Archive for May, 2005

Another Stolen Election Southern California Book Tour with Bob Fitrakis!

Posted in TAKE ACTION! on May 31st, 2005


BOB FITRAKIS ON TOUR WITH BOOK EXPOSING OHIO ELECTION FRAUD

The national launch of the new book by Bob Fitrakis, Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election? Essential Documents, begins on June 15, 2005 in Santa Barbara and includes Ventura (6/16), Topanga (6/17), San Diego (6/18), and Santa Monica (6/19).

“In contrast to the deadly silence of the media is the silent scream of the numbers. The more you ponder these numbers, and all the accompanying data, the louder that scream grows.” —Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services

This book is filled with numbers and data showing what really happened in the 2004 election in Ohio. It includes many crucial source materials, commentary and investigative reports—including the complete text of the Conyers report, prepared by the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff. It is a must read for all people concerned about saving democracy and ensuring free and fair elections in the future.

Bob Fitrakis will speak about the book and his role in holding the first public hearings on voter suppression and election irregularities that lead to the Conyers hearings and the members of Congress and the Senate contesting the election in Ohio. Fitrakis is a dynamic, inspiring speaker who receives standing ovations after nearly every speech he gives. He is committed to protecting the voting rights of all Americans and is truly a national hero.

Come support the Another Stolen Election book tour! Your community is invited to join Bob at events in the following cities:

6/15 Santa Barbara, 8pm, Unitarian Hall, 1535 Santa Barbara Street, $5, contact Helen Conly, 805 746-0199
6/16 Ventura, 8pm, Franky’s Restaurant, 456 East Main Street, $5, contact Helen Conly, 805 746-0199
6/17 Topanga, 7pm, Topanga Christian Fellowship Church, 269 Old Topanga Canyon Road , free (donations gladly accepted), contact Rain Cater, 310-570-3254
6/18 San Diego, evening, venue TBA, contact Marin Eder, activist@cox.net, 619-528-8383
6/19 Santa Monica, 6pm, Venice United Methodist Church, 1020 Victoria Ave., $10 (fathers get in free), 310-390-8141

Be sure to check Bob’s calendar for continuous updates on venues, times,
etc.: www.freepress.org

Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election? Essential Documents (CICJ Books) will be available in bookstores by mid June and is available now on Amazon.com and Freepress.org. ISBN 0-971-04389-2

If your group wants to table at the event, contact us at:
lara@openvoting.org, 831-419-0758

We look forward to seeing you on the tour and thank you for your continued support!

********************
If your group would like to contribute to any of the events or help get the
word out about the tour – get in touch with the Lara Shaffer
lara@openvoting.org

If you would like to inquire about interviews with Bob please also contact Lara Shaffer at
lara@openvoting.org

And as always: www.FreePress.org for more information.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

top of page

Salon: My Right Wing Degree (Learn how to rig an election)

Posted in General on May 31st, 2005

MY RIGHT WING DEGREE

How I learned to convert liberal campuses into conservative havens at Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute, alma mater of Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Jeff Gannon and two Miss Americas

By Jeff Horwitz
May 24, 2005
Salon

One recent Sunday, at Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute, a dozen students meet for the second and final day of training in grass-roots youth politics. All are earnest, idealistic and as right wing as you can get. They take careful notes as instructor Paul Gourley teaches them how to rig a campus mock election.

It’s nothing illegal — no ballot stuffing necessary, even at the most liberal colleges. First you find a nonpartisan campus group to sponsor the election, so you can’t be accused of cheating. Next, volunteer to organize the thing. College students are lazy, and they’ll probably let you. Always keep in mind that a rigged mock election is all about location, location, location.

"Can anyone tell me," asks Gourley, a veteran mock electioneer, "why you don’t want the polling place in the cafeteria?"

Stephen, a shy antiabortion activist sitting toward the rear of the class, raises his hand: "Because you want to suppress the vote?"

"Stephen has the right answer!" Gourley exclaims, tossing Stephen his prize, a copy of Robert Bork’s "Slouching Toward Gomorrah."

*snip*

There is no better place to master the art of mock-election rigging — and there is no better master than Morton Blackwell, who invented the trick in 1964 and has been teaching it ever since…

Go to Salon and click the one-day pass:

www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/25/blackwell/

 

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

top of page

Optical scan machines hacked in Florida

Posted in General on May 30th, 2005

(Is it true that memory cards are used in optical scan machines? I thought they were only for touchscreens and the scan machines use paper ballots. –rf. (note: permission to reprint granted with link)

Tallahassee, FL: "Are we having fun yet?"

This is the message that appeared in the window of a county optical scan machine, startling Leon County Information Systems Officer Thomas James. Visibly shaken, he immediately turned the machine off.

Diebold’s opti-scan (paper ballot) voting system uses a curious memory card design, offering penetration by a lone programmer such that standard canvassing procedures cannot detect election manipulation.

The Diebold optical scan system was used in about 800 jurisdictions in 2004. Among them were several hotbeds of controversy: Volusia County (FL); King County (WA); and the New Hampshire primary election, where machine results differed markedly from hand-counted localities.

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/5921.html

New regs: Counting paper ballots forbidden

Most states prohibit elections officials from checking on optical scan tallies by examining the paper ballots. In Washington, Secretary of State Sam Reed declared such spontaneous checkups to be "unauthorized recounts" and prohibited them altogether. New Florida regulations will forbid counting paper ballots, even in recounts, except in highly unusual circumstances. Without paper ballot hand-counts, the hacks demonstrated below show that optical-scan elections can be destroyed in seconds.

A little man living in every ballot box

The Diebold optical scan system uses a dangerous programming methodology, with an executable program living inside the electronic ballot box. This method is the equivalent of having a little man living in the ballot box, holding an eraser and a pencil. With an executable program in the memory card, no Diebold opti-scan ballot box can be considered "empty" at the start of the election.

The Black Box Voting team proved that the Diebold optical scan program, housed on a chip inside the voting machine, places a call to a program living in the removable memory card during the election. The demonstration also showed that the executable program on the memory card (ballot box) can easily be changed, and that checks and balances, required by FEC standards to catch unauthorized changes, were not implemented by Diebold — yet the system was certified anyway.

The Diebold system in Leon County, Florida succumbed to multiple attacks.

Ion Sancho: Truth and Excellence in Elections

Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho and Information Systems Officer Thomas James had already implemented security procedures in Leon County far exceeding the norm in elections management. This testing, done by a team of researchers including Black Box Voting, independent filmmakers, security expert Dr. Herbert Thompson, and special consultant Harri Hursti, was authorized by Mr. Sancho, in an unusual act of openness and courage, to identify any remaining holes in Leon County’s election security.

The results of the memory card hack demonstration will assist elections supervisors throughout the U.S., by emphasizing the critical importance of accounting for each and every memory card and protecting access.

Findings:

Computer expert Harri Hursti gained control over Leon County memory cards, which handle the vote-reporting from the precincts. Dr. Herbert Thompson, a security expert, took control of the Leon County central tabulator by implanting a trojan horse-like script.

Two programmers can become a lone programmer, says Hursti, who has figured out a way to control the entire central tabulator by way of a single memory card swap, and also how to make tampered polling place tapes match tampered central tabulator results. This more complex approach is untested, but based on testing performed May 26, Hursti says he has absolutely no reason to believe it wouldn’t work.

Three memory card tests demonstrated successful manipulation of election results, and showed that 1990 and 2002 FEC-required safeguards are being violated in the Diebold version 1.94 opti-scan system.

Three memory card hacks

1. An altered memory card (electronic ballot box) was substituted for a real one. The optical scan machine performed seamlessly, issuing a report that looked like the real thing. No checksum captured the change in the executable program Diebold designed into the memory card.

2. A second altered memory card was demonstrated, using a program that was shorter than the original. It still worked, showing that there is also no check for the number of bytes in the program.

3. A third altered memory card was demonstrated with the votes themselves changed, showing that the data block (votes) can be altered without triggering any error message.

How to "Roll over the odometer" in Diebold optical scan machines

Testing also showed that integer overflow checks do not exist in this system, making it possible to stuff the ballot box without triggering any error message. This would be like pre-loading minus 100 votes for Tom and plus 100 votes for Rick (-100+100=ZERO) — changing the candidate totals without changing the overall number of votes.

A more precise comparison would be this: The odometer on a car rolls over to zero after 999,999. In the Diebold system tested, the rollover to zero happens at 65,536 votes. By pre-loading 65,511 votes for a candidate, after 25 real votes appear (65,511 plus 25 = 65,536) the report "rolls over" so that the candidate’s total is ZERO.

This manipulation can be balanced out by preloading votes for candidate "A" at 65,511 and candidate "B" at 25 votes — producing an articifial 50-vote spread between the candidates, which will not be obvious after the first 25 votes for candidate "A" roll over to zero. The "negative 25" votes from the odometer rollover counterbalance the "plus 25" votes for the other candidates, making the total number of votes cast at the end of the day exactly equal to the number of voters.

While testing the hack on the Leon County optical scan machine, Hursti was stunned to find that pre-stuffing the ballot box to "roll over the odometer" produced no error message whatsoever.

Simple tweaks to pass L&A test and survive zero tape

Though the additional tweaks were not demonstrated at the Leon County elections office, Hursti believes that the integor overflow hack can easily be covered up on the "zero tape" produced at the beginning of the election. The programming to cover up manipulations during the "logic & accuracy test" is even simpler, since the program allows you to specify on which reports (and, if you like, date and time of day) the manipulation will affect.

The testing demonstrated, using the actual voting system used in a real elections office, that Diebold programmers developed a system that sacrifices security in favor of dangerously flexible programming, violating FEC standards and calling the actions of ITA testing labs and certifiers into question.

In the case of Leon County, inside access was used to achieve the hacks, but there are numerous ways to introduce the hacks without inside access. Outside access methods will be described in the technical report to be released in mid-June.

Security concerns

Putting an executable program into removable memory card "ballot boxes" — and then programming the opti-scan chip to call and invoke whatever program is in the live ballot box during the middle of an election — is a mind-boggling design from a security standpoint. Combining this idiotic design with a program that doesn’t even check to see whether someone has tampered with it constitutes negligence and should result in a product recall.

Counties that purchased the Diebold 1.94 optical scan machines should not pay for any upgraded program; instead, Diebold should be required to recall the faulty program and correct the problem at its own expense.

None of the attacks left any telltale marks, rendering all audits and logs useless, except for hand-counting all the paper ballots.

Is it real? Or is it Memorex?

For example, Election Supervisor Ion Sancho was unable to tell, at first, whether the poll tape printed with manipulated results was the real thing. Only the message at the end of the tape, which read "Is this real? Or is it Memorex?" identified the tape as a tampered version of results.

In another test, Congresswoman Corrine Brown (FL-Dem) was shocked to see the impact of a trojan implanted by Dr. Herbert Thompson. She asked if the program could be manipulated in such a way as to flip every fifth vote.

"No problem," Dr. Thompson replied.

"It IS a problem. It’s a PROBLEM!" exclaimed Brown, whose district includes the troubled Volusia County, along with Duval County — both currently using the Diebold opti-scan system.

This system is also used in Congressman John Conyers’ home district, in contentious King County, Washington, and in Lucas County, Ohio (where six election officials resigned or were suspended after many irregularities were found.)

Diebold optical scans were used in San Diego for its ill-fated mayoral election in Nov. 2004.

– – – – – – – – – – –

Optical scan systems have paper ballots, but election officials are crippled in their ability to hand count these ballots due to restrictive state regulations and budget limitations.

The canvassing (audit) procedure used to certify results from optical scan systems involves comparing the "poll tapes" (cash register-like results receipts) with the printout from the central tabulator. These tests demonstrate that both results can be manipulated easily and quickly.

Minimum requirements to perform this hack:

1. A single specimen memory card from any county using the Diebold 1.94 optical scan series. (These cards were seen scattered on tables in King County, piled in baskets accessible to the public in Georgia, and jumbled on desktops in Volusia county.)

2. A copy of the compiler for the AccuBasic program. (These compilers have been fairly widely distributed by Diebold and its predecessor company, and there are workarounds if no compiler is available.)

3. Modest working language of any one of the higher level computer languages (Pascal, C, Cobol, Basic, Fortran…) along with introductory-level knowledge of assembler or machine language. (Machine language knowledge needed is less than an advanced refrigerator or TV repairmen needs. The optical scan system is much simpler than modern appliances).

The existence of the executable program in the memory card was discernable from a review of the Diebold memos. The test hacks took just a few hours for Black Box Voting consultants to develop.

Nearly 800 jurisdictions conducted a presidential election on this system. This system is so profoundly hackable that an advanced-level TV repairman can manipulate votes on it.

Black Box Voting asked Dr. Thompson and Hursti to examine the central tabulator and the optical scan system after becoming concerned that not enough attention had been paid to optical scans, tabulators and remote access.

Thompson and Hursti each found the vulnerabilities for their respective hacks in less than 24 hours.

"Open for Business"

When it comes to this optical-scan system, as Hursti says, "It’s not that they left the door open. There is no door. This system is ‘open for business.’"

The question now is: How brisk has business been? Based on this new evidence, it is time to sequester and examine the memory cards used with Diebold optical scans in Nov. 2004.

The popularity of tamper-friendly machines that are "open for business" in heavily Democratic areas may explain the lethargy with which Democratic leaders have been approaching voting machine security concerns.

The enthusiasm with which Republicans have endorsed machines with no paper ballots at all indicates that neither party really wants to have intact auditing of elections.

The ease with which a system — which clearly violates dozens of FEC standards going back to 1990 — was certified calls into question the honesty, competence, and personal financial transactions of both testing labs and NASED certifiers.

Revamp and update hand-counted paper ballot technology?

Perhaps it is time to revisit the idea of hand-counted paper ballots, printed by machines for legibility, with color-coded choices for quick, easy, accurate sorting and counting. We should also take another look at bringing counting teams in when the polls close, to relieve tired poll workers.

This report is the "non-techie" version of a longer report, to be made available around mid-June, with more technical information.

PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED AS LONG AS YOU PROVIDE A LINK TO http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Discuss this article here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/72/5936.html

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

top of page

USCountVotes.org – Please get involved with this organization!

Posted in TAKE ACTION! on May 30th, 2005

Please get involved and support this extremely important organization!

 From the USCountVotes.org page:

National Election Data Archive Project

Thursday, 31 March 2005

We remain concerned that massive electoral mistabulation may have occurred in 2004. Crucially, we also believe that the U.S. electoral system is vulnerable to massive vote embezzlement in the future.

On May 15th, our National Election Data Archive Project released a  new scientific paper   that shows what patterns of exit poll discrepancies are produced by various Bush and Kerry voter exit poll response rates and vote shifts from Kerry to Bush.

We emphasize that our objective is to ensure that, if election fraud occurred, it never does again in the future. 

This paper follows our earlier  scientific paper released on March 31st,   and executive summary report on the 2004 election exit poll discrepancies. 

More than 27,000 reports of irregularities in the 2004 election were submitted to the independent "Election Incident Reporting System"; thousands more were reported to other organizations.

Unprecedented discrepancies between exit poll results and final tallies in several key states occurred that still have never been explained.  It has only recently been officially confirmed (by the exit pollsters themselves) that on election night the final set of exit polls showed John Kerry defeating George Bush by 3% of the popular vote and a clear majority of 316 electoral votes.  Our statisticians analyzed Edison/Mitofsky’s own explanation of their exit poll discrepancies, and found serious flaws in their argument.  Exit polls have been used for years to detect corruption of official vote tallies – most recently in Ukraine. 

A General Accounting Office (GAO) investigation is already underway into the security and accuracy of voting technologies, the distribution and allocation of voting machines, and counting of provisional ballots.  The FBI, the Department of Justice and the Congressional Research Service have also been officially asked to  investigate various aspects of the 2004 election.

We believe that the new National Election Data Archive Project can apply statistical techniques to identify the best places to focus the investigation. 

We have formed a volunteer scientific research project to create and analyze – for the first time ever – a database containing precinct-level election results for the entire United States.

This rich mine of data will be made publicly available and analyzed by our project’s affiliated mathematicians, pollsters and statisticians, as well as by an independent peer-review board. Our goal is to use this data to develop and test techniques to reliably detect precinct-level vote counting errors worthy of conventional investigation.  We will start with an in-depth statistical analysis of the 2004 election.

By the national election in November 2006, for the first time in American history, it could be possible for candidates to be reliably warned of indications of machine or human-caused vote count errors in time to challenge the results.  With a sound scientific approach and methodology, it may be possible for our project staff to develop statistical evidence in support of legal filings and serve as expert witnesses for candidates, regardless of party affiliation.

Please help us now to defend the integrity of the American ballot.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

top of page

CENSUS DATA MATCHED NATIONAL EXIT POLL WEIGHTS(12:22AM, 13047 SAMPLE). Why won’t the media report this?

Posted in Exit Polls on May 28th, 2005

Source:
U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey,
November 2004.

More proof that the Exit Poll of 13047 Respondents at 12:22am
was accurate, contrary to what the die-hard naysayers have
been saying the last six months.

And it’s yet another indicator of fraud.
According to the census, 125.7 million voted.
That’s 3.4 million (2.78%) over the recorded vote.

Of course, spoiled Democratic votes is not news.
It happens all the time.

The Census closely matched the weights of the following
demographics:
Gender Census Poll
Male 46.49% 46%
Female 53.51% 54%

Income
15-30 12.08% 15%
30-50 20.58% 22%
50-75 20.02% 23%
100-150 13.55% 11%

Education
Some College 30.96% 31%
College Grad 26.84% 26%

Posted on Democratic Underground by TruthIsAll

Read the complete report here.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

top of page

I saw it coming, did you?

Posted in General on May 24th, 2005

Remember seeing massive Kerry rallies, open to the public, with thousands and thousands of supporters lining the streets? Remember Bush’s hand picked rallies where people had to sign a loyalty oath just to attend, and any protesters that snuck in were strong armed out? Remember the hugely successful Democratic registration drives, registered droves of new Dems, much more successful than the Repub. drives?

Then there was election day, when Bush was told mid-day that he had lost. It was true. Then a miracle happened – Bush won! I shook my head in disbelief and hit the net. Stories were springing up everywhere of voter suppression and machine errors, so I checked the network news……nothing!

I knew the fix was in. Simply impossible for this dribbling idiot to win again (er…for the first time, since 2000 was fixed). I began cataloging every story I could find on the net or elsewhere on my 2004 election theft page, and I continue to do so to this day. The silence of the main stream media on this issue is maddening. Please join me in spreading this information to everybody around you, I think we will reach a breaking point and awareness of this issue will spread like wildfire, hopefully before they steal elections in ’06, and ’08.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

top of page

The Beginning

Posted in General on May 22nd, 2005

I will be courting various folks in the election investigation and reform community to participate in this blog shortly….stay tuned!

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

top of page