Election Fraud Blog

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, with additional reporting by Brad Friedman

“We can take a version of Sequoia’s software program and modify it to do something different — like appear to count votes, but really move them from one candidate to another. And it can be programmed to do that only on Tuesdays in November, and at any other time. You can’t detect it,” Princeton’s Professor of Computer Science Andrew Appel explains in New Jersey’s Star-Ledger today.

Like Diebold’s touch-screen machines before them, Sequoia’s voting machines have now been found to be hackable in seconds by a Princeton University professor who says the systems could be “easily…rigged to throw an election.” Someone may wish to let the folks in Riverside County, CA, know since County Supervisors there recently issued a “thousand to one” bet that their Sequoia voting systems couldn’t be manipulated.

In the same report, it was revealed that an attorney has filed suit, claiming the Sequoia AVC Advantage Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines used in 18 of New Jersey’s 21 counties were never reviewed by the state before they were improperly certified for use and that Princeton’s Appel was able to acquire five Sequoia voting machines for only $86. The same machines were recently purchased by the state for $8,000 apiece.

According to the Star-Ledger…

Venetis argues that the state certification is in violation of NJ state law which says such systems must “correctly register and accurately count all votes cast,” be “of durable construction” to be used “safely, efficiently, and accurately.”

The lack of documentation and testing, however, is hardly the only problem, as reported by the paper today. “Had the machines been tested,” Election Integrity advocates have found, “they would have proved to be a hacker’s dream.”

Princeton Computer Science Professor Andrew Appel revealed that he bought 5 of the Advantage voting machines from an on-line government equipment clearinghouse for a total of $86. Virtually identical machines were bought in 2005 by Essex County New Jersey for $8,000 per machine.

“Appel had to submit only minimal personal information and a cashier’s check to close the deal,” the Star-Ledger reports. He and his team then put the 5 machines to good use…

And what does Sequoia systems vaunted crisis-management team have to say for itself?

Appel counters:

Of course, this is not the first time that Sequoia’s “tamperproof products” have been found to be highly tamperable.

In March of 2006, just prior to the Pennsylvania’s Primary Election, Carnegie Mellon University’s Dr. Michael Shamos, — a long-time advocate of electronic, touch-screen voting — accidentally “hacked” a Sequoia system during a demonstration of the system’s “invulnerability” to tampering. Shamos was in charge of testing systems for the state.

As well, last November, just days before the General Election, in a stunning report by The BRAD BLOG we revealed the “yellow button” on the back of every Sequoia touch-screen machine which, when pressed once in a simple sequence, places the machine into “manual mode,” allowing anybody to cast as many votes as che or she wishes on that machine.

In Riverside County, CA, just before the end of last year, County Supervisor Jeff Stone challenged Election Integrity advocates during a public, video-taped meeting to bring a hacker in to try and manipulate the county’s Sequoia voting systems. Riverside was the first county in the country to move to touch-screen voting in the late 90’s. Election Integrity advocates on the ground there have been challenging that decision ever since.

Though noted computer security expert Harri Hursti, who has hacked several Diebold systems, quickly agreed to meet Stone’s “thousand to one” challenge, Stone has been balking ever since. So far, he has failed to allow Hursti and the Election Integrity advocates from DFA-Temecula Valley to take him up on his ill-considered challenge, citing unsubstantiated concerns about state law and universally attempting to establish “ground rules” which have been dismissed as unrealistic by both Hursti and a number of internationally recognized computer scientists and security experts.

We suspect there will be much fallout from this latest chapter in New Jersey. Stay tuned…

UPDATE: Princeton Professor Appel has described the act of purchasing the Sequoia Advantage machines and what he found on opening the machines and the actions that students are taking in his blog “How I bought used voting machines on the Internet”. His blog includes the following:

by John Gideon for The BRAD BLOG 

Guest blogged by Emily Levy of Velvet Revolution for The BRAD BLOG

Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization, issued a press release yesterday announcing their new report, “Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006.”

According to EDA, the Edison-Mitofsky National Exit Poll, conducted by a consortium of news organizations, showed at 7 p.m. on Election Night an 11.5% vote margin in favor of Dems nationwide. But by 1:00 p.m. on the following day, according to EDA, “[T]he Edison-Mitofsky poll had been adjusted, by a process known as ‘forcing,’ to match the reported vote totals for the election.” The adjusted exit polls showed “a 7.6 percent margin exactly mirroring the reported vote totals.”

It was EDA co-founder Jonathan Simon whose foresight in downloading the Edison-Mitofsky exit polls on Election Night 2004 before those polls were adjusted made the discovery of the now-infamous “red shift” possible. Analysis of the original exit polls from 2004 became one of the most compelling bodies of evidence to suggest that the 2004 election was stolen on behalf of George W. Bush.

Now EDA reveals evidence of similar manipulation of this year’s election. In his story Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Election Hacked, executive editor of OpEdNews Rob Kall quotes Simon as saying:

The BRAD BLOG wishes to point out the difference between election “hacking” and “rigging.” Hacking can be done by outsiders armed with such difficult-to-obtain weapons as a hotel mini-bar key (in the case of the Diebold TSx) or a finger (in the case of the Sequoia touchscreen machines). Rigging would be done by an insider such as someone working for an electronic voting machine company or a department of elections. The evidence of skewed results in the 2006 Congressional election doesn’t specifically prove whether hacking or rigging or both occurred, but certainly magnifies the call for further investigation into irregularities in the 2006 elections. Will this new report help the newly-elected-but-apparently-robbed-of-its-landslide Democratic Majority Congress understand the importance of revamping our election system before 2008?

The next phase of Election Defense Alliance’s work will be to analyze results of specific Congressional races. This work will include analysis of exit polls commissioned by Velvet Revolution (of which The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder) and other independent organizations. Perhaps then we will find out how many Democratic (or even Republican) candidates who have been declared losers actually won their races.

By Michael Parenti

The 2004 presidential contest between Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry and the Republican incumbent, President Bush Jr., amounted to another stolen election. This has been well documented by such investigators as Rep. John Conyers, Mark Crispin Miller, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, Bev Harris, and others. Here is an overview of what they have reported, along with observations of my own.

Some 105 million citizens voted in 2000, but in 2004 the turnout climbed to at least 122 million. Pre-election surveys indicated that among the record 16.8 million new voters Kerry was a heavy favorite, a fact that went largely unreported by the press. In addition, there were about two million progressives who had voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 who switched to Kerry in 2004.

Yet the official 2004 tallies showed Bush with 62 million votes, about 11.6 million more than he got in 2000. Meanwhile Kerry showed only eight million more votes than Gore received in 2000. To have achieved his remarkable 2004 tally, Bush would needed to have kept all his 50.4 million from 2000, plus a majority of the new voters, plus a large share of the very liberal Nader defectors.

Nothing in the campaign and in the opinion polls suggest such a mass crossover. The numbers simply do not add up.

In key states like Ohio, the Democrats achieved immense success at registering new voters, outdoing the Republicans by as much as five to one. Moreover the Democratic party was unusually united around its candidate-or certainly against the incumbent president. In contrast, prominent elements within the GOP displayed open disaffection, publicly voicing serious misgivings about the Bush administration’s huge budget deficits, reckless foreign policy, theocratic tendencies, and threats to individual liberties.

Sixty newspapers that had endorsed Bush in 2000 refused to do so in 2004; forty of them endorsed Kerry.

All through election day 2004, exit polls showed Kerry ahead by 53 to 47 percent, giving him a nationwide edge of about 1.5 million votes, and a solid victory in the electoral college. Yet strangely enough, the official tally gave Bush the election. Here are some examples of how the GOP “victory” was secured.

—In some places large numbers of Democratic registration forms disappeared, along with absentee ballots and provisional ballots. Sometimes absentee ballots were mailed out to voters just before election day, too late to be returned on time, or they were never mailed at all.

—Overseas ballots normally reliably distributed by the State Department were for some reason distributed by the Pentagon in 2004. Nearly half of the six million American voters living abroad—a noticeable number of whom formed anti-Bush organizations—never received their ballots or got them too late to vote. Military personnel, usually more inclined toward supporting the president, encountered no such problems with their overseas ballots.

—Voter Outreach of America, a company funded by the Republican National Committee, collected thousands of voter registration forms in Nevada, promising to turn them in to public officials, but then systematically destroyed the ones belonging to Democrats.

— Tens of thousands of Democratic voters were stricken from the rolls in several states because of “felonies” never committed, or committed by someone else, or for no given reason. Registration books in Democratic precincts were frequently out-of-date or incomplete. —Democratic precincts—enjoying record turnouts—were deprived of sufficient numbers of polling stations and voting machines, and many of the machines they had kept breaking down. After waiting long hours many people went home without voting. Pro-Bush precincts almost always had enough voting machines, all working well to make voting quick and convenient.

—A similar pattern was observed with student populations in several states: students at conservative Christian colleges had little or no wait at the polls, while students from liberal arts colleges were forced to line up for as long as ten hours, causing many to give up.

—In Lucas County, Ohio, one polling place never opened; the voting machines were locked in an office and no one could find the key. In Hamilton County many absentee voters could not cast a Democratic vote for president because John Kerry’s name had been “accidentally” removed when Ralph Nader was taken off the ballot.

—A polling station in a conservative evangelical church in Miami County, Ohio, recorded an impossibly high turnout of 98 percent, while a polling place in Democratic inner-city Cleveland recorded an impossibly low turnout of 7 percent.

—Latino, Native American, and African American voters in New Mexico who favored Kerry by two to one were five times more likely to have their ballots spoiled and discarded in districts supervised by Republican election officials. Many were given provisional ballots that subsequently were never counted. In these same Democratic areas Bush “won” an astonishing 68 to 31 percent upset victory. One Republican judge in New Mexico discarded hundreds of provisional ballots cast for Kerry, accepting only those that were for Bush.

—Cadres of rightwing activists, many of them religious fundamentalists, were financed by the Republican Party. Deployed to key Democratic precincts, they handed out flyers warning that voters who had unpaid parking tickets, an arrest record, or owed child support would be arrested at the polls—all untrue. They went door to door offering to “deliver” absentee ballots to the proper office, and announcing that Republicans were to vote on Tuesday (election day) and Democrats on Wednesday.

—Democratic poll watchers in Ohio, Arizona, and other states, who tried to monitor election night vote counting, were menaced and shut out by squads of GOP toughs. In Warren County, Ohio, immediately after the polls closed Republican officials announced a “terrorist attack” alert, and ordered the press to leave. They then moved all ballots to a warehouse where the counting was conducted in secret, producing an amazingly high tally for Bush, some 14,000 more votes than he had received in 2000. It wasn’t the terrorists who attacked Warren County.

—Bush did remarkably well with phantom populations. The number of his votes in Perry and Cuyahoga counties in Ohio, exceeded the number of registered voters, creating turnout rates as high as 124 percent. In Miami County nearly 19,000 additional votes eerily appeared in Bush’s column after all precincts had reported. In a small conservative suburban precinct of Columbus, where only 638 people were registered, the touchscreen machines tallied 4,258 votes for Bush.

—In almost half of New Mexico’s counties, more votes were reported than were recorded as being cast, and the tallies were consistently in Bush’s favor. These ghostly results were dismissed by New Mexico’s Republican Secretary of State as an “administrative lapse.”

Exit polls showed Kerry solidly ahead of Bush in both the popular vote and the electoral college. Exit polls are an exceptionally accurate measure of elections. In the last three elections in Germany, for example, exit polls were never off by more than three-tenths of one percent.

Unlike ordinary opinion polls, the exit sample is drawn from people who have actually just voted. It rules out those who say they will vote but never make it to the polls, those who cannot be sampled because they have no telephone or otherwise cannot be reached at home, those who are undecided or who change their minds about whom to support, and those who are turned away at the polls for one reason or another.

Exit polls have come to be considered so reliable that international organizations use them to validate election results in countries around the world.

Republicans argued that in 2004 the exit polls were inaccurate because they were taken only in the morning when Kerry voters came out in greater numbers. (Apparently Bush voters sleep late.) In fact, the polling was done at random intervals all through the day, and the evening results were as much favoring Kerry as the early results.

It was also argued that pollsters focused more on women (who favored Kerry) than men, or maybe large numbers of grumpy Republicans were less inclined than cheery Democrats to talk to pollsters. No evidence was put forth to substantiate these fanciful speculations.

Most revealing, the discrepancies between exit polls and official tallies were never random but worked to Bush’s advantage in ten of eleven swing states that were too close to call, sometimes by as much as 9.5 percent as in New Hampshire, an unheard of margin of error for an exit poll. In Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico, and Iowa exit polls registered solid victories for Kerry, yet the official tally in each case went to Bush, a mystifying outcome.

In states that were not hotly contested the exit polls proved quite accurate. Thus exit polls in Utah predicted a Bush victory of 70.8 to 26.4 percent; the actual result was 71.1 to 26.4 percent. In Missouri, where the exit polls predicted a Bush victory of 54 to 46 percent, the final result was 53 to 46 percent.

One explanation for the strange anomalies in vote tallies was found in the widespread use of touchscreen electronic voting machines. These machines produced results that consistently favored Bush over Kerry, often in chillingly consistent contradiction to exit polls.

In 2003 more than 900 computer professionals had signed a petition urging that all touchscreen systems include a verifiable audit trail. Touchscreen voting machines can be easily programmed to go dead on election day or throw votes to the wrong candidate or make votes disappear while leaving the impression that everything is working fine.

A tiny number of operatives can easily access the entire computer network through one machine and thereby change votes at will. The touchscreen machines use trade secret code, and are tested, reviewed, and certified in complete secrecy. Verified counts are impossible because the machines leave no reliable paper trail.

Since the introduction of touchscreen voting, mysterious congressional election results have been increasing. In 2000 and 2002, Senate and House contests and state legislative races in North Carolina, Nebraska, Alabama, Minnesota, Colorado, and elsewhere produced dramatic and puzzling upsets, always at the expense of Democrats who were ahead in the polls.

In some counties in Texas, Virginia, and Ohio, voters who pressed the Democrat’s name found that the Republican candidate was chosen. In Cormal County, Texas, three GOP candidates won by exactly 18,181 votes apiece, a near statistical impossibility.

All of Georgia’s voters used Diebold touchscreen machines in 2002, and Georgia’s incumbent Democratic governor and incumbent Democratic senator, who were both well ahead in the polls just before the election, lost in amazing double-digit voting shifts.

This may be the most telling datum of all: In New Mexico in 2004 Kerry lost all precincts equipped with touchscreen machines, irrespective of income levels, ethnicity, and past voting patterns. The only thing that consistently correlated with his defeat in those precincts was the presence of the touchscreen machine itself.

In Florida Bush registered inexplicably sharp jumps in his vote (compared to 2000) in counties that used touchscreen machines.

Companies like Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S that market the touchscreen machines are owned by militant supporters of the Republican party. These companies have consistently refused to implement a paper-trail to dispel suspicions and give instant validation to the results of electronic voting. They prefer to keep things secret, claiming proprietary rights, a claim that has been backed in court.

Election officials are not allowed to evaluate the secret software. Apparently corporate trade secrets are more important than voting rights. In effect, corporations have privatized the electoral system, leaving it easily susceptible to fixed outcomes. Given this situation, it is not likely that the GOP will lose control of Congress come November 2006. The two-party monopoly threatens to become an even worse one-party tyranny.

Michael Parenti’s recent books include The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), Superpatriotism (City Lights), and The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories Press). For more information visit: www.michaelparenti.org.

from ZNet

Don’t be a Sitting Duck for the Secret Ballot



Verify Election Results

Run Parallel Elections

Collect Voter Affidavits

CONGRESS! BAN Voting by Secret Ballot, Voting Machine, Internet, Absentee, Early, or Carrier Pigeon.

Others’ videos: GOT DEMOCRACY, Help America Vote On Paper, (from eon3), The Right To Count,  Invisible Ballots(2004),  VoterGate,  The Big Fix 2000

another must watch: 911 Cover Up

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5946593973848835726&q=genre%3Adocumentary&hl=en

“...our elections are easy to rig because of how we vote.  It wasn’t always this way.   Prior to the Civil War, voting was a completely observable process.  It was only after the Civil War, as the right to vote expanded to African Americans, that the voting process itself began to recede from public view and meaningful oversight.  It started with absentee voting by the military in the 1870’s, the use of secret ballots in the 1880’s, and voting by machine in the 1890’s.  Today, approximately 30% of all voting is conducted early or by absentee, 95% of all votes are processed by machines, and 100% of all ballots are secret and anonymous.”  Lynn Landes

PARTIAL “The Fix Is In” TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

(VIDEO CLIP)  “The election is over. We won.” (Reporter’s voice – “How do you know that?”)  “It’s all over, but the counting.  And we’ll take care of the counting.”

That was Republican Congressman Peter King of New York.  He made those remarks just BEFORE the 2004 presidential election. 

Hi.  I’m Lynn Landes.  I’m a freelance journalist and publisher of the website, EcoTalk.org.  I want to thank you for taking the time to watch this brief video.

Our elections are in deep trouble.  Many Americans no longer believe that voting results are accurate. More and more voters are learning first-hand that voting machines are completely unreliable and that many of our election officials are untrustworthy.  But what’s at the core of this crisis?  The secret ballot.

Any ballot in America can be easily miscounted either by accident or design, regardless of whether it’s a paper ballot or electronic vote. That’s because modern Americans vote by secret ballot.  A secret ballot is an anonymous ballot, which means it can’t be traced to the voter.  We’ve been told that’s a good deal for us, that it protects us against harassment and vote selling.  But, it’s a much better deal for those who want to rig elections and not get caught.  It’s time we scrap the secrecy and go public with our votes.

In this video you’ll hear a startling admission from a voting company representative, I offer some practical advice on how to verify or challenge election returns through the collection of voter affidavits, And I make the case for a return to total transparency in voting, what I call “Open Voting”

The fact is our elections are easy to rig because of how we vote.  It wasn’t always this way.   Prior to the Civil War, voting was a completely observable process.  It was only after the Civil War, as the right to vote expanded to African Americans, that the voting process itself began to recede from public view and meaningful oversight.  It started with absentee voting by the military in the 1870’s, the use of secret ballots in the 1880’s, and voting by machine in the 1890’s.  Today, approximately 30% of all voting is conducted early or by absentee, 95% of all votes are processed by machines, and 100% of all ballots are secret and anonymous.

Worse yet, most of the voting process in America has been privatized and outsourced to a handful of domestic companies and multi-national corporations.  One company, Sequoia, is foreign-owned.  And just two companies (ES&S and Diebold) process 80% of all votes in the United States.  These companies make, sell, and service both ballot scanners and touchscreen machines. 

Although most of the debate over security issues has been framed to target suspicion on outside hackers and backdoors, it is in fact company insiders who have the keys to the front door and complete access to the electronic ballot box. For all practical purposes, voting machine companies are self-regulating, and as such, their employees are in a perfect position to rig elections nationwide.   But even if these companies were regulated, it is virtually impossible to guard against insider vote fraud, as you will see.

The following are video clips of an examination of the Danaher voting system by Pennsylvania state authorities in November of 2005. 

(VIDEO CLIP)

Notice, the Danaher representative assured state officials that the company would not be able to rig elections because their programmers would have to know well in advance all the candidates names and their positions on the ballot.  But that’s ludicrous.  There’s nothing to stop programmers from using secret company code to manipulate votes for a particular candidate.  This can be done while making a service call before, during, or after an election.  It could be accomplished remotely via the Internet, modem, or through wireless technology.  And it can be done without the knowledge of election officials. 

But, setting that issue aside, what if it is not a specific candidate the company wants to rig an election for, but a particular party instead? 

(VIDEO CLIP)

The Danaher representative just admitted that their computer program includes a party identifier next to each candidate’s name.  Therefore, the company can easily write a program that shifts a certain percentage of votes from one party’s candidates to another party before the machines ever leave the factory floor.  That shift could make the difference in tight races.

Most voting machine companies have close ties to the Republican Party and most voting machine irregularities appear to favor Republicans, but I must emphasize, that is not always the case.  Even in Republican and Democratic primaries, where the race is between members of the same party, voting machines are exhibiting suspicious irregularities.  Meanwhile, the Democratic Party and the Green Party’s measured response to the gravity of this situation makes one wonder. 

Pending congressional legislation that would require ballot printers for paperless voting machines is a woefully inadequate response to the threat these machines represent, as a long history of equipment malfunctions and failures can attest.  But, even more disturbing are the actions of some candidates, particularly Democratic candidates, who are conceding extremely close races without waiting for all the absentee and provisional ballots to be counted.  It appears that the fix may be in across the political spectrum.

What’s the solution?  Perhaps voters should support candidates that have no party affiliation.  But, regarding the voting process itself, Congress should return to a policy of open and transparent elections and ban voting by machine, absentee, early, and by secret ballot.  Until that day, we must go public with our votes.  We must provide candidates with hard evidence of how we voted so that election results can be verified, or challenged, if necessary.  Exit polls do not constitute hard evidence.  Only voter affidavits can provide that.  It’s time voters sign up and be counted. 

Specifically, candidates or activists need to conduct a Parallel Election, of sorts.  They need to collect affidavits from voters or, at the very least, get signed statements that include the voter’s name, signature, address, and for whom they voted.  These can be collected in three ways: 1) on Election Day as voters leave the polls, 2) door to door after the election, or 3) by asking voters, particularly absentee voters, to mail-in affidavits or signed statements immediately after they mail in their ballot.  If manpower is a problem, then target only a few polling places or precincts.  Keep in mind that a list of those who voted is a matter of public record.  Most precincts have about 500 voters and most voters don’t vote. 

So, for many races we’re not talking about contacting a lot of people.  Naturally, you want to first contact voters that belong to the same party as your candidate.  Depending on your results, that may be sufficient to challenge election returns.  You don’t need 100% participation from voters.  Any number of signatures collected that exceeds the official vote count is an indicator of a miscount.  

Something similar to this idea was put into practice last winter in North Carolina.  A Republican candidate gathered more than 1400 affidavits from voters in precincts where voting machines malfunctioned and lost thousands of votes.  On the basis of those affidavits his Democratic opponent conceded.

Last year I wrote my first article calling for Parallel Elections. See – http://www.ecotalk.org/ParallelElections.htm  A few activists around the country did just that.  On the basis of signed statements collected at 11 polling places in a California election, a recount was granted.  Unfortunately by the time the recount was held, there was plenty of opportunity for election officials to minimize the miscount. So, be careful about asking for a recount when what’s actually needed is a new election that’s free from voting machines at the very least.  And remember, even a new election needs a Parallel Election to serve as a check. 

If no one is organizing a Parallel Election, then voters can on their on initiative send the candidate of their choice a card or letter indicating that they voted for them.  That might spur more candidates to action. You may not win an election challenge in a court of law, but the court of public opinion is more important in the long run.

If we want a real democracy we must take our elections out of the corporate boardroom and back into the public square.  We cannot continue to hide behind the secret ballot.  Remember John Hancock’s large and flamboyant signature on the Declaration of Independence?  He did that in the face of certain hardship and possible death.  It’s now our turn to sign up and be counted. 

I’m Lynn Landes.  And thanks for watching. 

1. Is there any evidence that voting machines have been rigged?  Yes. Lots of it.  An extensive history of voting machine irregularities can be found in the following:
   
    
   • Election 2004-Voters Unite.org
   • The Conyers Report – Read Excerpts
   • Black Box Voting, Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century (Chapter II) by Bev Harris (2003)
   • Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying, by Dr. Roy Saltman (1988)
   • my own list
   • Check out Florida in 2004 – does anyone really believe that so many Democrats crossed over to vote for George Bush?
     
      
2. Has anyone confessed to rigging voting machines?  Yes.
   • http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/ Also see: Programmer Built Vote Rigging Prototype at Florida Congressman’s Request– Clint Curtis affidavit
   • Conyers Report excerpts – how Triad technicians reset computers to cheat a recount of votes

   • Cincinnati Bell security supervisors ordered wire-taps installed on county computers before elections in the late 1970s and early 1980s that could have allowed vote totals to be altered, a former Bell employee says in a sworn court document. Leonard Gates, a 23-year Cincinnati Bell employee until he was fired in 1986, claims in a deposition filed Thursday in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court to have installed the wire-taps. (1989) Pandora’s Black Box & http://www.votefraud.org/expert_strunk_report.htm (contains case number)

   The easiest way to rig elections nationwide is for voting machine company-insiders to program the firmware (permanently installed software in touchscreens and ballot scanners) to favor one political party over another. That way they don’t need to know the candidates’ names nor their position on the ballot. They can even rig the top of the ticket only, in which case the winning candidate can claim a crossover vote in a opposing party’s district, as may have happened in Florida 2004 – See Lynn’s data table
   
    

3. Don’t some voters need these machines, such as non-English language voters and disabled voters?  No.  Voters who want a ballot in their own language should be able to order such a ballot in advance of any election.  Secondly, voting machines present the same violation of voting rights for disabled voters.  And contrary to popular belief, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) does not require election officials to purchase electronic voting machines.  Besides, anecdotal evidence suggests that these machines are difficult for the disabled to use.  Election officials and voting machine companies admit that it takes the sight-impaired voters ten times longer to use a touchscreen machine than able-bodied voters.  However, there is a way for the sight-impaired to vote privately and independently.  They can use tactile paper ballot with audio assistance.  Tactile ballots are used around the world and in some states such as Rhode Island.  Unfortunately, many disabled voters are unaware of these kinds of ballots.  That may not be an accident.  Two organizations for the blind, The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) and The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), are ardent supporters of paperless touchscreen voting machines.  They also have received over $1 million dollars from the voting machine industry, according to news reports.
   
    
4. Can you conduct Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) using paper ballots?  First, I do not support IRV or proportional voting because they are unnecessary, complicated, and cannot be easily observed.  But, yes,  Britain, Ireland, and Australia have used paper ballots to conduct Instant Run-Off Voting.  However, some advocates of IRV are aggressively promoting the idea that voting machines are necessary. Regarding proportional voting, it is the wrong answer to the obvious problem presented by “at-large” elections where the winners take all.  Instead, political entities (such as townships) should be divided into voting districts (which many already are), thereby allowing the development of Democratic, Republican, etc. strongholds which could result in more equitable representation.
   
    
5. Aren’t machines faster than a hand count and isn’t that important?  They should be, but often they’re not.  Machines breakdown routinely, thereby taking longer to report election results.  In Maryland in the 2004 election, 9% of machines observed by a voting rights group, broke down.  Essentially, a speedy hand count is based on a sufficient number of poll workers per number of registered voters and the length of the ballot.  Canada uses 2 election officials per approximately 500 registered voters.  In addition, election officials don’t need to depend on volunteers.  Citizens can be drafted to work at the polls on Election Day, as is done routinely with jury duty.  The right to direct access to a ballot and meaningful public oversight of the process supersedes the perceived convenience of voting machines. 
   
    
6. What about states that have really long ballots, including initiatives and referendum?  Most countries keep their ballots brief.  For instance, in America state and local judges could be elected by legislative bodies instead of the voters. But, there are other issues.  The initiative/referendum movement is called Direct Democracy.  However, it is really an end-run around the legislature.  Some activists think this is a good idea, but others disagree.  California’s ballot has become a nightmare.  Clearly, those with the money get their issues on the ballot. And consider this.  The initiative/referendum movement allows those who control the voting machines to also control which candidates win and what legislation gets passed. 
   
    
7. Aren’t voting machines more accurate than a hand count?  There is no way to know. There is no way to test the accuracy of voting machines during the actual voting process on Election Day.  Citizens vote in secret.  The machines count those votes in secret.  If ballot scanners are used, then election officials can run an audit to check accuracy.  But, few states require audits.  Even with an audit, election officials decide where and when the audits occur.  Public participation and oversight is not meaningful. Any test done prior or after an election cannot ensure that during the election the machine did not manipulate votes, either by accident or design.  The accuracy of voting machines is often correlated with the number of overvotes and undervotes it records.  One could have nothing to do with the other.  There is no way to know the intention of the voter, or if a voting machine is filling in votes that the voter deliberately left blank. Although a lever and touchscreen machine can prevent overvotes, all in all, “The difference between the best performing and worst performing technologies is as much as 2 percent of ballots cast. Surprisingly, paper ballots—the oldest technology—show the best performance.” This is the finding of two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) political science professors, Dr. Stephen Ansolabehere and Dr. Charles Stewart III, in a September 25, 2002 study entitled, Voting Technology and Uncounted Votes in the United States.
   
    
8. Which is more expensive, voting by machine or paper?  For legitimate elections, expense can never be a consideration.  That said, paper is cheap and requires no special servicing, storage, or trained personnel, while a single voting machines can cost thousands of dollars and require servicing, storage, and trained personnel.  Furthermore, election officials never need to rely on volunteers to staff the polls.  Citizens can always be drafted as they are for jury duty, at little or no cost to the tax payer. 
   
    
9. Shouldn’t we allow absentee voting for overseas military at least?  No.  Again, think in terms of jury duty.  There are certain rights and responsibilities of citizenship that require your personal appearance.  In addition, the polling place provides the voter protection from intimidation and allows poll watchers the opportunity to detect vote fraud or system failure.
   
    
10. If someone wins by a large enough margin, isn’t that a sign that the election wasn’t rigged?  No. It only stands to reason that if someone is going to rig an election, it will be done by a sufficient number of votes to avoid triggering a recount. Otherwise, this could happen: In August of 2002, in Clay county Kansas, Jerry Mayo lost a close race for county commissioner, garnering 48% of the vote, but a hand recount revealed May won by a landslide, earning 76% of the vote.
    
     
11. If the voting machines are being used at my polling precinct, is it better to vote by absentee?   Most absentee ballots are not counted by hand, but instead scanned by computers. The same corporations (ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia, etc) that dominate the touchscreen market, also control the ballot scanners.  In addition, some counties, like King County Washington, have even outsourced the mailing of their absentee ballots to private industry. 
    
     
12. Can’t elections be rigged by stuffing ballot boxes, as well?  Yes, but it is a detectable kind of vote fraud, whereas voting by machine, early or absentee is nearly impossible to detect.  The problem of stuffed ballot boxes may be more fiction than fact.  In his book, The Right To Vote, The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Alexander Keyssar, of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, writes, “…recent studies have found that claims of widespread corruption were grounded almost entirely in sweeping, highly emotional allegations backed by anecdotes and little systematic investigation or evidence. Paul Kleppner, among others, has concluded that what is most striking is not how many, but how few documented cases of electoral fraud can be found. Most elections appear to have been honestly conducted: ballot-box stuffing, bribery, and intimidation were the exception, not the rule.”
    
     
13. Doesn’t the federal government regulate the voting machine industry?  No. There is no federal agency charged with regulatory oversight of the elections industry. There are no restrictions on who can count our votes. Anyone from anywhere can count our votes. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) doesn’t even publish a complete list of all the voting technology companies whose business it is to count Americans’ votes.   see: voting companies info
    
     
14. Can a voting machine company be owned by foreigners and run by felons?  Yes. Sequoia is the third largest voting machine company in America and is owned by a British-based company, De La Rue. Diebold is the second largest voting machine company in the country. It counts about 35% of all votes in America.  Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states. Jeff Dean, Diebold’s Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold’s central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree. Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a “high degree of sophistication” to evade detection over a period of 2 years. see: fraud & irregularities
    
     
15. Isn’t that a threat to national security? Yes.
    
     
16. What was the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) all about? It established the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to distribute billions of dollars to the states to upgrade their voting systems, but failed to mandate any meaningful standards.  http://www.eac.gov/law_ext.asp 
    
     
17. Doesn’t the federal government certify the voting machines?  No. The federal government has a loose set of technical guidelines for voting machines that are voluntary and may be actually harmful.  The Federal Voting Systems Standards (FVSS) used by the three NASED’s approved Independent Test Authorities (ITA) to “certify” companies are outmoded guidelines and voluntary, and not all states have adopted them.  According to industry observers, the FVSS guidelines allow one in ten machines to fail.  There is no enforcement of these guidelines, such as they are. 
    
     
18. Who, then, certifies the nation’s voting machines? The FEC coordinates with the industry-funded National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), a private non-profit group, to have machines inspected certified by industry-funded private contractors.  NASED selects and approves the testing laboratories. Only prototypes of the machines and software are available for a very superficial inspection.  The inspection is conducted by three private companies who are not themselves subject to any regulation.  Technical Issues & Standards  “An unelected person named R. Doug Lewis runs a private non-profit organization called “The Election Center.”
    

    Lewis is possibly the most powerful man in the U.S., influencing election procedures and voting systems, yet he is vague about his credentials and no one seems to be quite sure who hired him or how he came to oversee such vast electoral functions. Lewis organized the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS, now heavily funded by voting machine vendors); he also organized the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) and, through them, Lewis told (author Bev) Harris he helps certify the certifiers.”  “Wyle Laboratories is the most talked-about voting machine certifier, probably because it is the biggest, but in fact, Wyle quit certifying voting machine software in 1996. It does test hardware: Can you drop it off a truck? Does it stand up to rain? Software testing and certification is done by Shawn Southworth. When Ciber quit certifying in 1996, it was taken over by Nichols Research, and Southworth was in charge of testing. Nichols Research stopped doing the testing, and it was taken over by PSInet, where Southworth did the testing. PSInet went under, and testing functions were taken over by Metamore, where Southworth did the testing. Metamore dumped it, and it was taken over by Ciber, where Southworth does the testing. Here is a photo of Shawn Southworth:” scoop.co.nz

WOULD YOU TRUST THIS MAN WITH YOUR VOTE?

meet Shawn Southworth

the industry guy who “certifies” America’s voting technology

By Michael Parenti

The 2004 presidential contest between Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry and the Republican incumbent, President Bush Jr., amounted to another stolen election. This has been well documented by such investigators as Rep. John Conyers, Mark Crispin Miller, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, Bev Harris, and others. Here is an overview of what they have reported, along with observations of my own.

Some 105 million citizens voted in 2000, but in 2004 the turnout climbed to at least 122 million. Pre-election surveys indicated that among the record 16.8 million new voters Kerry was a heavy favorite, a fact that went largely unreported by the press. In addition, there were about two million progressives who had voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 who switched to Kerry in 2004.

Yet the official 2004 tallies showed Bush with 62 million votes, about 11.6 million more than he got in 2000. Meanwhile Kerry showed only eight million more votes than Gore received in 2000. To have achieved his remarkable 2004 tally, Bush would needed to have kept all his 50.4 million from 2000, plus a majority of the new voters, plus a large share of the very liberal Nader defectors.

Nothing in the campaign and in the opinion polls suggest such a mass crossover. The numbers simply do not add up.

In key states like Ohio, the Democrats achieved immense success at registering new voters, outdoing the Republicans by as much as five to one. Moreover the Democratic party was unusually united around its candidate-or certainly against the incumbent president. In contrast, prominent elements within the GOP displayed open disaffection, publicly voicing serious misgivings about the Bush administration’s huge budget deficits, reckless foreign policy, theocratic tendencies, and threats to individual liberties.

Sixty newspapers that had endorsed Bush in 2000 refused to do so in 2004; forty of them endorsed Kerry.

All through election day 2004, exit polls showed Kerry ahead by 53 to 47 percent, giving him a nationwide edge of about 1.5 million votes, and a solid victory in the electoral college. Yet strangely enough, the official tally gave Bush the election. Here are some examples of how the GOP “victory” was secured.

—In some places large numbers of Democratic registration forms disappeared, along with absentee ballots and provisional ballots. Sometimes absentee ballots were mailed out to voters just before election day, too late to be returned on time, or they were never mailed at all.

—Overseas ballots normally reliably distributed by the State Department were for some reason distributed by the Pentagon in 2004. Nearly half of the six million American voters living abroad—a noticeable number of whom formed anti-Bush organizations—never received their ballots or got them too late to vote. Military personnel, usually more inclined toward supporting the president, encountered no such problems with their overseas ballots.

—Voter Outreach of America, a company funded by the Republican National Committee, collected thousands of voter registration forms in Nevada, promising to turn them in to public officials, but then systematically destroyed the ones belonging to Democrats.

— Tens of thousands of Democratic voters were stricken from the rolls in several states because of “felonies” never committed, or committed by someone else, or for no given reason. Registration books in Democratic precincts were frequently out-of-date or incomplete. —Democratic precincts—enjoying record turnouts—were deprived of sufficient numbers of polling stations and voting machines, and many of the machines they had kept breaking down. After waiting long hours many people went home without voting. Pro-Bush precincts almost always had enough voting machines, all working well to make voting quick and convenient.

—A similar pattern was observed with student populations in several states: students at conservative Christian colleges had little or no wait at the polls, while students from liberal arts colleges were forced to line up for as long as ten hours, causing many to give up.

—In Lucas County, Ohio, one polling place never opened; the voting machines were locked in an office and no one could find the key. In Hamilton County many absentee voters could not cast a Democratic vote for president because John Kerry’s name had been “accidentally” removed when Ralph Nader was taken off the ballot.

—A polling station in a conservative evangelical church in Miami County, Ohio, recorded an impossibly high turnout of 98 percent, while a polling place in Democratic inner-city Cleveland recorded an impossibly low turnout of 7 percent.

—Latino, Native American, and African American voters in New Mexico who favored Kerry by two to one were five times more likely to have their ballots spoiled and discarded in districts supervised by Republican election officials. Many were given provisional ballots that subsequently were never counted. In these same Democratic areas Bush “won” an astonishing 68 to 31 percent upset victory. One Republican judge in New Mexico discarded hundreds of provisional ballots cast for Kerry, accepting only those that were for Bush.

—Cadres of rightwing activists, many of them religious fundamentalists, were financed by the Republican Party. Deployed to key Democratic precincts, they handed out flyers warning that voters who had unpaid parking tickets, an arrest record, or owed child support would be arrested at the polls—all untrue. They went door to door offering to “deliver” absentee ballots to the proper office, and announcing that Republicans were to vote on Tuesday (election day) and Democrats on Wednesday.

—Democratic poll watchers in Ohio, Arizona, and other states, who tried to monitor election night vote counting, were menaced and shut out by squads of GOP toughs. In Warren County, Ohio, immediately after the polls closed Republican officials announced a “terrorist attack” alert, and ordered the press to leave. They then moved all ballots to a warehouse where the counting was conducted in secret, producing an amazingly high tally for Bush, some 14,000 more votes than he had received in 2000. It wasn’t the terrorists who attacked Warren County.

—Bush did remarkably well with phantom populations. The number of his votes in Perry and Cuyahoga counties in Ohio, exceeded the number of registered voters, creating turnout rates as high as 124 percent. In Miami County nearly 19,000 additional votes eerily appeared in Bush’s column after all precincts had reported. In a small conservative suburban precinct of Columbus, where only 638 people were registered, the touchscreen machines tallied 4,258 votes for Bush.

—In almost half of New Mexico’s counties, more votes were reported than were recorded as being cast, and the tallies were consistently in Bush’s favor. These ghostly results were dismissed by New Mexico’s Republican Secretary of State as an “administrative lapse.”

Exit polls showed Kerry solidly ahead of Bush in both the popular vote and the electoral college. Exit polls are an exceptionally accurate measure of elections. In the last three elections in Germany, for example, exit polls were never off by more than three-tenths of one percent.

Unlike ordinary opinion polls, the exit sample is drawn from people who have actually just voted. It rules out those who say they will vote but never make it to the polls, those who cannot be sampled because they have no telephone or otherwise cannot be reached at home, those who are undecided or who change their minds about whom to support, and those who are turned away at the polls for one reason or another.

Exit polls have come to be considered so reliable that international organizations use them to validate election results in countries around the world.

Republicans argued that in 2004 the exit polls were inaccurate because they were taken only in the morning when Kerry voters came out in greater numbers. (Apparently Bush voters sleep late.) In fact, the polling was done at random intervals all through the day, and the evening results were as much favoring Kerry as the early results.

It was also argued that pollsters focused more on women (who favored Kerry) than men, or maybe large numbers of grumpy Republicans were less inclined than cheery Democrats to talk to pollsters. No evidence was put forth to substantiate these fanciful speculations.

Most revealing, the discrepancies between exit polls and official tallies were never random but worked to Bush’s advantage in ten of eleven swing states that were too close to call, sometimes by as much as 9.5 percent as in New Hampshire, an unheard of margin of error for an exit poll. In Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico, and Iowa exit polls registered solid victories for Kerry, yet the official tally in each case went to Bush, a mystifying outcome.

In states that were not hotly contested the exit polls proved quite accurate. Thus exit polls in Utah predicted a Bush victory of 70.8 to 26.4 percent; the actual result was 71.1 to 26.4 percent. In Missouri, where the exit polls predicted a Bush victory of 54 to 46 percent, the final result was 53 to 46 percent.

One explanation for the strange anomalies in vote tallies was found in the widespread use of touchscreen electronic voting machines. These machines produced results that consistently favored Bush over Kerry, often in chillingly consistent contradiction to exit polls.

In 2003 more than 900 computer professionals had signed a petition urging that all touchscreen systems include a verifiable audit trail. Touchscreen voting machines can be easily programmed to go dead on election day or throw votes to the wrong candidate or make votes disappear while leaving the impression that everything is working fine.

A tiny number of operatives can easily access the entire computer network through one machine and thereby change votes at will. The touchscreen machines use trade secret code, and are tested, reviewed, and certified in complete secrecy. Verified counts are impossible because the machines leave no reliable paper trail.

Since the introduction of touchscreen voting, mysterious congressional election results have been increasing. In 2000 and 2002, Senate and House contests and state legislative races in North Carolina, Nebraska, Alabama, Minnesota, Colorado, and elsewhere produced dramatic and puzzling upsets, always at the expense of Democrats who were ahead in the polls.

In some counties in Texas, Virginia, and Ohio, voters who pressed the Democrat’s name found that the Republican candidate was chosen. In Cormal County, Texas, three GOP candidates won by exactly 18,181 votes apiece, a near statistical impossibility.

All of Georgia’s voters used Diebold touchscreen machines in 2002, and Georgia’s incumbent Democratic governor and incumbent Democratic senator, who were both well ahead in the polls just before the election, lost in amazing double-digit voting shifts.

This may be the most telling datum of all: In New Mexico in 2004 Kerry lost all precincts equipped with touchscreen machines, irrespective of income levels, ethnicity, and past voting patterns. The only thing that consistently correlated with his defeat in those precincts was the presence of the touchscreen machine itself.

In Florida Bush registered inexplicably sharp jumps in his vote (compared to 2000) in counties that used touchscreen machines.

Companies like Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S that market the touchscreen machines are owned by militant supporters of the Republican party. These companies have consistently refused to implement a paper-trail to dispel suspicions and give instant validation to the results of electronic voting. They prefer to keep things secret, claiming proprietary rights, a claim that has been backed in court.

Election officials are not allowed to evaluate the secret software. Apparently corporate trade secrets are more important than voting rights. In effect, corporations have privatized the electoral system, leaving it easily susceptible to fixed outcomes. Given this situation, it is not likely that the GOP will lose control of Congress come November 2006. The two-party monopoly threatens to become an even worse one-party tyranny.

Michael Parenti’s recent books include The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), Superpatriotism (City Lights), and The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories Press). For more information visit: www.michaelparenti.org.

Re-Posted from ZNet

The One-Two Punch: Disenfranchise Voters & Miscount the Votes
A. Disenfranchisement: Suppress the Vote!
B. E-Voting Problems: Many Different Systems, Different States, Different Elections
C. What You Can Do
D. Voting Systems: Election integrity requires openness & transparency.
E. The Elephant in the Room
F. Common Cause Recommends
G. Online Videos & Interactive
H. Books
I. The BEST Websites & Online Resources

March 7, 2005

By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers

The accumulated weight of evidence of election fraud – statistical, circumstantial, and anecdotal – has failed to move the mainstream media to report or investigate this evidence, or the Democratic party to acknowledge and protest the apparent Republican control of our elections.

This essay is not yet another account of that evidence, which I have spelled out extensively and which I firmly believe to be compelling.

Instead, I wish to deal with another indicator that our national elections no longer represent the will of the voters, but rather are manipulated to produce the outcome desired by the "winning" candidates and party. This indicator is the behavior of those who manufacture, program, and operate the paperless, unauditable machines (direct recording electronic: "DRE"), and those who benefit from this technology.

Perhaps this new electronic voting technology is as honest and reliable as the private election industry and the winning candidates tell us it is. However, they simply do not behave as if this were the case.

My contention might be illustrated by this parable:

Suppose that a drug-sniffing dog at an airport identifies a suspicious piece of luggage. The customs officer then locates the individual whose name is on the tag, and orders him to open it. Now suppose further that this person then proceeds to do one or more of the following:

a) He denies that the luggage is his.

b) He calls his lawyer who presents an injunction against further inspection of the luggage.

c) He claims that he is a diplomat, and thus not subject to luggage inspection.

d) He offers a bribe to the inspector if he will "forget the whole thing."

Might one not suspect that the traveler was trying to hide something?

The dog then gets back to work, and soon identifies another bag, and the owner of this parcel is identified and ordered to open the luggage for inspection. He does so willingly and without qualm, having packed the bag himself and thus knowing that there is no contraband therein. He is also aware that the dog has a record of 30% false positives.

Which of these two responses more closely resembles the behavior of the DRE manufacturers (Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia), of the Republican Congress, and of the Republican National Committee? Are the DRE manufacturers and the Republicans acting in a manner consistent with their claims that "e-voting" is both honest and accurate? Or are they behaving as if they have something to hide?

Here are a few indicators. Because there are so many, I will be brief. For details and documentation, follow the links:

• First and foremost: DRE machines use secret software and produce no separate record of the voting to allow auditing and validation of the votes. Thus, by design, it is impossible either to prove or disprove directly the accuracy of the vote totals of a DRE machine or the neutrality of the software. (However, there is abundant indirect evidence of e-voting fraud: statistical, anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. But that’s another topic).
• The manufacturers and programmers of DREs (all of whom have close ties with the Republican Party) insist that their software ("source codes") must be kept secret – for no apparent and defensible reason. (They claim to be concerned about copyright infringement. But music, essays, fiction, drama, etc., all are public by nature, and yet all are protected by copyright).
• The e-voting manufacturers also make ATM machines and automated gas pumps, both of which produce paper receipts. Yet they steadfastly resist demands that their "touch screen" voting machines produce printouts, which might then serve to validate the accuracy of the votes.
• DRE manufacturers will not allow "test hacks" of randomly selected machines. (Unauthorized hacks have proven DREs to be extremely vulnerable to fraudulent manipulation. So too a recent report by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office: a report that has been virtually ignored by the mainstream press).
• A bill by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) that would require validated printed paper receipts of the votes and random inspection of the DRE machines has been locked up in committee by the Congressional Republicans. A discharge petition, which would allow a vote on the bill, is unavailing, due to insufficient support by the Republicans.
• In 2000, computer programmer Clinton Curtis was asked by a GOP congressional candidate, Tom Feeney, to create a software program that would alter vote counts in favor of the Republicans. Curtis testified to this under oath, signed an affidavit, and took a polygraph test. Of course, Feeney, now a congressman, denies Curtis’ allegations, but unlike Curtis, Feeney refuses to state his denial under oath or to submit to a polygraph.
• In California, Stephen Heller, a temporary employee of Diebold Election Systems, obtained copies of memos indicating that Diebold may have used uncertified voting systems in the 2004 primary and suggesting that thousands of voters might be disenfranchised in subsequent elections. Heller’s "reward" for blowing this whistle? He was charged with three felony counts and, if convicted, could serve more than three years in state prison.
• In 2004, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified Diebold DRE machines. In a special recall election, Republican Arnold Schwarznegger replaced Democrat Gray Davis. Kevin Shelley was then harassed and forced out of office and replaced by Republican Bruce McPherson, who "conditionally" recertified the Diebold machines. (These are two types of machines: Optical scan with paper ballots, and "TSX" with touch-screens and no paper record. It is the paperless TSX machines that are especially vulnerable to undetectable manipulation and fraud." There is a heated debate within the election reform community as to whether Optical Scanning is an acceptable improvement over DREs, or whether, on the other hand, only hand counted paper ballots will do. But that’s a topic for another essay).
• The Alaska "flip-flop." The Republican state government of Alaska refused to release to the Alaska Democrats the Diebold database files from the 2004 election on the grounds that it was "a company secret." (These were records of a public election, mind you). After persistent requests, the state relented albeit under very restrictive conditions. But then, just two weeks ago, the state again denied the request, claiming that it was a "security risk" to the state of Alaska.
• December 20, 2005: Rather than obey a North Carolina law requiring that source codes be made public, Diebold withdrew its machines from the state elections.

There is much more, which you might find here and here. But this much suffices to make my point.

What we find, then, is an industry and a political party which, on the one hand, insists that the totals from electronic voting machines are entirely accurate and honest, though these same machines are so designed that they preclude any independent evidence to support these claims. On the other hand, this same industry and party steadfastly resist any and all attempts to introduce reliable methods of validation, much less the most reliable system of all: hand counted paper ballots.

Persistent suspicion and charges of fraud are damaging to the industry and the GOP. If they are as innocent as they claim to be, why don’t they just eliminate these damaging suspicions by offering proof, and then allowing, and even encouraging, paper records, independent audits, and exit polls?

Despite a near-total embargo by the mainstream media of news, analysis, investigation and commentary on ballot security and allegations of fraud, combined with an astonishing indifference to the issue on the part of the Democrats and their allies, public doubts about the security and accuracy of elections and hence of the legitimacy of the Republican control of the White House and the Congress, simply will not go away. In fact, these concerns appear to be increasing and will likely continue to increase, as the credibility and public approval of the Bush regime continues to drop.

Here’s a thought experiment for those who insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the past three elections were above reproach and doubt. Put this confidence aside for a moment and just imagine, hypothetically, that the elections of 2000, 2002, and 2004 were all fixed, and that the coming election of 2006 will be fixed. Then ask yourself: if this were so, how would the behavior of the industry and the GOP be in any way different from what it is now?

Then ask, if the elections are honest and accurate, why don’t the industry and the Republicans act like it? In short, if they are innocent, why do they willingly persist in appearing guilty?

These questions must be asked by the Democrats, loudly and persistently, for as Karl Rove and the GOP propaganda machine knows so well, repetition is the key to successful persuasion of the public. Satire and ridicule are also very much in order. We must "pile it on" until continuing silence by the GOP and by the compliant mainstream media becomes unendurable.

And if the e-voting establishment – party and industry – are ever forced, however reluctantly, to enact reforms consistent with their protestations of innocence, what might they do?

Here is a list of proposals that any honest voting machine industry and political party should be willing to endorse:

a) Publish the source codes. (The copyrights can be fully protected.)

b) Include printers with all machines. Stipulate by law that in case of recounts, the paper receipts are to be the official ballots of record.

c) Require independent audits – of local balloting, and of regional compiling of election returns.

d) Allow examination and "test hacks" of machines, selected randomly.

e) Outlaw all data inputs (by direct line, wireless, or UV) to voting machines and compilers with the exception, of course, of the "inputs" by the voters.

f) Rigorously enforce and prosecute election fraud laws.

If the industry and the Republicans won’t agree to these assurances, then they must present a plausible explanation as to why they decline to do so. Absent that explanation, we citizens of this alleged democracy under an alleged rule of law must demand that every vote be counted and verified, and we must be supplied with proof that this has been accomplished. Furthermore, every individual who has engaged in election fraud must be tracked down and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We are entitled to no less than this.

Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website, The Online Gadfly and co-edits the progressive website, The Crisis Papers. He is at work on a book, Conscience of a Progressive, which can be seen in-progress here. Send comments to: crisispapers@hotmail.com.

Crisis Papers Archive

Re-posted from Democratic Underground

(AK AZ CA CO FL GA IL IN IA MD MN MO NE NV NH NJ NM NC OH PA TX UT VA VT WA WI WY)

Alaska:

• 200% Voter Turnout in Alaska – Blue_In_AK on DU (Dec-21-05)
• AK: Democrats question (2004) vote results – Tabulation method…doubted – wilms on DU (Dec-21-05)
• State (AK) Refuses to Release Public Records-Claims Diebold Data is Proprietary – Wilms (Feb-07-06)
• State (Alaska) to turn over voting files from 2004 to Democrats – Blue_In_AK (Feb-11-06)
• “NO, YES, NO: Alaska Now Refuses Release of 2004 Election Data Citing Security Concerns!” – BradBlog (2/24/06)

Arizona:

• 27,878 Provisional Votes thrown out. by Wilms (1/30/05)
• ‘Serious problems’ found in AZ election results – garybeck (Wed May-25-05)
• Pentagon Seeks Power Over Elections in Arizona – Wilms (Jan-30-06)
• AZ: FBI seizes ballots in close ’04 legislative race – Wilms (Feb-03-06)
• 3. AZ: Maricopa County (Phoenix) – Huge Republican Election Fraud Scandal – kster (Feb-22-06)

California:

• Editorial: The new Palm Beach? (San Diego) (11/27)
• New analysis of California data – backs up Madsen’s claims – READ IT! from ClintCooper2003 on DU (12/6)
• Mocking democracy: San Diego Mayoral Race Results Certified from Rose Siding on DU (12/8)
• Citizens Request Recount in San Diego Mayoral Race – “Enron by the Sea” – raw story (Thursday August 18, 2005)
• California Election Protection Network – (10/04/2005)
• Why they went after Kevin Shelley and what it means for CA elections – Amaryllis on DU (Sun Nov-06-05)
• Crime Report: Los Angeles Denies Public Access to Central Tabulator – Einsteinia on DU (Wed Nov-09-05)
• Is Los Angeles Above the Law? – Einsteinia (Sat Nov-05-05)
• Brad: Something very rotten suddenly occuring in CA, plus more on OH – Amaryllis on DU (Fri Nov-18-05)
• California Citizens Coordinate Diebold Takedown – GuvWorld on DU (Dec-17-05 )
• Deborah Bowen (CA Dem4SoS) throws down gauntlet on secret vote counting! – Peace Patriot (Dec-31-05)
• SHIT!!! Diebold to be certified in CA … with yet-unstated conditions. – nicknameless (Feb-21-06)
• Despite Illegalities, Diebold Election Machines Certified In CA– GuvWurld ( Feb-19-06)
• Is The GOP “Shock-The-Vote Gang” Planning to Heist California? – AtLiberty (Feb-21-06)
• WOW! ** CA’s Sen Bowen Rips rethug SoS over Diebold Certification ** (3/1) – nicknameless (Mar-02-06)
• LEGAL ACTION TO BE FILED IN CALIFORNIA TO ‘HALT USE OR PURCHASE OF DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINES’ IN STATE! – BradBlog (3/20/2006)
• Choice Point in CA?! THOUSANDS already kicked off of voter rolls.– nicknameless (Mar-30-06)
• CA’s rethug SoS made a deal with bush to eliminate eligible voters!! – nicknameless (Mar-31-06)

Colorado:

• Activists protest electronic voting Denver Post (11/21)
• Colorado protest pictures..spread these around the internet! Denver Voice (11/18)
• Major fraud in Colorado? from ClintCooper2003 on DU (12/12)

Florida:

• CLOSE TO EVIDENCE!!! – palm beach county, FL
• I Smell a Rat…odor of Republicanus floridius [by a polling expert]
• Were the absentee ballots lost or stolen? Either way, it’s a crime. (Broward County)
• Orange County discrepancy–8,400 VOTES!
• 8400 Vote Orange County Bush Jump – Absentee Ballots?
• Congressional candidate Jeff Fisher says Florida vote was hacked, and he knows who did it and how!
• Jeff Fisher – sounding real and real scary… Reader Beware
• Something Rotten in the State of Florida
• Broward machines count backward
• Very Odd Results in Florida
• Bush wins by 5% in Florida yet his Latino vote in Florida was down 15%!!!
• Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters
• MiamiHerald.com: “Hackers rigging voting machines a real possibility”
• Busting the Dixiecrat myth
• Did Bush Lose… Again? (“optical scam” machines…debunks dixiecrat myth)
• Volusia County election records just got put on lockdown – Bev Harris (MUST READ!)
• Local couple travel to Florida to watch polls
• WAS IT HACKED? – Orlando Weekly News
• Berkeley’s published report is available to read. Oh-oh, Jeb. (at LEAST 130,000 extra Bush votes)
• ‘Stinking Evidence’ of Possible Election Fraud Found in Florida
• Florida counties stonewall records requests. – update on blackboxvoting.org (11/22)
• Volusia County lawsuit alleges irregularities in Nov. 2, 2004 election – blackboxvoting.org (11/24)
• UPDATE: Florida litigation on voting issues, from Black Box Voting by Bev Harris (11/24)
• ***Election 2004: 73 SCHOOLS LOCKEDDOWN IN PALM BEACH *** Carl Brennan on DU (11/26)
• Miami Herald article shows that Kerry may have won Florida! from pointsoflight on DU – BRILLIANT! (11/29)
• Black Box Voting files lawsuit against Palm Beach County Elections Division (11/30)
• Dixiecrats or not, FL results unbelievable from ccarter84 on DU (12/1)
• Florida – Suit seeks to overturn election – from dzika on DU (12/2)
• Florida Election Anomalies and Voter Suppression – collection of links(12/2)
• Comparison of Democratic and Republican Populations and Vote Counts in Florida from 2000 to 2004 (12/5)
• FLORIDA – 33 OF 34 VOTED FOR KERRY BUT THE MACHINE CAME UP BUSH from TruthIsAll on DU (12/5)
• Who supervised the removal of 21 Florida e-voting machines in Broward County? BlueLemur (12/6)
• BUSTED? Pynchon thinks there’s something rotten in Volusia from sabra on DU (12/8)
• MAJOR FRAUD IN FLORIDA? from ClintCooper2003 on DU (12/12)
• Fraud(Default to Bush) documented in Florida touchscreen county machines by berniew1 (12/22)
• ‘New Times Broward-Palm Beach’ Jumps into Feeney, Yang (YEI), Curtis Fray! [UPDATED] – BradBlog (2/08/05)
• Whistle blower alleges U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney might have rigged South Florida Election from pbartch (2/19/05)
• S. Florida : Sorry, your votes won’t count. We made a mistake. from berniew1 (2/28/05)
• FL Optiscans vs. Touchscreens:Prob of 9.03% discrepancy-1 in 12.7 trillion – TruthIsAll (Sun Apr-17-05)
• FL Vote analysis: Using registration, machine type, NEP Party ID stats. – TruthIsAll (Sun Apr-17-05)
• Are these Florida Precinct Reports a smoking gun or not? – adolfo (Wed Apr-06-05)
• Discrepancies found in 35 percent of Miami-Dade precincts by garybeck (Fri May-06-05)
• Votes counted three times (Dade County) audit shows – IChing (Wed May-25-05)
• Optical scan machines hacked in Florida – rightfoot (Sun May-29-05)
• Palm Beach County fails BBV audit – twilight zone, basically – rightfoot (Wed Jun-08-05)
• Leon County Fla. Report on Hacked Machines – BeFree (Sat Jun-04-05)
• FEMA Chief Brown Paid Millions in False Claims to Help Bush Win Fla. Votes in ’04 By Jason Leopold (Sat Sep-10-05)
• BREAKING: Florida Improperly Certified Diebold TSX – AmBlue on DU (Mon Nov-28-05)
• Leon County dumps Diebold!!! BBV Breaking News!!! – Einsteinia on DU ( Dec-16-05)
• Brad Blog: Volusia County, FL Dumps Diebold Too! – understandinglife (Dec-16-05)
• Watchdog Group Questions 2004 Fla. Vote (+) – kster (Feb-24-06)
• Miami Herald: Election official hammered for telling truth about Diebold – Amaryllis (Mar-08-06)
• “AP: 100,000 ERRORS REPORTED ON SEQUOIA VOTING MACHINES IN PALM BEACH, FL 2004 ELECTION!” – BradBlog (2/23/06)
• FL: Ion Sancho Initiates Legal Proceedings Against Diebold – Wilms (Mar-08-06)
• Gov. Jeb Bush, S.o.S. Sue Cobb threaten Leon Co. election takeover! – Steve A Play (Mar-08-06)
• St. Pete Times: “No conspiracy needed to support paper trail” -MSM, guys! – Amaryllis (Mar-13-06)

Georgia:

• Mark Crispin Miller: Secret ballot compromised in Georgia! – (Fri Jun-24-05)
• Congresswoman McKinney Reveals Shocking Data on Diebold and Elections in Georgia – Fly by night (Wed Jul-20-05)

Illinois:

• Chicago Tribune reporting many problems with Sequoia machines in Illinois – xray s (Mar-23-06)

Indiana:

• Computer glitch still baffles county clerk (affects Dem county in Indiana)
• Another screw-up in Indiana! Kerry losing thousands of votes to Bednarik.
• Voting machine glitch changes election
• 3 more counties report errors Franklin Co. equipment trouble wasn’t an isolated incident
• IN: Centralized Registration Database PROBLEMS. Test May 2nd. – autorank (Mar-20-06)

Iowa:

• Bush won Iowa by 10,000 (less than 1%–qualifies for a recount) by carolab on DU (11/18)

Maryland:

• Observers find 201 e-voting problems in Maryland by Grant Gross (11/23)
• In Response to Hursti Hack, MD Election Admin. Expresses ‘Great Concern’ – Wilms (Feb-08-06)
• UNCERTIFIED! (Maryland) – Bill Bored (Feb-18-06)
• Bradblog: VERY good news RE: Diebold in MD! Go get ’em, gov & MD house! – Amaryllis (Mar-06-06)
• TrueVote MD releases docs detailing Diebold failures, violations of law – Amaryllis (Mar-08-06)
• Maryland House votes to oust Diebold machines – FogerRox (Mar-10-06)
• Brad:MD House Votes 137 to 0 to Ban Diebold Touch-Screens in 2006! – Amaryllis (Mar-11-06)
• “Touch Screen Voting Isn’t the Right Answer” Balt.Sun-This is really good!– Amaryllis (Apr-01-06)

Minnesota:

• Major fraud in Minnesota? from ClintCooper2003 on DU (12/12)
• Please Help! Vote siphoning from Kerry to 3rd parties in Minnesota – IndyOp (Sat Jul-23-05)

Missouri:

• “Report of evidence sent to US Attorneys, Missouri Reps, State Auditor etc” Matt Fox, Ph.D. (11/29)

Nebraska:

• More Votes than Voters in Nebraska

Nevada:

• A CRY FOR HELP FROM BATTLE-STATION NEVADA by shraby on DU (11/20)
• nevada! please help on DU (11/21)
• BREAKING NEWS: Glibs to Recount NM and NV!!
• for everyone asking questions about the NV paper trail … from NVMojo on DU (11/30)
• JUDGE TO CHALLENGE BUSH ELECTORAL VOTES IN NEVADA from Karenca on DU (11/30)
• Inside the Nevada Numbers: Christmas Comes Early for the Republicans from ignatzmouse on DU (11/30)
• Why the “Greens” Dropped Nevada from Recount Efforts…Just So You Know. from KoKo01 on DU (12/5)
• Judge orders release of Nevada presidential election public records from Amaryllis on DU (1/25/05)
• NEVADA LEGAL SHOWDOWN from JoMama49 on DU (1/20/05)

New Hampshire:

• Presidential ballots to be recounted
• NH Recount shows Straight Dem Party votes miscounted! by FullCountNotRecount on DU (11/20)
• Recount finds few changes (bad news, but of course only 11 of 301 precincts were recounted..hmmm) (11/30)
• NH: Doing time for election fraud!!! NH Republican – autorank on DU (Dec-20-05)

New Jersey:

• Proposed law in NJ to outlaw paper ballots – FogerRox (Feb-10-06)
• NJ Appeals Court Reinstates Lawsuit Challenging Electronic Voting – Wilms (Feb-13-06)

New Mexico:

• Fishy New Mexico Numbers
• NM – Absentee and Provisional Ballot Rejection Rate – 50%+
• NM could flip for Kerry (it has tightened dramatically) 11/15
• weirdness in NM
• Bingo! “Prima Facie” for New Mexico from indigoblue on DU (11/29)
• BREAKING NEWS: Glibs to Recount NM and NV!!
• New Mexico Was Blue: 18,659 Missing E-Votes from ignatzmouse on DU (12/5)
• Strong evidence/doc. Kerry won New Mexico-Make sure Recount Happens from berniew1 on DU (12/22)
• THEY HAVE FILED LAWSUITS IN NEW MEXICO!!!! from pbartch on DU (1/25/05)
• New Mexico lawsuit update – garybeck – SolarBus.org (Thu Sep-29-05)
• Legal Battle for 2004 Recount Continues in New Mexico – by David Edwards (9/06/2005)
• BradBlog: Plaintiffs Suddenly Blocked in New Mexico ’04 Election Lawsuit – Nothing Without Hope on DU (Sat Nov-12-05)
• Looks like Bill Richardson (NM) has turned into a lion for paper ballot!! – Stevepol (Jan-29-06)

North Carolina:

• Unofficial Audit of NC Election: Comprehensive Case for Fraud by ignatzmouse on DU
• NC Unofficial Audit Part 2: Inside the Black Box by ignatzmouse on DU (11/22)
• Election problems due to a software glitch (11,283 x-tra for Bush in N.C )
• Fiasco in North Carolina
• NC Transfer Error Misses 12,000 Votes
• State to probe Gaston election – Charlotte Observer (11/19)
• NC Problems reported in the media by pointoflight on DU (11/22)
• Trail of Electronic Voting Uncovered: A Summary of NC Findings by ignatzmouse on DU (11/23)
• North Carolina’s ballot blues By JOYCE MCCLOY (11/27)
• A Florida Style Nightmare – North Carolina Citizens Demand Verified Voting Measures (11/28)
• North Carolina is contender for most fraud & glitches: new documentation from berniew1 (3/04/05) Video: Carteret Citizens whose votes were lost speak out – WillYourVoteBCounted (Wed Jul-27-05)
• Bradblog: Diebold certified in NC after all by former Diebold rep! – Amaryllis on DU (Thu Dec-01-05)
• Diebolding NC – the timeline,cronies, ties to NC corruption investigation – WillYourVoteBCounted on DU (Sun Dec-04-05)
• Red State NC Fights Back against Diebold! Another Lawsuit Filed! – KoKo01 on DU (12-13-05)

Ohio:

• OH Vote Suppression: 92,000 optiscan/punchcards didn’t record vote
• Ohio voters tell of Election Day troubles at hearing
• Slip-sliding away in Columbus
• Better Dead Than Red – The story Ken Blackwell didn’t want you to read.
• KERRY WON OHIO – JUST COUNT THE BALLOTS AT THE BACK OF THE BUS – Greg Palast
• A Legitimate Recount Effort in Ohio
• A report on the election from an Attorney that was “on the ground” in Ohio
• Errors plague voting process in Ohio, Pa.
• Unravelling the Mystery of the Cuyahoga County vote totals
• Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes
• Ohio Poll Worker on the Rigged Vote
• Why Did CNN Change Their Exit Poll Data for Ohio After 1:00 AM?
• And so the sorting and discarding of Kerry votes begins
• Who Counts in Ohio
• The Ohio Code – by Atrios
• The Perfect Election Day Crime
• GOP Vote Suppression: A Crime Against the U.S. Constitution
• Statistical Evidence: Ohio election rigged
• Notes from Ohio voter suppression hearing in Columbus 11/15
• Some ballots counted twice
• Document reveals Columbus, Ohio voters waited hours as election officials held back machines
• 93,000 Extra Votes In Cuyahoga County -Outrage In Ohio
• Possible Proof of fraud in one bit of testimony.
• Democrats take up fight over ballots
• Vote rigging by machine allocation in Franklin County, Ohio
• Sample Right-wing Voter Suppression Letter
• Precincts with only 21 votes in Cuyahoga, OH:218,981 less votes ’00 to ’04
• Hijinx in Ohio?
• Hearings on Ohio voting put 2004 election in doubt
• Lawyers to challenge election in Ohio
• Blackwell Violates Ohio State Law?
• Ohio Presidential Results to be Challenged by Stephen Rosenfeld (11/20)
• Hearings on Ohio voting put 2004 election in doubt by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman (11/18)
• Ohio counties w Registration exceeding 100% of the voting age by truehawk on DU (11/19)
• Election Day rolls include people who couldn’t—and shouldn’t—vote – Columbus Dispatch (10/24)
• Ohio hearings show massive GOP vote manipulation by Harvey Wasserman (11/21)
• One Ohio County (Cuhayoga) had 55,434 (at minimum) over votes. by jsamuel at DU (11/20)
• UPDATE: SOLID Proof of Vote Suppression in OH by markusd at dailyKOS (11/20)
• First hand reports by other Ohio volunteers by Ray Beckerman (11/18)
• How the Ohio election was rigged for Bush by Bob Fitrakis (11/22)
• Recount efforts in Ohio by Kerry intensify by Adam Stone (11/22)
• Cuyahoga County Ohio – List of 8k “Incomplete” Registration Cards…by sabra on DU (11/22)
• Blackwell sued over Cuyahoga vote tally by James Ewinger (11/27)
• More Interesting Ohio Data… please read by TennisGuy2004 on DU (11/23)
• 8,099 Cuyahoga ballots ruled invalid by Diane Solov (11/23)
• New Ohio voter transcripts feed floodtide of doubt about Republican election manipulation (11/25)
• More voting questions raised by Jon Craig (11/25)
• Widespread Election Fraud in Cleveland? by Bob Fertik (11/19)
• CUYAHOGA COUNTY: MASSIVE Punchcard machine outages by Chili on DU (11/28)
• Blackwell Denies Public Access to Poll Books in Trumbull County from rehema on DU (11/28)
• “Prima Facie” evidence of Ohio election fraud — Pacifica Radio from jamboi on DU (11/28)
• Kerry Supports Ohio Vote Investigation, Jackson says by Steven Rosenfeld (11/28)
• Re-Vote, Not Recount, in Ohio by Anne Pfeiffer (11/29)
• Dec. 4th Ohio Rally!
• Ohio tally fit for Ukraine (11/30)
• Kerry campaign joins the glib lawsuit in OH!!! from Wordie on DU (11/30)
• Kerry loses about 400 votes to 3rd parties in Cleveland? 1 in 10^50 odds from jfern on DU (12/1)
• Major vote suppression based on race…And its actionable. from pointoflight on DU (12/1)
• MUST SEE! Cliff Arnebeck Link on C-Span re: FRAUD!!! from Verve on DU (12/2)
• Conyers and Other Congressman to Hold Forum on Voting Irregularities in Ohio(12/3)
• Ohio Voter Turn Out Turned Off!!! from Ronbrynaert on DU (12/3)
• WHY HAVEN’T THEY COUNTED A QUARTER MILLION VOTES IN OHIO? Greg Palast (12/5)
• Kerry lost 369 votes at one Ohio polling place, 115 at another, hundreds at others on DailyKOS (12/2)
• BAD COUNTS CERTIFIED in Cuyahoga County OH from k8conant on DU (12/7)
• Graphics of Disenfranchisement, Turnout choked by too few machines – mirror of DU page (12/7)
• Ohio election fraud uproar blasting to new level by Steve Rosenfeld, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (12/7)
• Video Highlights of Rep. Conyers’ “Ohio Voting Irregularities” Forum .wmv from crooksandliars.com (12/8)
• Documentation that Kerry Won Ohio; (the recount will prove it) from berniew1 on DU (12/9)
• Why history demands an Ohio revote by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis (12/10)
• Triad machines produce 101,506 more Bush Votes than expected in Ohio from IndyOp on DU (12/10)
• More votes than voters in Ohio – absentee votes inflated from BR_Parkway on DU (12/10)
• GROUNDS to OVERTURN the election in OHIO from k8conant on DU (12/11)
• Disturbing occurance in Warren County, Ohio from yankeefanatic3 on DU (12/12)
• Cuts in precincts add to voter lines – Akron Beacon (12/12)
• Blackwell Locks Down Ohio Voting Records from shraby on DU (12/12)
• Smoking Gun of Election Fraud is in Ken Blackwell’s Hand By Anthony Wade (12/12)
• Ohio Recount Affidavit – Richard Hayes Phillips (12/12)
• Ohio pre-certification oddities – vanishing votes etc. from harmonyguy on DU (12/12)
• A READABLE, CONVINCING summary of Ohio vote fraud analyses from IndyOp on DU (12/12)
• Ohio lockdown a case of prima facie election fraud? from pointsoflight on DU (12/12)
• Hacking the vote in Lucas County by Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. (12/12)
• Update from Greene County Ohio – Sworn Affidavit from dzika on DU (12/14)
• OHIO sure knows how to count quickly!! from ClarkinMich on DU (12/14)
• Blackwell Refuses to Cooperate with House Judiciary Democrats from cyn2 on DU (12/14)
• “House Judiciary Ohio Forum Hears of Recount Fraud Plans” –Report from BreakForNews on DU (12/13)
• Ohio Electoral College Chooses Bush After Challenge Filed (12/13)
• Ohio Vote Fraud Battle Heats Up – Blackwell Is In Deep Trouble! from sabra on DU (12/13)
• Here is a specific Ohio law Blackwell violated–I need help getting arrest from Vote4Kerry on DU (12/14)
• Here are the Petition and Injuntion in the Arnebeck Case!!! from keithjx on DU (12/14)
• Witness says voting company tampered with machines after vote and tried to plant false information into Ohio recount (12/14)
• Proof of Ohio Election Fraud Exposed By William Rivers Pitt (12/15)
• Rep. Conyers Seeks Federal Inquiry into Ohio Voting – Buzzflash (12/15)
• Ohio Justice Throws Out Election Challenge – Associated Press (12/16)
• What R the odds of PERFECT RECOUNTS in multiple counties from texpatriot2004 on DU (12/16)
• Ohio, Fairfield County, suspends recount…UPDATED WITH REPORT from mtnester on DU (12/16)
• Kerry-Edwards letter to Blackwell: Please Analyze the Words.. from Shalom on DU (12/16)
• In addition to TRIAD, Diebold hacks the recount. – rawstory (12/16)
• Chaos in Cuyahoga? 49,000 Votes Disappear into the Ether …then found? from Iceburg on DU (12/16)
• Ohio vote count battles escalate amidst new evidence of potential criminal activity by Bob Fitrakis (12/18)
• ES&S Machines in Mahoning County Defaulted to Bush! from emlev (12/22)
• Mercer County: Triad Mechanic Permitted to Disassemble Tabulator from Carolab on DU (12/22)
• Report from Recount Observer, Lucas County, Ohio from carolab on DU (12/22)
• Blackwell crimes in 2004 pres. race already an issue for 2006 gov. race… from EMunster on DU (12/22)
• Ohio’s Perfectly Paranormal Recount Results from rainbow4321 on DU (12/22)
• Ohio recount- Cuyahoga County ballots pre-sorted from mdb on DU (12/22)
• Coshocton Co. Results: Kerry to Gain 40,000+ in Ohio Hand Recount from dzika on DU (12/12)
• Arnebeck ALSO Requests Emergency Hearing to Impound Machines…. from EMunster on DU (12/22)
• Voters Refile Challenge Of Presidential Results – Associated Press (12/22)
• Blackwell’s office had secret slush funds and Perry County lawsuit from WiseFawn on DU (12/22)
• Conyers Letter to Triad asking for cheat sheets from Twist_U_Up on DU (12/26)
• Cuyahoga Cty – 2000 Bush Tallies Used to Fake 2004 Tallies? from 59sunburst on DU (12/27)
• Ohio Official Refuses Interview Over Vote – Associated Press (12/27)
• ODDS OF A FAIR VOTE IN COSHOCTON COUNTY, OH: 1 of 17,000 ! from TruthIsAll on DU (12/28)
• Ohio Recount -Officialy Over- Ends in Laughable Outcome from BreakForNews on DU (12/28)
• OHIO HAS 11,360 PRECINCTS from stella2cat on DU (12/30)
• Conyers to Object to Ohio Electors, Requests Senate Allies By William Rivers Pitt (12/30)
• The Strange Death of American Democracy: Endgame in Ohio by Michael Keefer (1/24/05)
• A NEW legal challenge in Ohio!!! from ClassWarrior on DU (1/25/05)
• Proof of Vote fraud has happened in Ohio before from phantomvotes on DU (1/25/05)
• LETTER: Four House Dems ask for Ohio criminal investigation from rawstory on DU (1/14/05)
• CONYERS AND OTHERS TO FILE AMICUS BRIEF IN OHIO SUPREME COURT by WilliamPitt (2/15/05)
• Ohio recount volunteers allege electoral tampering, legal violations and possible fraud – RawStory (1/26/05)
• FBI checking Clermont voting – Congressman claims tampering – By Reid Forgrave (2/09/05)
• EIRS case doc. of vote switching, dirty tricks, suppression in Ohio by berniew1 (2/07/05)
• S.O.S. in Ohio did not allow recount of 3% sample in DRE TS counties-why? by berniew1 (2/15/05)
• Ohio Attorney-General’s attack on election protection attorneys draws mountain of documentation on state’s stolen election (2/03/05)
• Green recount volunteers found signif. irregularities inmost Ohio counties by berniew1 (1/29/05)
• Ohio has a history of hacking the vote from brindis_desala on DU (3/10/05)
• researchers at Nashville conference-strong case Kerry won Ohio – berniew1 (Mon Apr-11-05)
• Fired Ohio Election Board staffer defiant over “retribution” – Bob Fitrakis (May 25, 2005)
• Attack on election board whistleblower and leaked Blackwell threats re-fire Ohio’s election theft scandal – by Bob Fitrakis (May 23, 2005)
• UPDATE: ‘Democratic’ Election Officials’ Feet Held to Fire in Hocking County, OH – BradBlog ( 6/9/2005)
• Something Rotten in Ohio By Gore Vidal, The Nation (June 14, 2005)
• Everything you ever wanted to know about CoinGate in Ohio (June 22, 2005)
• Evidence of Fraud and Disenfranchisement in Ohio, 2004 : A Partial List (June 22, 2005)
• Taka a look at what OHIO thinks about Bush and tell me Kerry lost it.. – TruthIsAll (Tue Jun-28-05)
• Ohio Democrats victims of break-in – MelissaB (Sat Jul-02-05)
• Voter registration data could provide the key to the 2004 Ohio election – Time for change (Tue Jul-12-05)
• 10,000 Registration Documents Shredded in Hocking County? -NoBushSpokenHere (Thu Jul-14-05)
• Too Close for Comfort – Paul Hackett Congressional Race – (August 03, 2005)
• GOP Ohio Miracle of the Moment! – BradBlog (8/2/2005)
• about those white stickers…… – garybeck (Wed Aug-24-05)
• Ohio Governor’s ethics violations expose money trail to stolen 2004 election – by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman (August 30, 2005)
• What if NY Times was right about massive Dem. increase in OH voter reg.? – Time for change on DU (Fri Jul-22-05)
• NVRI: Federal Judge Sets Expedited Schedule for Lawsuit (Ohio!) – eomer on DU (Sat Sep-17-05)
• DNC Report Conclusion of “No Widespread Fraud” in Ohio Election Disputed – Time for change on DU (Tue Sep-27-05)
• Eye On Ohio: The Informed Citizen’s Guide to the 2004 Election (11-30-05)
• OH: Republican Mole at Toledo Blade Spiked Coingate in Jan 2004 – autorank on DU (Thu Oct-06-05)
• Watergate-style money laundering indictments stoke Ohio’s stolen election by kster on DU (Fri Oct-28-05)
• Ohio Precinct-level Exit Poll Data Show Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount sunshinekathy (Wed Nov-02-05)
• disconnect between the pre-election polls and the “reported” election results in Ohio on Issue 1 vs. Issues 2-5 – (Wed Nov-09-05)
• Update on purging of > 100 K voters from Cuyahoga Co. voter roles – Time for change (Wed Nov-09-05)
• State plans to investigate voting chaos; Tuesday’s problems are latest for Lucas County – OH – althecat (Thu Nov-10-05)
• Fitrakis & Wasserman discuss Ohio’s referendum electronic “defeats” – AtLiberty on DU (Sat Nov-12-05)
• The Staggeringly Impossible Outcome for Ohio’s ’05 Election – lizzieforkerry on DU (Sun Nov-13-05)
• The Role of Voter Registration Purging/Fraud in Kerry’s loss of Ohio – Time for change on DU (Wed Nov-09-05)
• Coup d’etat Redux in Ohio! – Einsteinia on DU ( Dec-12-05)
• OH: New Blackwell Directive: No More RANDOM recounts – mod mom on DU (Dec-16-05)
• Brad Blog: Bob Ney of Ohio’s Connection To Electoral Fraud – AtLiberty (Jan-10-06)
• The Gun Is Smoking! Election Archive Releases Analysis of OH! – Stevepol (Jan-21-06)
• Evidence of Fraud and Disenfranchisement in Ohio, 2004 : A Partial List – Wilms (Jan-19-06)
• Grand Theft Election Ohio.com – McCamy Taylor (Jan-21-06)
• Study of Provisionals in Cleveland – mod mom (Jan-25-06)
• FREE PRESS: OH GOP Poised to Gut Election Protection – mod mom (Feb-07-06)
• Revote in Ohio After More Votes Than Voters Recorded on Diebold Machines – Wilms (Feb-07-06)
• IMPORTANT: The Effects of PURGES in Franklin Co., Ohio: – mod mom (Feb-18-06)
• Hackett has election stolen then betrayed by Party – autorank (Feb-16-06)
• Hang On…: Cobb Demands Reinstatement of Ohio Recount Lawsuit – Wilms (Feb-23-06)
• We Need Help in Confirming Election Fraud in Cleveland 2004 – Time for change (Feb-25-06)
• Cleveland Audit Reveals Vote Count Discrepancy in Bush’s Favor–Need Help! – Time for change (Mar-03-06)
• Did 308,000 cancelled Ohio voter registrations put Bush back in the White – kster (Mar-03-06)
• The new face of apartheid: J. Kenneth Hackwell – Bob Fitrakis (March 30, 2006)
• An Analogous Event to the Warren County “Lockdown” – Colombia 1998 – Time for change (Mar-15-06)

Pennsylvania:

• Dirty work at Philly polls
• You think democracy is dead in OH? Get a load of PA! – Bill Bored (Jan-26-06)
• We lost a Big One in PA today…And I can’t figure out how… – Junkdrawer (Mar-04-06)
• Sequoia E-Vote Systems Found ‘Hackable’ in PA, Testing Shut Down After Machine Failures! – BradBlog (3/30/2006)

Texas:

• Problems in Texas With E-Slate and Straight-Party Vote from TexasLawyer on DU (11/30)
• Kaufman County Election Scandal by Greg Moses (12/27)
• Widespread vote machine fraud in Texas-Austin,Houston,SanAntonio from berniew1 on DU (1/15/05)
• High court observers see (Texas) redistricting case as pivotal – papau on DU (Dec-14-05)
• Brad:New voting machine co. whistleblower speaks out; TX primary afftected – Amaryllis (Mar-13-06)
• BREAKING: E-MACHINES FAIL! TX PRIMARY RECOUNT HALTED BY SEC OF STATE! – BradBlog (Mar-22-06)

Utah:

• 33,000 ballots lost in shuffle – Utah County
• Utah Election Auditor discovers Diebold real and potential problems – papau (Mar-19-06)

Vermont:

• Vermont Does Hand Counts! Please READ – interesting! – by TennisGuy2004 on DU (11/21)

Virginia:

• Trouble with voting Machines in Virginia – M_Demo_M on DU (Tue Nov-08-05)

Washington:

• Republicans file suit to limit King County recount Seattle Post-Intelligencer (11/21)
• “Serious problems in King County Elections Department” – (11/23)
• Snohomish county, Washington – evidence of systematic machine fraud from tex-wyo-dem on DU (1/20/05)
• USCountVotes: Evidence of Election Irregularities in Snohomish County, WA – eomer (Fri Apr-15-05)
• GOP challenges rights of hundreds of voters (WA) – cal04 on DU ( Sat Nov-05-05)

Wisconsin

• Error nets Bush 100 extra votes – By GREG J. BOROWSKI (June 7, 2005)
• Wisconsin Approves the Vote-PAD Assistive Device – kster (Feb-18-06)

Wyoming:

• There are even major irregularities in Wyoming! by pointsoflight on DU (11/25)

• How to Hack the Vote: the Short Version (it’s really THAT easy)
• The Case of the Diebold FTP Site – A nice summary of Diebold software flaws
• Nearly all of Diebold’s Board and it’s officers donated to Repubs
• seeVote – a better e-voting system?
• Republican White Hat Hacker Disses Diebold Big Time – Kos
• Election Worker Refuses to Lie for Voting Software Company
• “Bay Point Schools, Cal Tech, and the CyberNET connection.”
• Electronic Voting: The Stolen Election of 2004
• Hot!! Jeb Bush>Jeff Fisher>Straight School>FBI Cybernet bust.
• E-voting Security by Avi Rubin
• Confessions of a Republican hacker ChuckHerrin.com (11/21)
• Voting Machines Gone Wild! by Mark Lewellen-Biddle (12/11/03)
• E-voting rollout is slow going By William Welsh (10/25)
• Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire – Electronic Voting and the Legitimacy of the 2004 Presidential election -DU (11/30
• Voting machine test results ‘off-limits’ to the public (12/5)
• Sum of a Glitch – Evidence shows that machines might be the real swing voters this November (August ’04)
• How to hack an electronic voting machine….. from VTGold on DU (12/8)
• Sham Recount Process on Diebold E-voting Machines from AmerDem on DU (1/24/05)
• E-Voting to be Gone Sooner Than you Think by Land Shark (2/12/05)
• The Diebold dilemma – Toldedo Blade (9/03/03)
• Follow the money, find the truth: More voting machine company connections by Amaryllis (2/05/05)
• Largest investors in electronic voting are defense contractors?!? from AtLiberty on DU (3/15/05)
• Means, Motive, Opportunity – BBV EXPOSED! – tommcintyre (Tue Apr-12-05)
• Voting Machines Violate Constitution – Amaryllis (Thu Apr-28-05)
• Remote Hack of Diebold Systems Analysis – RedEagle (Thu May-05-05)
• Electronic vote switching: EIRS analysis shows 12:1 ratio of K/E to B/C by Time for change (Fri May-20-05)
• Nirvana! Automated Voting Fraud! by Filius Nullius (Sun May-08-05)
• Cynthia McKinney on the Diebold Hack…as Diebold Flips Out… – BradBlog (6/29/2005)
• A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America (Truthout) (Sat Jun-25-05)
• Diebold $10,000 (legal?)bribe of GOP Franklin County(Ohio) BOE uncovered – farmbo (Sat Jul-16-05)
• Scanners are not simple calculators! – mirrera (Sat Aug-06-05)
• EXACTLY WHAT YOU DON’T WANT: YOUR ELECTIONS ON DIEBOLD’S SERVER – helderheid (Tue Aug-09-05)
• $7.5M Awarded to Study Electronic Voting at Johns Hopkins Univ: -cyberpj (Tue Aug-16-05)
• DIVERSE LOCATIONS SWITCHED KERRY TOUCHSCREEN VOTES TO BUSH – TruthIsAll (Thu Aug-11-05)
• More Trouble for Diebold, This Time in Georgia… – Brad Friedman (9/27/2005)
• Diebold’s Tough Luck, VR’s Promise, and a New Ad for America from the Velvet Revolution… – BradBlog (9/23/2005)
• DIEB-THROAT Weighs in on Diebold’s Stunning 15.5% Wednesday Stock Plunge – BradBlog (9/22/2005)
• DIEB-THROAT : ‘Diebold System One of Greatest Threats Democracy Has Ever Known’ – BradBlog (9/15/2005)
• A Quick-ish DIEB-THROAT Follow-up… – BradBlog (9/18/2005)
• Clint Curtis Rebuilds Prototype!! This must get out!! – by KerryReallyWon on DU (Wed Sep-07-05)
• EAC has interpreted HAVA to require paper records for recounts! – Bill Bored on DU (Sat Sep-17-05)
• Paper trails are NOT the answer – Mark Crispin Miller (9/20/2005)
• A MUST READ — Bob Fleischer: Software IS a Problem – AtLiberty on DU (Fri Sep-23-05)
• Panel: E-voting vulnerable By Anne Broache, CNET News.com (10-07-05)
• Touchscreen Voting Increases Annual Election Costs by 40% (Mon Oct-10-05)
• GAO REPORT CONFIRMS CONCERNS ABOUT SECURITY OF ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES! – BradBlog (10/20/2005)
• With Diebold,you tweak to ‘get the reports you need’ – Algorem on DU (Fri Nov-11-05)
• MSM locally Quotes voter: Sequoia E-voting makes us “another Florida” – Land Shark on DU (Fri Nov-11-05)
• RawStory: Diebold insider alleges company plagued by technical woes… wilms on DU (12-07-05)
• Bradblog: Potential securities fraud class action lawsuit against Diebold – amarylis on DU (12-07-05)
• Wally O’Dell, Diebold CEO, resigns! – garybeck on DU (12-15-05)
• Best website I’ve ever seen on voting system company sleaziness… – amaryllis on DU (12-13-05)
• Voting system said to fail – kster on DU (Dec-16-05)
• Who’s counting the votes ? – kster on DU (Dec-17-05)
• HuffPo – Avi Rubin: The Dirty Little Secrets of Voting System Testing Labs – Wilms on DU (Dec-17-05)
• The Harri Hursti Hack And Its Importance To Our Nation – AtLiberty (Feb-09-06)
• (Lynn Landes) Voting Systems Lawsuit Reaches U.S. Supreme Court – Wilms (Feb-07-06)
• “I Saw it Hacked”….Eye witness to election fraud – autorank (Jan-25-06)
• BradBlog >> EXCLUSIVE: SECURITIES FRAUD LITIGATION FILED AGAINST DIEBOLD, – sabra (Dec-16-05)
• Diebold Reserves Right to “Manipulate the Data” Before Releasing it! – Amaryllis (Feb-10-06)
• Pressure on Diebold and the Stolen 04 Election on Daily Kos – mod mom (Feb-13-06)
• Now the Onus is on Counties and Diebold to Risk Multi-Million $ Lawsuits – Wilms (Feb-20-06)
• Designed for “Failure”? Discovery of Diebold’s Bugs & Cryptographic Key – nicknameless (Feb-24-06)
• Diebold Whistleblower Facing Three Felony Counts – freedomfries (Feb-27-06)
• BRADBLOG: AZ Election Official’s Diebold Tirade Caught on Tape – mod mom (Feb-27-06)
• DIEBOLD – 2008 “The fix is in” – Moscow Times – kster (Mar-04-06)
• “Why do Diebold’s Touch-Screen Voting Machines Have Built-In Wireless Infrared Data Transfer Ports?” – BradBlog (2/22/06)
• Hart InterCivic Whistleblower Warned of Texas, Ohio E-Voting ‘Fraud’ Concerns in 2004! – BradBlog (3/13/2006)
• Star-Telegram front page: computer “glitch” — election – antigop (Mar-09-06
• Diebold ExpressPoll 4000 – MGKrebs (Mar-11-06)
• Brad Blog: Wingnuts Concerned Re E-Voting- Hugo Chavez May Own Sequoia – Humor_In_Cuneiform (Apr-02-06)