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THE RECALL IS RIGGED !
Facism and apethitic Americans
Global Eye -- Vanishing Act
By Chris Floyd
It's a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buyouts and bogus fronts. It's a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers -- and presidential family members -- lie down together in the slime. It's a hacker's dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny. It's how the United States, the "world's greatest democracy," casts its votes. And it's why George W. Bush will almost certainly be the next president of the United States -- no matter what the people of the United States might want.
The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players -- Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia -- with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation, coming on strong. These companies -- all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid -- have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems -- many using "touch-screen" technology that leaves no paper trail at all -- are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, Johns Hopkins and other universities.
The technology had a trial run in the 2002 midterm elections. In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called "amazing" upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls. In computerized Minnesota, former Vice President Walter Mondale -- a replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone, who died days before the vote -- was also defeated in a large last-second vote swing. Convenient "glitches" in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the Democratic candidate registering instead for Governor Jeb "L'il Brother" Bush. A Florida Democrat who lost a similarly "glitched" local election went to court to have the computers examined -- but the case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the innards of America's voting machines are the "trade secrets" of the private companies who make them.
Who's behind these private companies? It's hard to tell: The corporate lines -- even the bloodlines -- of these "competitors" are so intricately mixed. For example, at Diebold -- whose corporate chief, Wally O'Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, has publicly committed himself to "delivering" his home state's votes to Bush next year -- the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The brothers were originally staked in the vote-count business by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing "steering group" stacked with Bushist faithful.
Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist "Christian Reconstructionist" movement, which openly advocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy, placing the entire society under the "dominion" of "Christ the King." This "dominion" includes the death penalty for homosexuals, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, stoning of sinners and -- we kid you not -- slavery, "one of the most beneficent of Biblical laws."
Ahmanson also has major holdings in ES&S, whose former CEO is Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company counted the votes; needless to say, his initial victory was reported as "an amazing upset." Hagel still has a million-dollar stake in the parent company of ES&S. In Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice for a running mate in his 1998 gubernatorial race was ES&S lobbyist Sandra Mortham, who made a mint installing the machines that counted Jeb's votes.
Sequoia also has a colorful history, most recently in Louisiana, where it was the center of a massive corruption case that sent top state officials to jail for bribery, most of it funneled through Mob-connected front firms. Sequoia executives were also indicted, but escaped trial after giving immunized testimony against state officials. The British-owned company's corporate parent is private equity firm Madison Dearborn -- a partner of the Carlyle Group, where George Bush I makes millions trolling the world for war pork, privatizations and sweetheart deals with government insiders.
Meanwhile, the shadowy defense contractor SAIC has jumped into the vote-counting game, both directly and through spinoffs by its top brass, including Admiral Bill Owens, former military aide to Dick Cheney and Carlyle honcho Frank Carlucci, and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates. SAIC's history of fraud charges and security lapses in its electronic systems hasn't prevented it from becoming one of the largest Pentagon and CIA contractors -- and will doubtless pose little obstacle to its entrance into election engineering.
The mad rush to install unverifiable computer voting is driven by the Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush last year. The chief lobbying group pushing for the act was a consortium of arms dealers -- those disinterested corporate citizens -- including Northop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin. The bill also mandates that all states adopt the computerized "ineligible voter purge" system that Jeb used to eliminate 91,000 eligible black voters from the Florida rolls in 2000. The Republican-run private company that accomplished this electoral miracle, ChoicePoint, is bagging the lion's share of the new Bush-ordered purge contracts.
The unelected Bush Regime now controls the government, the military, the judiciary -- and the machinery of democracy itself. Absent some unlikely great awakening by the co-opted dullards of the corporate media, next November the last shreds of a genuine American republic will disappear -- at the push of a button.
By Chris Floyd
It's a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buyouts and bogus fronts. It's a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers -- and presidential family members -- lie down together in the slime. It's a hacker's dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny. It's how the United States, the "world's greatest democracy," casts its votes. And it's why George W. Bush will almost certainly be the next president of the United States -- no matter what the people of the United States might want.
The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players -- Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia -- with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation, coming on strong. These companies -- all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid -- have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems -- many using "touch-screen" technology that leaves no paper trail at all -- are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, Johns Hopkins and other universities.
The technology had a trial run in the 2002 midterm elections. In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called "amazing" upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls. In computerized Minnesota, former Vice President Walter Mondale -- a replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone, who died days before the vote -- was also defeated in a large last-second vote swing. Convenient "glitches" in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the Democratic candidate registering instead for Governor Jeb "L'il Brother" Bush. A Florida Democrat who lost a similarly "glitched" local election went to court to have the computers examined -- but the case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the innards of America's voting machines are the "trade secrets" of the private companies who make them.
Who's behind these private companies? It's hard to tell: The corporate lines -- even the bloodlines -- of these "competitors" are so intricately mixed. For example, at Diebold -- whose corporate chief, Wally O'Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, has publicly committed himself to "delivering" his home state's votes to Bush next year -- the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The brothers were originally staked in the vote-count business by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing "steering group" stacked with Bushist faithful.
Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist "Christian Reconstructionist" movement, which openly advocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy, placing the entire society under the "dominion" of "Christ the King." This "dominion" includes the death penalty for homosexuals, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, stoning of sinners and -- we kid you not -- slavery, "one of the most beneficent of Biblical laws."
Ahmanson also has major holdings in ES&S, whose former CEO is Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company counted the votes; needless to say, his initial victory was reported as "an amazing upset." Hagel still has a million-dollar stake in the parent company of ES&S. In Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice for a running mate in his 1998 gubernatorial race was ES&S lobbyist Sandra Mortham, who made a mint installing the machines that counted Jeb's votes.
Sequoia also has a colorful history, most recently in Louisiana, where it was the center of a massive corruption case that sent top state officials to jail for bribery, most of it funneled through Mob-connected front firms. Sequoia executives were also indicted, but escaped trial after giving immunized testimony against state officials. The British-owned company's corporate parent is private equity firm Madison Dearborn -- a partner of the Carlyle Group, where George Bush I makes millions trolling the world for war pork, privatizations and sweetheart deals with government insiders.
Meanwhile, the shadowy defense contractor SAIC has jumped into the vote-counting game, both directly and through spinoffs by its top brass, including Admiral Bill Owens, former military aide to Dick Cheney and Carlyle honcho Frank Carlucci, and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates. SAIC's history of fraud charges and security lapses in its electronic systems hasn't prevented it from becoming one of the largest Pentagon and CIA contractors -- and will doubtless pose little obstacle to its entrance into election engineering.
The mad rush to install unverifiable computer voting is driven by the Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush last year. The chief lobbying group pushing for the act was a consortium of arms dealers -- those disinterested corporate citizens -- including Northop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin. The bill also mandates that all states adopt the computerized "ineligible voter purge" system that Jeb used to eliminate 91,000 eligible black voters from the Florida rolls in 2000. The Republican-run private company that accomplished this electoral miracle, ChoicePoint, is bagging the lion's share of the new Bush-ordered purge contracts.
The unelected Bush Regime now controls the government, the military, the judiciary -- and the machinery of democracy itself. Absent some unlikely great awakening by the co-opted dullards of the corporate media, next November the last shreds of a genuine American republic will disappear -- at the push of a button.
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I'm glad somebody through the scam. For starters, it's a 9 billion Schwarzenegger/Enron scam against the people of California. But with the same extremely powerful and trecherous interests behind Bush and Schwarzenegger, if Schwarzenegger replaces Davis, the Fascist coup d'etat will be complete and American will finally find out what it was really like to live in Germany and Italy in the '30's and 40's!
For the basic scam behind this, make sure you read and forward this to all your friends this article:
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=283&row=0
For the basic scam behind this, make sure you read and forward this to all your friends this article:
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=283&row=0
If you don't think secret conpiracies exist, YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND HISTORY, BUISNESS OR POLITICS AT ALL. And that is that. The truth is overwhelmingly clear throughout human history. It's just that some people don't like to face it so they retreat into a prejudiced dream world prepared for them by those who know how to conspire, plot and seize power as it has been done time and time again....and are they able to do it because enough total suckers call that truth "conspiracy theory". That is how a Democracy dies.
For more information:
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid...
Adding up recent poll numbers for Arnold and McClintock you get over 60%
Perhaps voting wont be fair with many machines messing up, but 60% is pretty high.
There must be a sizable percentage of Arnold voters (10+%) who are voting because of his celebrity since polls on political views wouldnt ever predict 60% going Republican in CA.
Perhaps voting wont be fair with many machines messing up, but 60% is pretty high.
There must be a sizable percentage of Arnold voters (10+%) who are voting because of his celebrity since polls on political views wouldnt ever predict 60% going Republican in CA.
They've dropped the ball in about 9000 ways - they let the voting machines in predominantly Democrat Alameda County have no paper trail, for one.
They also didn't get behind Cruz.
They didn't help get the groping info out until the last weekend before the election.
etc., etc.
They also didn't get behind Cruz.
They didn't help get the groping info out until the last weekend before the election.
etc., etc.
First you can’t have punch ballots because it disenfranchises minorities. Now you can’t have touch screen because of the margin of error and lack of a paper trail.
So what is the solution?
So what is the solution?
Perhaps voting wont be fair with many machines messing up, but 60% is pretty high.
There must be a sizable percentage of Arnold voters (10+%) who are voting because of his celebrity since polls on political views wouldnt ever predict 60% going Republican in CA.
You believe that polls are fair and un-biased? Look at how much media scrutiny this recall has received, not just in the U.S. but globally. You are telling me that this doesn't sway opinon or create ficticious polls? Arnold is one of eleven key player in our states budget crisis. The budget has been balanced my friend. There is still anegative of $8bil. and Arnlod, Milken, and Lay owe 9bil. to the state for their enron invovement. This adds up to to a $1bil. surplus if Bustamate's investigation continues. But, If Hitler is in office, the buck stops with him. Riordan and Simon are 2 other big players in the raping of the state. All involved in deregulation and documented saying there is a plot to overthrow the governor and take control of our state! Go to http://www.gregpalast.com/ and follow the trail of links to the truth (even the SF chronicle reported this activity 2001) look at sfgate.com, type in a search for schwarzenegger archived 2001. No conspiracy my man, reported fact. Polls manipulate opinion and lie to the voter!
There must be a sizable percentage of Arnold voters (10+%) who are voting because of his celebrity since polls on political views wouldnt ever predict 60% going Republican in CA.
You believe that polls are fair and un-biased? Look at how much media scrutiny this recall has received, not just in the U.S. but globally. You are telling me that this doesn't sway opinon or create ficticious polls? Arnold is one of eleven key player in our states budget crisis. The budget has been balanced my friend. There is still anegative of $8bil. and Arnlod, Milken, and Lay owe 9bil. to the state for their enron invovement. This adds up to to a $1bil. surplus if Bustamate's investigation continues. But, If Hitler is in office, the buck stops with him. Riordan and Simon are 2 other big players in the raping of the state. All involved in deregulation and documented saying there is a plot to overthrow the governor and take control of our state! Go to http://www.gregpalast.com/ and follow the trail of links to the truth (even the SF chronicle reported this activity 2001) look at sfgate.com, type in a search for schwarzenegger archived 2001. No conspiracy my man, reported fact. Polls manipulate opinion and lie to the voter!
http://www.sfgate.com has a space where you can submit your stories of problems with voting today. I didn't have an experience quite so problematic, but I was almost thinking of starting a thread about irregularities people have encountered today.
At 7:30am in my precinct in Berkeley, there was a drunk guy (maybe his team lost yesterday - but he was up awfully early), and he started pounding on the touch-screens and we thought he'd break them, but the one competent poll worker got him out. Some of the other poll workers were special or had a physical appearance like they were from a 1970s movie - with the thick glasses and same style of clothing, and so it seemed like maybe the drunk was also an actor - because it would be a great tactic against one of the green strongholds to go and break their equipment in the beginning of the day so a few hours worth of people wouldn't vote. I thought there would be a backup at the computers as people searched for their candidate's name, but actually, most of the computers weren't occupied as a really long line developed where one person slowly located their name in the long list, while 3 other poll workers watched. In other cities, they broke up the list of voters names into sections of the alphabet and it didn't seem to be nearly as flaky. I think Berkeley has no retirees because it's so expensive, but there are a lot of disabled people who are underemployed. Also, on the list of names by address, there are 8 names of people who don't live there, including some who haven't lived there for 6+ years, one or more felons who live in other states, and one person was listed twice under different spellings, and one was listed as King instead of Kang. Anyone could be requesting absentee ballots for all these people.
At 7:30am in my precinct in Berkeley, there was a drunk guy (maybe his team lost yesterday - but he was up awfully early), and he started pounding on the touch-screens and we thought he'd break them, but the one competent poll worker got him out. Some of the other poll workers were special or had a physical appearance like they were from a 1970s movie - with the thick glasses and same style of clothing, and so it seemed like maybe the drunk was also an actor - because it would be a great tactic against one of the green strongholds to go and break their equipment in the beginning of the day so a few hours worth of people wouldn't vote. I thought there would be a backup at the computers as people searched for their candidate's name, but actually, most of the computers weren't occupied as a really long line developed where one person slowly located their name in the long list, while 3 other poll workers watched. In other cities, they broke up the list of voters names into sections of the alphabet and it didn't seem to be nearly as flaky. I think Berkeley has no retirees because it's so expensive, but there are a lot of disabled people who are underemployed. Also, on the list of names by address, there are 8 names of people who don't live there, including some who haven't lived there for 6+ years, one or more felons who live in other states, and one person was listed twice under different spellings, and one was listed as King instead of Kang. Anyone could be requesting absentee ballots for all these people.
Ars Technica Newsdesk
Who do the hackers want to be governor?
Posted 10/06/2003 @ 11:03 PM, by Eric Bangeman
With the California gubernatorial recall election on tap for Tuesday, Wired has a piece on the electronic balloting system in place in some counties. Maryland officials had previously released a report stating that the touch screen machines to be used in Alameda county are "at high risk of compromise." Yet, in no small part due to the fiasco in Florida with hanging chads in the 2000 presidential elections, Alameda County, California is going full steam ahead with with their touch-screen voting machines. County officials are confident that they can secure the machines despite the myriad security risks, saying that proper training of election workers will mitigate against them. Wired paints a different picture:
However, information obtained by Wired News at a training session for Alameda County poll workers indicates that security lapses in the use of the equipment and poor worker training could expose the election to serious tampering. Voting-machine experts say the lapses could allow a poll worker or an outsider to change votes in machines without being detected. And because other problems inherent in the software won't be fixed before the recall, experts say sophisticated intruders can intercept and change vote tallies as officials transmit them electronically.
Beyond that there are a number of security risks involved in using these machines. The machines are left at the polling places for some time before the election, with memory cards loaded with ballots already installed. Poll supervisors are chosen with minimal regard to qualifications and without a background check. They then receive a key which will unlock all the voting machines at a single location. And the list goes on.
When most people think of compromising computerized polling systems, I'm sure the first thing that comes to mind is some nerdy guy sitting at his PC in his parents' basement haX0ring the Gibson. The truth is much simpler -- systems are much easier to compromise when you have physical access to the machines. On top of all of this, the voting machines also have some software issues that were not able to be corrected prior to the election. Between security, training, and software problems, Alameda County could very well make the Dade County, Florida voters look good tomorrow.
http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/1065499416.html
Who do the hackers want to be governor?
Posted 10/06/2003 @ 11:03 PM, by Eric Bangeman
With the California gubernatorial recall election on tap for Tuesday, Wired has a piece on the electronic balloting system in place in some counties. Maryland officials had previously released a report stating that the touch screen machines to be used in Alameda county are "at high risk of compromise." Yet, in no small part due to the fiasco in Florida with hanging chads in the 2000 presidential elections, Alameda County, California is going full steam ahead with with their touch-screen voting machines. County officials are confident that they can secure the machines despite the myriad security risks, saying that proper training of election workers will mitigate against them. Wired paints a different picture:
However, information obtained by Wired News at a training session for Alameda County poll workers indicates that security lapses in the use of the equipment and poor worker training could expose the election to serious tampering. Voting-machine experts say the lapses could allow a poll worker or an outsider to change votes in machines without being detected. And because other problems inherent in the software won't be fixed before the recall, experts say sophisticated intruders can intercept and change vote tallies as officials transmit them electronically.
Beyond that there are a number of security risks involved in using these machines. The machines are left at the polling places for some time before the election, with memory cards loaded with ballots already installed. Poll supervisors are chosen with minimal regard to qualifications and without a background check. They then receive a key which will unlock all the voting machines at a single location. And the list goes on.
When most people think of compromising computerized polling systems, I'm sure the first thing that comes to mind is some nerdy guy sitting at his PC in his parents' basement haX0ring the Gibson. The truth is much simpler -- systems are much easier to compromise when you have physical access to the machines. On top of all of this, the voting machines also have some software issues that were not able to be corrected prior to the election. Between security, training, and software problems, Alameda County could very well make the Dade County, Florida voters look good tomorrow.
http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/1065499416.html
Geeze . . . you'd think that our parents never voted and that there was never any other procedure in place! People already act like there's no other option than using voting machines.
The fact is, small errors in the voting machines add up exponentially because they handle so many votes, small errors in the software can have huge implications.
There is already a LOT of info on how f**ked up the voting machine situation is - in Texas, three different races were recorded with the exact same number of votes, something like 18,011 or something, in one county.
In most places, the only way ANY error is seen is if the POLL WORKERS know that something is up, and call for a new chip to be put in the machines. If they don't, no one knows when there is an error.
You don't hear about these in the news unless you're looking for them.
Look here:
http://www.blackboxvoting.com
The fact is, small errors in the voting machines add up exponentially because they handle so many votes, small errors in the software can have huge implications.
There is already a LOT of info on how f**ked up the voting machine situation is - in Texas, three different races were recorded with the exact same number of votes, something like 18,011 or something, in one county.
In most places, the only way ANY error is seen is if the POLL WORKERS know that something is up, and call for a new chip to be put in the machines. If they don't, no one knows when there is an error.
You don't hear about these in the news unless you're looking for them.
Look here:
http://www.blackboxvoting.com
I raise the point agina - What is the solution? Punch Ballots – which I personally think are the best way of voting due to the paper trail and have worked for many decades – is under heavy scrutiny because they disenfranchise minorities and several groups are against the usage. Touch screen is flawed due software errors.
You raise concerns but NO SOLUTIONS. Maybe we need to use a #2 pencil and scantron but I can already see the problem in that with people not properly filling in the bubble or eraser marks.
Anyone can point a finger – but can you coming up with a solution to the problem?
You raise concerns but NO SOLUTIONS. Maybe we need to use a #2 pencil and scantron but I can already see the problem in that with people not properly filling in the bubble or eraser marks.
Anyone can point a finger – but can you coming up with a solution to the problem?
Our senior US correspondent, David Halton, had a documentary on California and its recall and other policies last night. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, other than to note one absolutely gorgeous sunset over the ocean (or sea) somewhere in California. No doubt when I watch it later on tonight I shall have a question or two for clarification from the Board at large!!
wow - I was about to upload that ars technica article. Note that they aren't a local magazine and somehow alameda county stuck out as a worse-than-usual computerized system. Does anyone have the original wired story for us to read?
With the story in Texas, that's very problematic. There was evidence of problems in Georgia too. How come the national news like CNN isn't covering this, and focuses on the stupid side of Schwarzenegger instead?
I personally hope that anyone who could commit fraud does so today, so we can deal with it before 2004.
With the story in Texas, that's very problematic. There was evidence of problems in Georgia too. How come the national news like CNN isn't covering this, and focuses on the stupid side of Schwarzenegger instead?
I personally hope that anyone who could commit fraud does so today, so we can deal with it before 2004.
"Anyone can point a finger – but can you coming up with a solution to the problem?"
(btw - is anyone asking these questions of Howard Dean? His whole campaign is based on attacking Bush and never committing to one solution, but saying different things every time he's interviewed)
The solution:
1) Even if we simply ELIMINATED the voting machines and went back to chads and #2 pencils we'd be better off. Why? Because every US voter is now accutely aware of the chad problem as well as every poll worker and looks out for it. Why else? Because staying with the voting machines is a HUGE risk - this makes the other former methods - #2 pencil, chads, punch card - BETTER OPTIONS! They do not expoentially increase errors when only tiny errors are made.
3) The ERROR RATE RESEARCH IS FLAWED! It is designed to promote voting machines by using one system to rate them, and a different system to rate former methods. So going back to other systems is still a step in the right direction.
4) DIEBOLD LIES! The makers of the machines are saying there has never been evidence of tampering, etc., when it's actually a Catch-22 - you can only send the chip back and then a new vote comes out when you replace the chip, but no one can say WHY the chip was giving the vote to the Republican over and over, so they can't say there was any tampering.
5) Look at what this posting says (funny you should have missed it) - http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/10/1651149.php
- paper ballots are counted by hand and the world doesn't come to an end.
6) There are many many solutions. The PROBLEM is when people like you are claiming there is only one way -there are many ways. WAKE UP PLEASE!
(btw - is anyone asking these questions of Howard Dean? His whole campaign is based on attacking Bush and never committing to one solution, but saying different things every time he's interviewed)
The solution:
1) Even if we simply ELIMINATED the voting machines and went back to chads and #2 pencils we'd be better off. Why? Because every US voter is now accutely aware of the chad problem as well as every poll worker and looks out for it. Why else? Because staying with the voting machines is a HUGE risk - this makes the other former methods - #2 pencil, chads, punch card - BETTER OPTIONS! They do not expoentially increase errors when only tiny errors are made.
3) The ERROR RATE RESEARCH IS FLAWED! It is designed to promote voting machines by using one system to rate them, and a different system to rate former methods. So going back to other systems is still a step in the right direction.
4) DIEBOLD LIES! The makers of the machines are saying there has never been evidence of tampering, etc., when it's actually a Catch-22 - you can only send the chip back and then a new vote comes out when you replace the chip, but no one can say WHY the chip was giving the vote to the Republican over and over, so they can't say there was any tampering.
5) Look at what this posting says (funny you should have missed it) - http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/10/1651149.php
- paper ballots are counted by hand and the world doesn't come to an end.
6) There are many many solutions. The PROBLEM is when people like you are claiming there is only one way -there are many ways. WAKE UP PLEASE!
Analysis of an Electronic Voting System
Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute Technical Report TR-2003-19, July 23, 2003
Authors
Tadayoshi Kohno
Adam Stubblefield
Aviel D. Rubin
Dan S. Wallach
Abstract
Recent election problems have sparked great interest in managing the election process through the use of electronic voting systems. While computer scientists, for the most part, have been warning of the perils of such action, vendors have forged ahead with their products, claiming increased security and reliability. Many municipalities have adopted electronic systems, and the number of deployed systems is rising. For these new computerized voting systems, neither source code nor the results of any third-party certification analyses have been available for the general population to study, because vendors claim that secrecy is a necessary requirement to keep their systems secure. Recently, however, the source code purporting to be the software for a voting system from a major manufacturer appeared on the Internet. This manufacturer's systems were used in Georgia's state-wide elections in 2002, and the company just announced that the state of Maryland awarded them an order valued at up to $55.6 million to deliver touch screen voting systems. 1
This unique opportunity for independent scientific analysis of voting system source code demonstrates the fallacy of the closed-source argument for such a critical system. Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We highlight several issues including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. For example, common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered without the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable. We conclude that, as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk.
Paper: PDF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebuttal
On July 30, 2003, Diebold posted a "technical analysis" of our report at http://www2.diebold.com/checksandbalances.pdf.
Our response is available at: http://avirubin.com/vote/response.html.
Doug Jones from the University of Iowa Department of Computer Science also responded to their analysis http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.html#rebuttals.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAIC Report
In early August 2003 the state of Maryland hired a third-party consulting firm (SAIC) to perform an analysis of Diebold’s AccuVote-TS voting system. On September 24, 2003, Maryland made SAIC’s report public. To quote the SAIC report, “[t]he system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise.” Despite the problems identified in our report and in the SAIC report, Maryland is still planning to proceed with the 55.6 million dollar purchase of Diebold AccuVote-TS voting terminals.
To help mitigate the risks identified in the security analyses, Maryland proposed a set of technological changes to Diebold’s voting machines as well as procedural changes to the election process. While this may help “raise the bar,” it is impossible to know whether any security analysis identifies all the possible vulnerabilities present in an analyzed system. By only patching the known vulnerabilities, Maryland is not actually ensuring that the voting system will be secure. Rather, Maryland should follow security engineering best practices, which state that security can only be assured through a rigorous design process that considers security from a project’s conception, not through a set of patches applied after the fact.
It appears that the state of Maryland has had to compromise on the security of the voting system due to the election calendar. The Maryland State Board of Elections states that “an alternative system could not be implemented in time to conduct the March 2004 Presidential Primary election and could jeopardize the November 2004 Presidential General election.” Unfortunately, by compromising on security, the integrity and privacy of these elections may still be in jeopardy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Questions for vendors
We have compiled a list of questions you can ask your vendors for people considering buying voting machines.
http://www.avirubin.com/vote/
Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute Technical Report TR-2003-19, July 23, 2003
Authors
Tadayoshi Kohno
Adam Stubblefield
Aviel D. Rubin
Dan S. Wallach
Abstract
Recent election problems have sparked great interest in managing the election process through the use of electronic voting systems. While computer scientists, for the most part, have been warning of the perils of such action, vendors have forged ahead with their products, claiming increased security and reliability. Many municipalities have adopted electronic systems, and the number of deployed systems is rising. For these new computerized voting systems, neither source code nor the results of any third-party certification analyses have been available for the general population to study, because vendors claim that secrecy is a necessary requirement to keep their systems secure. Recently, however, the source code purporting to be the software for a voting system from a major manufacturer appeared on the Internet. This manufacturer's systems were used in Georgia's state-wide elections in 2002, and the company just announced that the state of Maryland awarded them an order valued at up to $55.6 million to deliver touch screen voting systems. 1
This unique opportunity for independent scientific analysis of voting system source code demonstrates the fallacy of the closed-source argument for such a critical system. Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We highlight several issues including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. For example, common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered without the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable. We conclude that, as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk.
Paper: PDF
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebuttal
On July 30, 2003, Diebold posted a "technical analysis" of our report at http://www2.diebold.com/checksandbalances.pdf.
Our response is available at: http://avirubin.com/vote/response.html.
Doug Jones from the University of Iowa Department of Computer Science also responded to their analysis http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.html#rebuttals.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAIC Report
In early August 2003 the state of Maryland hired a third-party consulting firm (SAIC) to perform an analysis of Diebold’s AccuVote-TS voting system. On September 24, 2003, Maryland made SAIC’s report public. To quote the SAIC report, “[t]he system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise.” Despite the problems identified in our report and in the SAIC report, Maryland is still planning to proceed with the 55.6 million dollar purchase of Diebold AccuVote-TS voting terminals.
To help mitigate the risks identified in the security analyses, Maryland proposed a set of technological changes to Diebold’s voting machines as well as procedural changes to the election process. While this may help “raise the bar,” it is impossible to know whether any security analysis identifies all the possible vulnerabilities present in an analyzed system. By only patching the known vulnerabilities, Maryland is not actually ensuring that the voting system will be secure. Rather, Maryland should follow security engineering best practices, which state that security can only be assured through a rigorous design process that considers security from a project’s conception, not through a set of patches applied after the fact.
It appears that the state of Maryland has had to compromise on the security of the voting system due to the election calendar. The Maryland State Board of Elections states that “an alternative system could not be implemented in time to conduct the March 2004 Presidential Primary election and could jeopardize the November 2004 Presidential General election.” Unfortunately, by compromising on security, the integrity and privacy of these elections may still be in jeopardy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Questions for vendors
We have compiled a list of questions you can ask your vendors for people considering buying voting machines.
http://www.avirubin.com/vote/
Then we are in agreement. As I mention in my previous post – which you failed to read – I personally support punch ballots due to their ability to have a paper trail.
But then the question of disenfranchisement of minorities must be answered and addressed. Remember it was the ACLU – which is hardly a bastion of conservative thinkers – sued to have the recall delayed because several regions with large groups of minorities didn’t have the new voting box. And because they didn’t have the new voting box this would lead to a disenfranchisement of their votes.
And if I recall – a majority of the complaints to move to from the punch ballot to an easier touch screen method did in fact come from mostly the left wing. In fact I think there are a couple of strings here that basically support this. So I would say the people you need to convince is not so much as people on the right – but people on the left.
But in any case - I am looking forward to tomorrow because that's when all the fun begins and the lawyers will come out sueing regardless of the outcome. And you can bet both the right and the left have their lawyers ready.
But then the question of disenfranchisement of minorities must be answered and addressed. Remember it was the ACLU – which is hardly a bastion of conservative thinkers – sued to have the recall delayed because several regions with large groups of minorities didn’t have the new voting box. And because they didn’t have the new voting box this would lead to a disenfranchisement of their votes.
And if I recall – a majority of the complaints to move to from the punch ballot to an easier touch screen method did in fact come from mostly the left wing. In fact I think there are a couple of strings here that basically support this. So I would say the people you need to convince is not so much as people on the right – but people on the left.
But in any case - I am looking forward to tomorrow because that's when all the fun begins and the lawyers will come out sueing regardless of the outcome. And you can bet both the right and the left have their lawyers ready.
http://workersrighttovote.org/more.htm
• Richard Miholic, a losing Republican candidate for alderman was told that he won. He was among 15 people in four races affected by ES&S vote-counting errors in the Chicago area.
• An Orange County California election computer made a 100 percent error. The Registrar of Voters Office initially announced that a school bond issue lost by a wide margin when in fact it was supported by a majority of the ballots cast. The error was due to a programmer reversing the “yes” and “no” answers in the software used to count the votes.
• According to the Wall Street Journal, in the year 2000, an ES&S optical scan machine in Allamakee County Iowa was fed 300 ballots and reported four million votes.
• A computer program that was specially enhanced to speed Kane County's election results to a waiting public did just that — unfortunately, it sped the wrong data. Voting totals for a referendum proposal said it had lost when it actually was approved. For some reason, software which worked earlier without a hitch waited until election night to get it wrong.
• In Polk County Florida, County Commissioner Marlene Duffy Young lost the election to Bruce Parker, but regained the seat after a court-ordered hand recount. After the recount, county commissioners unanimously voted to ask for a grand jury probe. Testifying were Todd Urosevich, a vice president with American Information Systems Inc., the company that sold the county its ballot-counting equipment. The machines had given the election to Parker (a Republican) but a hand recount revealed that Young (a Democrat) had won. Todd Urosevich said his machines were not responsible for the miscount.
• A grand jury was convened in Stanislaus County California to determine what caused computerized voting machines to misreport election results. The grand jury concluded that an ES&S computerized counting system miscalculated the votes for three propositions. A hand recount of the ballots resulted in Measure A, a state proposition, being reversed. ES&S machines had reported that it lost badly, but it had won. According to Karen Matthews, county clerk recorder and registrar of voters, the problem occurred because of a incorrect programming in the counting system produced by ES&S.
• In Union County, Florida a programming error caused machines to read 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes as entirely Republican. The vendor, ES&S, accepted responsibility for the incorrect programming.
• Among the problems outlined by the Democratic Party in the infamous Florida election in 2000: A faulty “memory card” in a polling machine, which counts and reports the tally by modem, resulted in a DeLand precinct's reporting that presidential candidate Al Gore had negative 16,022 votes. The computerized vote tally gave the Socialist Workers Party candidate almost 10,000 votes — about half the number he received nationwide.
• In Conroe, Texas congressional candidate Van Brookshire wasn't worried when he looked at the vote tabulation and saw a zero next to his name. After all, he was unopposed in the District 2 primary and he assumed that the Montgomery County Elections Administrator's Office hadn't found it necessary to display his vote. He was surprised to learn the next day that a computer glitch had given all of his votes to U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, who was unopposed for the nomination for another term in District 8. A retabulation was paid for by ES&S, the company that made the programming mistake. The mistake was undetected despite mandatory testing.
• In Tennessee, a computer snafu temporarily stopped the Shelby County vote count after generating wildly inaccurate results and forcing a second count that continued into the morning. State Sen. Roscoe Dixon huddled with other politicos around a single copy of the latest corrected election returns that quickly became dog-eared and riddled with circles and "X"s. “This system should have been checked,” Dixon said.
• Pamela Justice celebrated her re-election to the school board in Dysart, Arizona. But because of incorrect programming in the county's computer, the computer had failed to count 1,019 votes. When those votes were added in, Justice lost the election to her opponent, Nancy Harrower. “We did an accuracy test before election day and the computers worked fine,” said Karen Osborne, county elections director
• In a Salt Lake City Republican primary election, 1,413 votes never showed up in the total. A software programming error caused a batch of ballots not to count, even though they had been run through the machine like all the others. When the 1,413 missing votes were counted, it reversed the election
• 1971, Las Vegas Nevada — A precedent was set for seating a candidate challenging incorrect voting machine tallies. Machines declared Democrat Arthur Espinoza Republican to be the winner, but Hal Smith challenged the election when he determined that some votes had not been counted due to a faulty voting machine. After unrecorded votes were tallied, Smith was declared the winner.
• 1986, Atlanta, Georgia — Wrong candidate declared the winner. Incumbent Donn Peevy was running for state senator in the old District 48, which straddled Barrow and Gwinnett counties. The machines said he lost the election. After an investigation revealed that a Republican elections official had kept uncounted ballots in the trunk of his car, officials also admitted that a computerized voting program had miscounted. Peevy insisted on a recount. "When the count finished around 1 a.m., they walked into a room and shut the door,” recalls Peevy. “When they came out, they said 'Mr. Peevy, you won.' That was it. They never apologized. They never explained.
• 1994, New Orleans Louisiana — Voting machine tests performed and videotaped by candidate Susan Barnecker immediately after the election demonstrated that votes she cast for herself were electronically recorded for her opponent. This test was repeated several times with the same result. (The video footage of this incident can be seen on Dan Hopsicker’s documentary video The Big Fix, 2000, Mad Cow Productions).
• November, 1996, Bergen County, New Jersey — Democrats told Bergen County Clerk Kathleen Donovan to come up with a better explanation for mysterious swings in vote totals. Donovan blamed voting computers for conflicting tallies that rose and fell by 8,000 or 9,000 votes. The swings perplexed candidates of both parties. For example, Cassano, the Republican freeholder had beaten Guarino by about 7,000 votes as of the day after the election but the lead evaporated later. One candidate actually lost 1,600 votes during the counting. "How could something like that possibly happen?" Guarino asked. "Something is screwed up here."
• November 1996, Guadalupe County Texas — Officials discovered a voting computer counted more votes in the presidential election than the number of ballots cast.
• July 1996, Clark County Nevada — According to a Las Vegas Review-Journal article, a technician removed thousands of files from the tabulation sector of the program during the vote count "to speed up the reading of the count." Reconfiguring a computer program that effects the tabulation of votes is prohibited without prior state verification.
• December 1997, Akron Ohio — Scrambled votes: Ed Repp won the election — no, cancel that, a software programming error was discovered — Repp actually lost. (Oh look, twins!) Another programming error in the same election resulted in incorrect vote totals for the Portage County Board election. (Make that triplets!) Turns out the bond referendum results were wrong too.
• August 1997, Oklahoma — Computers gave the election to the wrong candidates, twice. The private company hired to handle the election for the Seminole Nation announced results for tribal chief and assistant chief, then decided that their computer had counted the absentee ballots twice, so they posted a second set of results. Tribal officials then counted the votes by hand, producing yet a third, and this time official, set of results. Each of the three sets of results had a different set of candidates moving on to the runoff election.
• 1984 Tucson, Arizona — 826 legitimate ballots were discarded in Oro Valley due to a computer error. The error wasn’t discovered until after the deadline for counting them.
• 1996 Tucson, Arizona — Software programming mixed up the votes cast for two Republican Supervisor candidates.
• 1997 Tucson, Arizona — More than 8,300 votes in the City Council race were initially left uncounted because of defective ballots, which were provided by the voting machine company.
• 1997 Tucson, Arizona — The city had to hand-count 79,000 votes because of a manufacturing defect in the ballots, provided by the voting machine company.
• 1998 Tucson, Arizona — 9,675 votes were missed in the tabulation. After canvassing, officials realized that no votes were recorded for 24 precincts even though voter rolls indicated thousands had voted at those polling places. Global Elections Systems tried to figure out why the computer failed to record the votes.
• July 1998, Cobb County Georgia — On-the-spot reprogramming was done (after votes were cast) because the computer would not read any votes cast for state representative Sharon Cooper. "The computer couldn't find her votes at all." said Paul Ruth, applications manager of the county's information services department.
• November 1998 Franklin County, Ohio — One candidate was incorrectly credited with 14,967 votes; another received 6,889 in error. Congress Pryce and Kasich gained 13,427 votes and 9,784 votes, respectively, after election officials hand-checked vote totals in 371 machines that were affected by a software programming error.
• November 1998, Washoe County Nevada — A breathtaking number of snafus in the Washoe County registrar's office caused candidates in Reno to liken the election to the movie, "Groundhog Day," with every day starting all over to repeat itself. Count votes. Computer failure. Go to court. Count more votes. Software programming error. More counting. Back to court. And so on
• September 1998, Kansas City Kansas — Republican John Bacon, a staunch conservative, celebrated a resounding victory over moderate Republican Dan Neuenswander. Two weeks later Neuenswander learned that the race was actually dead even, which should have qualified him for a recount except that the deadline had passed. No one offered any explanation why it was 24 votes not 3,018 that separated Dan from John
• August 1998, Memphis Tennessee — In the governor’s race, a software programming error in Shelby County began generating inaccurate results. Votes went to the wrong candidates. Computer cartridges containing 295 individual precinct results were taken to a central location, because the scanner couldn’t read the cartridges. The system that was shut down was posting the incorrect results to newsrooms across the city that had computer links to the data. At least one television station broadcast the bogus results. Which brings up a question: Why were newspaper and TV hooked directly up to computerized voting machines?
• November 1999, Onondaga County — Computers gave the election to the wrong candidate, then gave it back. Bob Faulkner, a political newcomer, went to bed Tuesday night confident he helped complete a Republican sweep of three open council seats. But after Onondaga County Board of Elections staffers rechecked the totals Faulkner had lost to Democratic incumbent Elaine Lytel. Just a few hours later, election officials discovered a software programming error had given too many absentee ballot votes to Lytel. Faulkner took the lead.
• November, 2000 San Francisco, California — In polling place 2214, machines counted 416 ballots, but there were only 362 signatures in the roster, and the secretary of state found only 357 paper ballots.
• April 2002, Johnson County Kansas — Johnson County's new Diebold touch screen machines, proclaimed a success on election night, did not work as well as originally believed. Incorrect vote totals were discovered in six races, three of them contested, leaving county election officials scrambling to make sure the unofficial results were accurate. Johnson County Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt that internal checks revealed that the system had under- and over-reported hundreds of votes. Schmidt said the voting machines worked fine, they just tabulated wrong. "The machines performed terrifically," said Robert J. Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems. "The anomaly showed up on the reporting part." The problem, however, was so perplexing that Schmidt asked the Board of Canvassers to order a hand re-count to make sure the results were accurate. Unfortunately, the touch screen machines did away with the ballots, so the only way to do a hand recount is to have the machine print its internal data page by page. Diebold tried to re-create the error in hopes of correcting it. "I wish I had an answer," Urosevich said. In some cases, vote totals changed dramatically.
• November 2002, Palm Beach Florida — A Florida woman, a former news reporter, discovered that votes were being tabulated in 644 Palm Beach precincts, but only 643 precincts have any eligible voters. An earlier court case in Florida found the same discrepancy, and the reason for it was never satisfactorily explained.
• August 2002, Clay County Kansas — A squeaker — no, a landslide — oops, we reversed the totals — and about those absentee votes, make that 72-19, not 44-47. Software programming errors, sorry. Oh, and reverse that election, we announced the wrong winner — The machines said Jerry Mayo ran a close race but lost, garnering 48 percent of the vote, but a hand recount revealed Mayo won by a landslide, earning 76 percent of the vote.
• September 2002, Union County, Florida — A programming error caused machines to read 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes as entirely Republican.
• November 2002, Dallas Texas — When 18 machines were pulled out of action in Dallas because they registered Republican when voters pushed Democrat, the judge quashed an effort to investigate the accuracy of the tally.
• November 2002, Scurry County Texas — When Scurry County poll workers got suspicious about a landslide victory for Republicans, they had a new computer chip flown in and also counted the votes by hand — and found out that Democrats actually won by wide margins, overturning the election.
• March 2002, Medley Florida — Voting machines gave the election to the wrong candidate. The cause was attributed to a software programming error by voting machine technician. County Elections Supervisor David Leahy said he was concerned because the computer did not raise any red flags, and humans had to spot the error.
• November 2002, Baldwin County Alabama — No one at ES&S can explain the mystery votes that changed after polling places had closed, flipping the election from the Democratic winner to a Republican in the Alabama Governor's race. "Something happened. I don't have enough intelligence to say exactly what," said Mark Kelley, of ES&S. Baldwin County results showed that Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state of Alabama. All the observers went home. The next morning, however, 6,300 of Siegelman's votes inexplicably disappeared, and the election was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was requested, but denied.
• November 2002, North Carolina — Computer misprogramming overturned the result: In North Carolina, a mistake in the computer program caused vote-counting machines to skip over several thousand party-line votes, both Republican and Democratic. Fixing the error turned up 5,500 more votes and reversed the election.
• November 2002, Gretna Nebraska — This crushing defeat never happened: Vote-counting machines failed to tally "yes" votes on the Gretna school-bond issue, giving the false impression that the measure failed miserably. The measure actually passed by a 2-1 margin. Responsibility for the errors was attributed to ES&S, the Omaha company that provided the ballots and the machines. 97
• November 2002, South Carolina — A software programming error of 55 percent: In South Carolina, and it caused more than 21,000 votes in the squeaker-tight race for S.C. commissioner of agriculture to be uncounted
• February 2003, Everett, Washington —If there was any doubt that Republicans were right to ask for a recount of some Snohomish County absentee ballots from November's general election, it was erased by one sobering number: 21.5 percent of the ballots cast in 28 selected precincts were not counted. The Snohomish County Auditor's Office recounted 116,837 absentee ballots Thursday after county officials discovered that the optical scan ballot-counting machines had miscounted
"Gimme five (electoral) commissioners, and I'll make them voting machines sing `Home Sweet Home.'" — Gov. Earl Long, Louisiana
Sources and links:
• Richard Miholic, a losing Republican candidate for alderman was told that he won. He was among 15 people in four races affected by ES&S vote-counting errors in the Chicago area.
• An Orange County California election computer made a 100 percent error. The Registrar of Voters Office initially announced that a school bond issue lost by a wide margin when in fact it was supported by a majority of the ballots cast. The error was due to a programmer reversing the “yes” and “no” answers in the software used to count the votes.
• According to the Wall Street Journal, in the year 2000, an ES&S optical scan machine in Allamakee County Iowa was fed 300 ballots and reported four million votes.
• A computer program that was specially enhanced to speed Kane County's election results to a waiting public did just that — unfortunately, it sped the wrong data. Voting totals for a referendum proposal said it had lost when it actually was approved. For some reason, software which worked earlier without a hitch waited until election night to get it wrong.
• In Polk County Florida, County Commissioner Marlene Duffy Young lost the election to Bruce Parker, but regained the seat after a court-ordered hand recount. After the recount, county commissioners unanimously voted to ask for a grand jury probe. Testifying were Todd Urosevich, a vice president with American Information Systems Inc., the company that sold the county its ballot-counting equipment. The machines had given the election to Parker (a Republican) but a hand recount revealed that Young (a Democrat) had won. Todd Urosevich said his machines were not responsible for the miscount.
• A grand jury was convened in Stanislaus County California to determine what caused computerized voting machines to misreport election results. The grand jury concluded that an ES&S computerized counting system miscalculated the votes for three propositions. A hand recount of the ballots resulted in Measure A, a state proposition, being reversed. ES&S machines had reported that it lost badly, but it had won. According to Karen Matthews, county clerk recorder and registrar of voters, the problem occurred because of a incorrect programming in the counting system produced by ES&S.
• In Union County, Florida a programming error caused machines to read 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes as entirely Republican. The vendor, ES&S, accepted responsibility for the incorrect programming.
• Among the problems outlined by the Democratic Party in the infamous Florida election in 2000: A faulty “memory card” in a polling machine, which counts and reports the tally by modem, resulted in a DeLand precinct's reporting that presidential candidate Al Gore had negative 16,022 votes. The computerized vote tally gave the Socialist Workers Party candidate almost 10,000 votes — about half the number he received nationwide.
• In Conroe, Texas congressional candidate Van Brookshire wasn't worried when he looked at the vote tabulation and saw a zero next to his name. After all, he was unopposed in the District 2 primary and he assumed that the Montgomery County Elections Administrator's Office hadn't found it necessary to display his vote. He was surprised to learn the next day that a computer glitch had given all of his votes to U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, who was unopposed for the nomination for another term in District 8. A retabulation was paid for by ES&S, the company that made the programming mistake. The mistake was undetected despite mandatory testing.
• In Tennessee, a computer snafu temporarily stopped the Shelby County vote count after generating wildly inaccurate results and forcing a second count that continued into the morning. State Sen. Roscoe Dixon huddled with other politicos around a single copy of the latest corrected election returns that quickly became dog-eared and riddled with circles and "X"s. “This system should have been checked,” Dixon said.
• Pamela Justice celebrated her re-election to the school board in Dysart, Arizona. But because of incorrect programming in the county's computer, the computer had failed to count 1,019 votes. When those votes were added in, Justice lost the election to her opponent, Nancy Harrower. “We did an accuracy test before election day and the computers worked fine,” said Karen Osborne, county elections director
• In a Salt Lake City Republican primary election, 1,413 votes never showed up in the total. A software programming error caused a batch of ballots not to count, even though they had been run through the machine like all the others. When the 1,413 missing votes were counted, it reversed the election
• 1971, Las Vegas Nevada — A precedent was set for seating a candidate challenging incorrect voting machine tallies. Machines declared Democrat Arthur Espinoza Republican to be the winner, but Hal Smith challenged the election when he determined that some votes had not been counted due to a faulty voting machine. After unrecorded votes were tallied, Smith was declared the winner.
• 1986, Atlanta, Georgia — Wrong candidate declared the winner. Incumbent Donn Peevy was running for state senator in the old District 48, which straddled Barrow and Gwinnett counties. The machines said he lost the election. After an investigation revealed that a Republican elections official had kept uncounted ballots in the trunk of his car, officials also admitted that a computerized voting program had miscounted. Peevy insisted on a recount. "When the count finished around 1 a.m., they walked into a room and shut the door,” recalls Peevy. “When they came out, they said 'Mr. Peevy, you won.' That was it. They never apologized. They never explained.
• 1994, New Orleans Louisiana — Voting machine tests performed and videotaped by candidate Susan Barnecker immediately after the election demonstrated that votes she cast for herself were electronically recorded for her opponent. This test was repeated several times with the same result. (The video footage of this incident can be seen on Dan Hopsicker’s documentary video The Big Fix, 2000, Mad Cow Productions).
• November, 1996, Bergen County, New Jersey — Democrats told Bergen County Clerk Kathleen Donovan to come up with a better explanation for mysterious swings in vote totals. Donovan blamed voting computers for conflicting tallies that rose and fell by 8,000 or 9,000 votes. The swings perplexed candidates of both parties. For example, Cassano, the Republican freeholder had beaten Guarino by about 7,000 votes as of the day after the election but the lead evaporated later. One candidate actually lost 1,600 votes during the counting. "How could something like that possibly happen?" Guarino asked. "Something is screwed up here."
• November 1996, Guadalupe County Texas — Officials discovered a voting computer counted more votes in the presidential election than the number of ballots cast.
• July 1996, Clark County Nevada — According to a Las Vegas Review-Journal article, a technician removed thousands of files from the tabulation sector of the program during the vote count "to speed up the reading of the count." Reconfiguring a computer program that effects the tabulation of votes is prohibited without prior state verification.
• December 1997, Akron Ohio — Scrambled votes: Ed Repp won the election — no, cancel that, a software programming error was discovered — Repp actually lost. (Oh look, twins!) Another programming error in the same election resulted in incorrect vote totals for the Portage County Board election. (Make that triplets!) Turns out the bond referendum results were wrong too.
• August 1997, Oklahoma — Computers gave the election to the wrong candidates, twice. The private company hired to handle the election for the Seminole Nation announced results for tribal chief and assistant chief, then decided that their computer had counted the absentee ballots twice, so they posted a second set of results. Tribal officials then counted the votes by hand, producing yet a third, and this time official, set of results. Each of the three sets of results had a different set of candidates moving on to the runoff election.
• 1984 Tucson, Arizona — 826 legitimate ballots were discarded in Oro Valley due to a computer error. The error wasn’t discovered until after the deadline for counting them.
• 1996 Tucson, Arizona — Software programming mixed up the votes cast for two Republican Supervisor candidates.
• 1997 Tucson, Arizona — More than 8,300 votes in the City Council race were initially left uncounted because of defective ballots, which were provided by the voting machine company.
• 1997 Tucson, Arizona — The city had to hand-count 79,000 votes because of a manufacturing defect in the ballots, provided by the voting machine company.
• 1998 Tucson, Arizona — 9,675 votes were missed in the tabulation. After canvassing, officials realized that no votes were recorded for 24 precincts even though voter rolls indicated thousands had voted at those polling places. Global Elections Systems tried to figure out why the computer failed to record the votes.
• July 1998, Cobb County Georgia — On-the-spot reprogramming was done (after votes were cast) because the computer would not read any votes cast for state representative Sharon Cooper. "The computer couldn't find her votes at all." said Paul Ruth, applications manager of the county's information services department.
• November 1998 Franklin County, Ohio — One candidate was incorrectly credited with 14,967 votes; another received 6,889 in error. Congress Pryce and Kasich gained 13,427 votes and 9,784 votes, respectively, after election officials hand-checked vote totals in 371 machines that were affected by a software programming error.
• November 1998, Washoe County Nevada — A breathtaking number of snafus in the Washoe County registrar's office caused candidates in Reno to liken the election to the movie, "Groundhog Day," with every day starting all over to repeat itself. Count votes. Computer failure. Go to court. Count more votes. Software programming error. More counting. Back to court. And so on
• September 1998, Kansas City Kansas — Republican John Bacon, a staunch conservative, celebrated a resounding victory over moderate Republican Dan Neuenswander. Two weeks later Neuenswander learned that the race was actually dead even, which should have qualified him for a recount except that the deadline had passed. No one offered any explanation why it was 24 votes not 3,018 that separated Dan from John
• August 1998, Memphis Tennessee — In the governor’s race, a software programming error in Shelby County began generating inaccurate results. Votes went to the wrong candidates. Computer cartridges containing 295 individual precinct results were taken to a central location, because the scanner couldn’t read the cartridges. The system that was shut down was posting the incorrect results to newsrooms across the city that had computer links to the data. At least one television station broadcast the bogus results. Which brings up a question: Why were newspaper and TV hooked directly up to computerized voting machines?
• November 1999, Onondaga County — Computers gave the election to the wrong candidate, then gave it back. Bob Faulkner, a political newcomer, went to bed Tuesday night confident he helped complete a Republican sweep of three open council seats. But after Onondaga County Board of Elections staffers rechecked the totals Faulkner had lost to Democratic incumbent Elaine Lytel. Just a few hours later, election officials discovered a software programming error had given too many absentee ballot votes to Lytel. Faulkner took the lead.
• November, 2000 San Francisco, California — In polling place 2214, machines counted 416 ballots, but there were only 362 signatures in the roster, and the secretary of state found only 357 paper ballots.
• April 2002, Johnson County Kansas — Johnson County's new Diebold touch screen machines, proclaimed a success on election night, did not work as well as originally believed. Incorrect vote totals were discovered in six races, three of them contested, leaving county election officials scrambling to make sure the unofficial results were accurate. Johnson County Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt that internal checks revealed that the system had under- and over-reported hundreds of votes. Schmidt said the voting machines worked fine, they just tabulated wrong. "The machines performed terrifically," said Robert J. Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems. "The anomaly showed up on the reporting part." The problem, however, was so perplexing that Schmidt asked the Board of Canvassers to order a hand re-count to make sure the results were accurate. Unfortunately, the touch screen machines did away with the ballots, so the only way to do a hand recount is to have the machine print its internal data page by page. Diebold tried to re-create the error in hopes of correcting it. "I wish I had an answer," Urosevich said. In some cases, vote totals changed dramatically.
• November 2002, Palm Beach Florida — A Florida woman, a former news reporter, discovered that votes were being tabulated in 644 Palm Beach precincts, but only 643 precincts have any eligible voters. An earlier court case in Florida found the same discrepancy, and the reason for it was never satisfactorily explained.
• August 2002, Clay County Kansas — A squeaker — no, a landslide — oops, we reversed the totals — and about those absentee votes, make that 72-19, not 44-47. Software programming errors, sorry. Oh, and reverse that election, we announced the wrong winner — The machines said Jerry Mayo ran a close race but lost, garnering 48 percent of the vote, but a hand recount revealed Mayo won by a landslide, earning 76 percent of the vote.
• September 2002, Union County, Florida — A programming error caused machines to read 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes as entirely Republican.
• November 2002, Dallas Texas — When 18 machines were pulled out of action in Dallas because they registered Republican when voters pushed Democrat, the judge quashed an effort to investigate the accuracy of the tally.
• November 2002, Scurry County Texas — When Scurry County poll workers got suspicious about a landslide victory for Republicans, they had a new computer chip flown in and also counted the votes by hand — and found out that Democrats actually won by wide margins, overturning the election.
• March 2002, Medley Florida — Voting machines gave the election to the wrong candidate. The cause was attributed to a software programming error by voting machine technician. County Elections Supervisor David Leahy said he was concerned because the computer did not raise any red flags, and humans had to spot the error.
• November 2002, Baldwin County Alabama — No one at ES&S can explain the mystery votes that changed after polling places had closed, flipping the election from the Democratic winner to a Republican in the Alabama Governor's race. "Something happened. I don't have enough intelligence to say exactly what," said Mark Kelley, of ES&S. Baldwin County results showed that Democrat Don Siegelman earned enough votes to win the state of Alabama. All the observers went home. The next morning, however, 6,300 of Siegelman's votes inexplicably disappeared, and the election was handed to Republican Bob Riley. A recount was requested, but denied.
• November 2002, North Carolina — Computer misprogramming overturned the result: In North Carolina, a mistake in the computer program caused vote-counting machines to skip over several thousand party-line votes, both Republican and Democratic. Fixing the error turned up 5,500 more votes and reversed the election.
• November 2002, Gretna Nebraska — This crushing defeat never happened: Vote-counting machines failed to tally "yes" votes on the Gretna school-bond issue, giving the false impression that the measure failed miserably. The measure actually passed by a 2-1 margin. Responsibility for the errors was attributed to ES&S, the Omaha company that provided the ballots and the machines. 97
• November 2002, South Carolina — A software programming error of 55 percent: In South Carolina, and it caused more than 21,000 votes in the squeaker-tight race for S.C. commissioner of agriculture to be uncounted
• February 2003, Everett, Washington —If there was any doubt that Republicans were right to ask for a recount of some Snohomish County absentee ballots from November's general election, it was erased by one sobering number: 21.5 percent of the ballots cast in 28 selected precincts were not counted. The Snohomish County Auditor's Office recounted 116,837 absentee ballots Thursday after county officials discovered that the optical scan ballot-counting machines had miscounted
"Gimme five (electoral) commissioners, and I'll make them voting machines sing `Home Sweet Home.'" — Gov. Earl Long, Louisiana
Sources and links:
I'm glad we agree, although I wouldn't say that left or right is any more or less supportive of secretive electronic voting.
"But then the question of disenfranchisement of minorities must be answered and addressed. "
This would not be an issue if ALL machines were eliminated - then all counties would be voting in the same manner - chads, pencils, papers, observers, etc. - and no one or two groups would be singled out.
If the handicapped needs electronic voting, then they should get it. But that shouldn't be a reason to force it on everyone else.
"But then the question of disenfranchisement of minorities must be answered and addressed. "
This would not be an issue if ALL machines were eliminated - then all counties would be voting in the same manner - chads, pencils, papers, observers, etc. - and no one or two groups would be singled out.
If the handicapped needs electronic voting, then they should get it. But that shouldn't be a reason to force it on everyone else.
From a distance I'd say that Arnie won:
a) because some idiots tried to play the nazi card against him. The fact that jews didn't want him probably helped him. People are sick of the"Jewish lobby" dictating how things should be.
b) the same idiots tried to play the sexist card. Didn't you cretins learn anything from Lewisnskygate? Sex issues have no place in politics. If you leave rooting habits (even ugly ones) out of it you can focus on policies. People are sick of muckrakers.
SO MR ZIONAZI DON"T TAKE NO COMFORT FROM ARNIES WIN. IF ANTHING IT'S A BACKLASH AGAINST ZIONAZIS LIKE YOU. AND STOP YELLING AT ME YOU CLOWN. What are ya, some kinda sicko?
a) because some idiots tried to play the nazi card against him. The fact that jews didn't want him probably helped him. People are sick of the"Jewish lobby" dictating how things should be.
b) the same idiots tried to play the sexist card. Didn't you cretins learn anything from Lewisnskygate? Sex issues have no place in politics. If you leave rooting habits (even ugly ones) out of it you can focus on policies. People are sick of muckrakers.
SO MR ZIONAZI DON"T TAKE NO COMFORT FROM ARNIES WIN. IF ANTHING IT'S A BACKLASH AGAINST ZIONAZIS LIKE YOU. AND STOP YELLING AT ME YOU CLOWN. What are ya, some kinda sicko?
How can that be when democrats control the voting system? And maybe we should just keep the punch cards you democrats had no problem with that. Amem
1. Lots of people didn't want Arnold elected; the Jewish opposition, if any, was a minor issue in the process.
2. Some women have legitimate grievances against Arnold for sexual harassment. If anyone of them is Jewish, none made an issue of it. Fyi, Arnold has *apologized* for his sexual misconduct. This means the harassment allegations aren't a figment of imagination.
It's high time an anti-Semitic chucklehead like you learned to stop stubbornly dragging the Jewish thing into every political event and started learning to articulate yourself in a more civil manner. But before you realize you were kicking up bullshit, you must realize you're a first rate buffoon. It's the buffoons who consider normal people as clowns.
I wasn't civil to you because you're post didn't deserve a cicil response.
P.S.: I'm not the guy you disparaged.
2. Some women have legitimate grievances against Arnold for sexual harassment. If anyone of them is Jewish, none made an issue of it. Fyi, Arnold has *apologized* for his sexual misconduct. This means the harassment allegations aren't a figment of imagination.
It's high time an anti-Semitic chucklehead like you learned to stop stubbornly dragging the Jewish thing into every political event and started learning to articulate yourself in a more civil manner. But before you realize you were kicking up bullshit, you must realize you're a first rate buffoon. It's the buffoons who consider normal people as clowns.
I wasn't civil to you because you're post didn't deserve a cicil response.
P.S.: I'm not the guy you disparaged.
Well you're a total jerk anyway aren't you Anti-jerk?
Did you even notice that my comments were a response to a zionist jerk who raised the whole racial issue? No? That's because you're a jerk.
As for sexual harrasment. Big deal. He's a right wing jerk like your zionazi buddy and it was the 70-80's after all. What did you expect? Mother Theresa?
Now fuck off back into your hole. Poser.
Did you even notice that my comments were a response to a zionist jerk who raised the whole racial issue? No? That's because you're a jerk.
As for sexual harrasment. Big deal. He's a right wing jerk like your zionazi buddy and it was the 70-80's after all. What did you expect? Mother Theresa?
Now fuck off back into your hole. Poser.
The fact you addressed another sane person unlike yourself doesn't mean I do not have a right to contribute to the discussion. You made some really shitty arguments (which should be expected from a shithead such as yourself) that I responded to.
You're probably a far-right misogynist bastard posing as a leftwinger and I hope the editors will remove all your comments and ban you from posting to this site. But I wouldn't count on that happening as they need your "anti-Zionist" input. Apparently Arnold has more respect for women then you ever had.
You're probably a far-right misogynist bastard posing as a leftwinger and I hope the editors will remove all your comments and ban you from posting to this site. But I wouldn't count on that happening as they need your "anti-Zionist" input. Apparently Arnold has more respect for women then you ever had.
So how come the ACLU wants to get rid of punch cards and switch to touch screen voting? I wouldn't classify the ACLU as a "right wing" organization!
It would be very interesting to do a comparison of the vote results in precincts with electronic voting, verson those with punch card, or write in ballots.
Presumably the pro-schwarzenneger vote would be the same independent of the voting technology.
Regards
Me.
Presumably the pro-schwarzenneger vote would be the same independent of the voting technology.
Regards
Me.
The ACLU wanted to make the point that all voters needed to be treated alike.
They lost.
They were willing to overlook the voting machine issue most likely because they have no clue. The only people who are clued in to the voting machine COUP taking place are those who read internet news fairly closely. Mainstream news barely touched this issue and congress people were the idiots forcing the machines on us.
They lost.
They were willing to overlook the voting machine issue most likely because they have no clue. The only people who are clued in to the voting machine COUP taking place are those who read internet news fairly closely. Mainstream news barely touched this issue and congress people were the idiots forcing the machines on us.
That's not the important one, the important one was the recall. And yes, I agree, it would be interesting to look at.
Thank you for this wonderful text. I learned a lot from reading this and wish many people in this country would read it too. We need to start talking about what we can do against this dictatorship instead of just sitting back and accepting it. Thay can last for years and years, you know. If so many of us agree with the views posted on indymedia than why can't we organize and try to make a change or even a big dent?
Congratulations on your article!
Congratulations on your article!
Didn't democrats and the aclu win a ruling saying everybody needs to use computer systems right after the 2000 election. Would that not implicate all politicians in this?
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