.

Under the terms of a 2002 campaign finance law, these messages are independent expenditures that the parties can undertake only if they do not coordinate with the candidates they are seeking to help. This type of spending by the parties on congressional campaigns is 54 percent higher than it was for the same period in the 2004 campaign season, according to data compiled by the Federal Election Commission.

MORE AT:

http://www.rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fstories%2F2006%2F10%2F31%2Fap%2Fpolitics%2FmainD8L3PIVG0.shtml

[kpete]

10. NY: More state delay possible on new voting machines

More state delay possible on new voting machines
By MARC HUMBERT
AP Political Writer

October 31, 2006, 3:26 PM EST


ALBANY, N.Y. -- Already the worst in the nation for complying with new voting standards, New York may again stretch the deadline for counties to order new voting machines, raising new fears about whether they will be available for next year's elections, a state official said Tuesday.

Lee Daghlian, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections, said the board may decided at its meeting on Wednesday to push back the required date for counties to order the machines to "late January or sometime in February."


The deadline had already been shoved back to early January from mid-December.

Daghlian said slower-than-expected state testing of new machines to replace the decades old lever-action machines still used in New York was responsible for the possible new delay.

MORE AT:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--votingmachines1031oct31,0,5702986.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

[kpete]

11. FEDERAL INVESTIGATION OF SMARTMATIC UNDER WAY

11/1/2006
FEDERAL INVESTIGATION OF SMARTMATIC UNDER WAY

The U.S. government launched a federal probe of Smartmatic, the Venezuelan voting machine company affiliated with the Venezuelan government, whose machines were instrumental in all the electoral fraud committed in Venezuela since 2004. The company claims the probe, first broke by the Miami Herald on Saturday, was all their idea but ahead of U.S. elections, under unfavorable media spotlight, I do not believe them at all.

Following its role in the recall referendum that entrenched Hugo Chavez in power, the company has since taken its kooka-profits (in the neighborhood of $120 million) from the crime against democracy, and bought up a U.S. voting machine company, called Sequoia. Those machines have contributed to slow, error-fraught elections in Chicago, earning them municipal scrutiny, and questions have arisen as to who really owns the company, which has relatives of current Venezuelan ambassador, Bernardo Alvarez, on its board.

The whole thing looks shady, by the way. It’s ownership structure is a series of shell companies through the Caribbean and Europe. On the record, the company says there is nothing unusual about this, and they only do it to avoid paying Venezuelan taxes, something that must endear them with the Chavista regime, which continually rails about capital flight and tax avoidance. /s

For awhile, the company had a Chavista board member on its board - it claims that was just archaic Venezuelan law and they never met the guy anyway, something that is hard to believe.

more at:
http://www.publiuspundit.com/?p=3016

[kpete]

12. Dems Peaking at the Right Time

Partisan Trends:
Dems Peaking at the Right Time
November 1, 2006

In the final full month before Election 2006, the number of people identifying themselves as Republicans has fallen to its lowest level since we began reporting this measure of partisan trends in January 2004. As a result, Democrats have their biggest net advantage of the past two campaign cycles.

In October, just 31.5% of Americans considered themselves Republicans. That’s a startling decline of nearly six percentage points from 37.2% two years ago. It’s also down nearly a full point from last month.

Democrats have also lost a little ground since October 2004. Today, 37.7% identify themselves as Democrats, down a point from 38.7% on the eve of Election 2004.

However, Democrats now have a 6.2 percentage point advantage over the GOP, their largest recorded over the past 34 months. In October 2004, the Democrats advantage was a miniscule 1.5 percentage points.

more at:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/October%20Dailies/OctoberPartyAffiliationTrends.htm

[kpete]

13. Settlement Reached To Protect Maryland Voters

Settlement Reached To Protect Maryland Voters
By The Advancement Project
October 31, 2006

Advancement Project and Project Vote reached a settlement agreement with the Maryland State Board of Elections to protect the voting rights of voter registration applicants who have been classified as "pending" because their identification number did not produce an exact match against the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration or Social Security Administration database.



Nationwide statistics have shown that matching results in a high percentage of legitimate applications being denied through no fault of the applicants. If Maryland did not discontinue its practice of placing applicants whose personal ID number cannot be verified on pending status rather than registering such applicants, it would have lead to the inevitable and unlawful disenfranchisement of thousands of eligible voters throughout the state.

"Maryland was relying on computers to accurately identify eligible voters in a way that did not account for human error," said Elizabeth Westfall, senior attorney, Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, "A disenfranchisement by typo rule would have mistakenly rejected too many registration applications, too close to the election. We are pleased that state has agreed to take immediate action to rectify this problem."

The state has agreed to implement the following:

read the rest at:
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1953&Itemid=113

[kpete]

14. Election Day is Around the Corner - What Should YOU Be Doing?

November 1, 2006 at 05:41:33

Election Day is Around the Corner - What Should YOU Be Doing?

by Vickie Karp

http://www.opednews.com

Election Day is Around the Corner ~ What Should YOU Be Doing?

At last, mainstream media has figured it out: electronic voting can be hacked! They are just three years behind the curve, but at least they are finally getting the word out there to the public. Now all Americans who do not believe anything is true until they see it on CNN will finally know we've been speaking truth for the past several years regarding electronic voting and stolen elections. We especially thank Lou Dobbs and Kitty Pilgrim, who have become relentless in covering this crucial story and even brought up hand-counted paper ballots as a possible solution in their one-hour special this past week!

Logically, citizens keep raising the question: Does this mean we shouldn't vote, since our vote will probably be corrupted, flipped, or stolen anyway?

Our answer is: Vote anyway! As Bev Harris says, make "them" have to steal your vote to manipulate an election. But secondarily, vote so that you can record your experience or that of other voters you see or meet on Election Day. There are many organizations that will be gathering data on November 7th, and we have links to some of those orgs on our website.

No, you can't see an electronic voting machine steal an election (hence the name "black box"). But you can record (in writing, or with a camera or videocamera if the election judges don't toss you out of the polling place for using one) if, for example: You are voting on a touchscreen voting machine, you press the button for one candidate and another candidate's name lights up on the screen; if the machine gives you other types of problems; if it breaks down; if it has to be "re-booted"; if vendors are called in to "fix" machines; if you wait in a long line to vote only to find they moved your precinct's voting place at the last minute to another location; if election officials try to bully you or subvert the process in some way; if you get disenfranchised by some weird move like you're suddenly on a list of convicted felons; if there are long lines in your polling place, etc. etc.

more at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_vickie_k_061101_election_day_is_arou.htm

[kpete]

16. Sixth Circuit Issues Three Opinions on Ohio Voter ID Appeal

October 31, 2006
Breaking News: Sixth Circuit Issues Three Opinions on Ohio Voter ID Appeal
Here are the three opinions: majority opinion (Judge Gibbons); concurring opinion (Judge McKeague); concurrence and dissent (Judge Tarnow) .

Most of the 20-page majority opinion considers the authority of the Attorney General to appeal when the Secretary of State did not wish to appeal. It is only on page 15 when the court gets to the merits. In a nutshell, the majority sees two reasons why those challenging the law are unlikely to succeed on the merits. (1) Plaintiffs may not have standing (a point Judge McKeague highlights in the separate concurring opinion, noting that plaintiffs cannot point to anyone in particular who would be disenfranchised by the law) and (2) given a directive that has been issued by Ohio clearing up certain ambiguities and potential disparate treatment of voter id requirements across the state, there does not appear to be a likely constitutional violation. The judges stressed that Ohio was willing to work with plaintiffs to make sure that no one would be disenfranchised by the new law.

The dissenting judge (perhaps not coincidentally, a district judge sitting by designation) thought that the Sixth Circuit had an obligation to defer to the district court's factual findings. In making this point, the dissenting judge relied upon the Supreme Court's recent Purcell opinion. The majority too relied upon Purcell, this time for the point that last minute changes by courts in election rules may contribute to voter confusion. (This is the reading of Purcell I expected and feared.)

The plaintiffs had said they planned to appeal this reversal of the TRO to the Supreme Court. My prediction is that the Supreme Court will decline to reverse the Sixth Circuit.

more at:
http://electionlawblog.org/archives/007076.html

[kpete]

17. Recount Redux?: What Might Happen in a Close Election

Recount Redux?: What Might Happen in a Close Election

October 31, 2006
Daniel P. Tokaji
Associate Director, Election Law @ Moritz
Assistant Professor of Law
Moritz College of Law


Voting technology issues continue to loom large in the 2006 election season. This is largely the result of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), which requires that new equipment be in place this year in states that accepted federal funds to get rid of their old punch-card and lever machines. HAVA also mandates that at least one disability-accessible unit be at each polling place in this year's elections. While HAVA was intended to remedy some of the problems that arose in the 2000 Florida recount, the equipment that's been put in place in a number of states raises new questions about what would happen if a close election led to another recount.

Security Concerns and the VVPAT

The introduction of new voting equipment has prompted security concerns on the part of some computer scientists, who argue that paperless electronic voting machines are susceptible to fraud and error. This has in turn led some advocates to demand that electronic voting machines produce a contemporaneous paper record, or "voter-verified paper audit trail" (VVPAT), which may be used in the event of a recount. According to electionline.org, 22 states have now enacted such laws, 17 of which use electronic voting equipment. In some of those states -- including Ohio -- the paper ballot is the official ballot of record as a matter of law. ORC 3506.18.

A problem that's not been given sufficient attention is how a recount would actually work with a VVPAT electronic voting system. In Ohio and most other places that have VVPAT electronic voting machines, the paper record is printed on a roll of paper tape adjacent to the touchscreen interface. That paper tape is behind a transparent screen, so that the voter can see but not touch it, as depicted here and here.

A closer examination of this type of VVPAT system reveals difficulties, both legal and practical, that could arise in the event of a recount. On the practical side, an in-depth study of the equipment used in Cuyahoga County, Ohio's May primary election showed that 10% of the VVPAT records were in some way compromised. Among the problems were blank VVPAT tapes, accordian-style crumpling, destroyed VVPATs, printing anomolies, and missing text. To be sure, there were many other problems found in Cuyahoga County's primary election, as itemized in today's story from Wired.com. Those include human errors that could result in the electronic records being compromised. The problems relating to the paper records are particularly troubling, however, because they could mean trouble in the event of a recount.

more at:
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/comments/articles.php?ID=17

[kpete]

18. An Untimely Voter Purge

Editorial
An Untimely Voter Purge

Published: November 1, 2006
One of the most deplorable political tactics — trying to suppress the votes of poor or minority citizens by raising the specter of voter fraud — is playing out this week in the city of Yonkers. Republican Party lawyers are calling for an 11th-hour purge of voter rolls in a clear effort to help their endangered state senator, Nicholas Spano.

Two years ago, Mr. Spano won a race against Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democratic Westchester County legislator, by 18 votes after months of courtroom wrangling and ballot-challenging. This year’s rematch has been bitter, full of venomous ads and slung mud. Then last Friday, Republican lawyers filed challenges to nearly 6,000 voter registrations in the Senate district, charging discrepancies between county voter lists and change-of-address records compiled by the Postal Service.

There is a process for investigating an accusation of voter fraud. It involves sending a letter to an address in dispute, and possibly following up with a police inquiry. The Westchester County Board of Elections is doing that. But it has never had an outside party dump so many contested names so close to such a fiercely contested election.

The Republicans say they have only the purest motives. “It’s in everyone’s interest to put the election beyond the pale of fraud,” said John Ciampoli, a lawyer for the county Republican Party.

more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/opinion/01wed3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[kpete]

19. 'Hacking' Casts Doubts on Electronic Voting

Published on Wednesday, November 1, 2006 by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
'Hacking' Casts Doubts on Electronic Voting
by Monica Haynes

Visions of hanging chads are still dancing in the heads of voters who saw the 2000 presidential election nightmare as a wake-up call to the fallibility of the voting process.

Many states, prompted by the federal Help America Vote Act and its pot of $3.9 billion for upgrading election equipment, moved to electronic voting machines.

Allegheny County spent $11.9 million on iVotronic machines by Election Systems & Software.

The HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy," which debuts tomorrow night, shows that despite the use of electronic voting machines, America's voting system is still vulnerable.

The documentary focuses on Bev Harris, a Seattle author and grandmother, whose research into electronic voting machines led to everything from Dumpster diving at Diebold Corp. -- one of the leading electronic voting machine manufacturers -- to tussling over discarded election result slips.

While many folks focused on the hanging chads in Florida, no one seemed to pay as much attention to the fact that an electronic voting machine in Volusia County, Fla., recorded minus 16,022 votes for Al Gore, according to the documentary.


more at:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1101-08.htm

[kpete]

20. Diebold demands that HBO cancel documentary on voting machines

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Diebold demands that HBO cancel documentary on voting machines
Film saying they can be manipulated 'inaccurate'

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Diebold Inc. insisted that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair.

The program, "Hacking Democracy," is scheduled to debut Thursday, , five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results.

"Hacking Democracy" is "replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting," Diebold Election System President David Byrd said in a letter to HBO President and Chief Executive Chris Albrecht posted on Diebold's Web site. Short of pulling the film, Monday's letter asks for disclaimers to be aired and for HBO to post Diebold's response on its Web site.

According to Byrd's letter, inaccuracies in the film include the assertion that Diebold, whose election systems unit is based in Allen, Texas, tabulated more than 40 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election.

more at:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/290653_diebold01.html

[Algorem]

21. The View-were talking voting machines with ABC anchor Charlie Gibson

was changing channles about 25 minutes after hour,the red-haired comedian one (Joy Behar?) was telling Gibson about her concerns about the machines he said he's appalled that 200+-year old democracy can't count the votes,said ABC will be covering voting machine problems "to the extent that they occur" on election night,Rosie O'Donnell mentioned the HBO voting machine show,he said he knows a lot about that...


Someone in another time zone should check it out

[kpete]

22. Truth in the Booth: The Clint Curtis Story

November 1, 2006 at 10:38:06

Truth in the Booth: The Clint Curtis Story

by Joan Brunwasser

http://www.opednews.com



Truth in the Booth: The Clint Curtis Story
By Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity Editor, OpEdNews November 1, 2006

I may be getting a reputation as a one-trick pony. First, it was my Invisible Ballots lending-library project. Then it was my dedication to OpEdNews and voting integrity. Now, it seems like I'm a full-time reviewer of election material, having done Steven Freeman's book on exit polls, Hacked! by Vickie Karp and Abbe DeLozier, Sheri Myers' Cheated, and the movies Man of the Year, No Umbrella, and most recently, Dorothy Fadiman's Stealing America: Vote by Vote. David Earnhardt's documentary, Eternal Vigilance, is waiting patiently in line as well. But, it is difficult to ignore Truth in the Booth: The Clint Curtis Story. Curtis is popping up all over the place, in documentaries as well as books about our recent voting debacles. Since this review is time sensitive, instead of giving it the care I usually devote to my writing – which would have left it well after the midterm elections – I have tried to put something together quite quickly. I ask your forbearance with this unpolished piece.

Clint Curtis worked for Yang Enterprises (YEI), an engineering consulting firm that has contracts with NASA, among others. While working at Yang, he was contacted by Tom Feeney about vote-flipping software. Feeney was a member of the Florida legislature while he acted as the general counsel and the registered lobbyist for Yang, a clear conflict of interest. A lifelong Republican, Curtis assumed that Feeney and the party were trying to prevent Democrats from using this type of strategy to win the election. Feeney asked him if touch-screen machines could be programmed to flip votes invisibly, and Curtis answered that this was indeed possible. He was then told to create a system that would accomplish this task without leaving a trace were someone to examine the source code. His employer revealed to him that the purpose of this assignment was to control the vote in South Florida. Curtis testified about this under oath before Congress in December 2004, and later passed a polygraph test on every count. His claims have also borne the scrutiny of investigative journalist Brad "BradBlog" Friedman, one of the only members of the press to be on top of this story from the get-go.

Curtis decided to resign from Yang because he found them to be "ethically challenged." He moved on to a post at the Florida Department of Transportation, which, surprise, surprise, had contracts with Yang. He came across invoices over-billing for his own services at Yang, a practice that continued after he had left the company and was already employed by the Department of Transportation.

Curtis has refused to shut up. He was fired from his job at the Department of Transportation at the same time as whistleblower Mavis Georgalis. In all, half a dozen employees who were familiar with the Department's Yang connection were purged from their positions. Yang first tried to entice Curtis back, and he was then offered $1 million to leave Tallahassee and keep quiet about what he knew. Raymond Lemme, an investigator from the Florida Inspector General's office, looked into Curtis and Georgalis's allegations and told Curtis that the trail went right up to the top. Several weeks before the story was due to break, Lemme was found dead under suspicious circumstances. Curtis was threatened not to be alone, and his dog was shot.

more at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_joan_bru_061101_truth_in_the_booth_3a_.htm

[kpete]

23. Ohio Election Portends Trouble

Ohio Election Portends Trouble

By Kim Zetter
02:00 AM Oct, 31, 2006

Six years ago the world watched dumbfounded as the Florida 2000 fiasco exposed the messy underbelly of U.S. election administration. Since then states have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new electronic voting equipment to ensure that the nation would never experience such mishaps again.

But two recent and lengthy reports examining this year's May primary in Cuyahoga County, Ohio -- a pivotal state where the electoral votes gave President Bush his second win in 2004 -- make it clear that Florida-like fiascos are far from behind us.

The reports, totaling more than 500 pages, paint a disturbing picture of how million-dollar equipment and security safeguards can quickly be undone by poor product design, improper election procedures and inadequate training. From destroyed ballots and vote totals that didn't add up to lost equipment and breaches in security protocols, Cuyahoga's primary is a perfect study in how not to run an election.

The findings have ominous national implications. Cuyahoga County could play an important role in deciding two races in next week's election that will help decide which party controls the Senate and House. But one of the reports concluded that problems in the county were so extensive that meaningful improvements likely could not be achieved before that election, or even before the 2008 presidential election.

Moreover, few voting activists and election experts believe the problems are unique to Cuyahoga.

more at:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,71999-2.html

[kpete]

24. Justice Department is Reducing Elections Monitoring

Justice Department is Reducing Elections Monitoring and Ignoring State Noncompliance With Electoral Improvement Laws
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Wed, 11/01/2006 - 2:39pm. Analysis
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Today's report that the Justice Department will dispatch hundreds of election monitors to the polls next Tuesday should do little to assuage voters' fears of Republican prevarication. After all, a skilled magician may be the only one who knows what he is keeping up his sleeve, regardless of how many people are watching.

With the vast amounts of credible evidence proving that voting machines can be discretely rigged behind the scenes -- either onsite or ahead of time -- what exactly are these inspectors looking for? Unless they are all expert computer technicians, their mere presence at voting places will not prevent or uncover machine tampering.

Unfortunately, the fact that some federal officials will be casually monitoring a few elections will give Republicans more ammunition to dismiss charges of fraud should they once again mysteriously do better than the exit polls predict. Alberto Gonzales would likely be made aware of any swindling schemes to make sure the Bush Administration could establish plausible deniability, and he would know full well that sending in his henchmen would pose little risk to being discovered.

The Administration also gets to claim that they are seeking to prevent racial discrimination at the polls, but they are actually cutting by more than 20% what were clearly inadequate monitoring levels in 2004. While the Democratic Party is trying to do everything it can to protect voting rights by employing an army of 7,000 lawyers across all 50 states, the Bush Administration is only mustering about 800 Justice officials in just 20 states.

more at:
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/138

[kpete]

25. Confessions of an Ohio poll worker

Confessions of an Ohio poll worker
I went through the training -- twice -- and I'm still confused. I hope I can figure it all out by Election Day because I'm a precinct judge.

Editor's note: The author's real name and other details in this article have been changed to protect the author and other people mentioned. Her identity will be revealed after Election Day.

By Lucy Paul

Nov. 1, 2006 | I had been thinking about working at a polling place on Election Day ever since 2004, when Ohio was the crucial presidential battleground state -- and the red-hot center of controversy, with voters either turned away from the polls, or exercising their rights on machines that recorded their votes incorrectly, or not being able to get to the few machines at all.

Would this year be 2004 all over again, I wondered?

Then I saw a notice in our church bulletin: "Poll Workers Wanted." It said you could help your community and make money, too. It listed the pay: $95 plus training fees as a regular judge, $105 plus training fees as a presiding judge, or $115 plus training fees as a red bag judge. Figuring I could take a paid vacation day from my job while being paid to work a polling place -- and seeing the bill from my husband's student loans -- I decided I could use an extra hundred bucks, in addition to witnessing our democracy at work. Or not.

more at:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/11/01/poll/

[kpete]

26. Ohio Voter ID Law: I just got back from court.

Ohio Voter ID Law: I just got back from court.
by Jello2028
Wed Nov 01, 2006 at 05:18:00 PM PST

As you may well know, the Ohio voter identification law has been under challenge in Ohio, with U.S. Dist. Judge Algernon Marbley issuing a preliminary injunction as far as requiring voter identification for absentee ballots for about, oh, a day, and then it being reinstated by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Today was the hearing for a decision on what would be done with the law. The hearing was undertaken with the serious concern that if the law was thrown out, the 6th Circuit would reverse the decision and we would be right back where we started.

The good news is: A settlement has been reached!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/1/20180/1141

[rumpel]

28. TX: Voter Fraud Alert [VIDEO]

Alternet

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 8:07 AM on November 1, 2006

Touchscreen Trouble in Texas

This is a dicey subject. Ignore it at your peril, but obsess and you erode confidence and the thing that makes a nation great: the belief that an individual can make a difference.

So watch the local Texas clip to the right, one of many to come no doubt, but read all the way to the bottom of this post. In this local Texas news clip, though the report doesn't dig that far, ES&S voting machines seem to lean right, even when voters don't. It's sort of astonishing that the clip insinuates that all "mistakes" favor Republicans, yet they quote an expert innocuously saying that he believes it's a programming error. But see, he can't know, because nobody's watching. See how that's the problem?

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/43758/