Funny all the recent "anti-election fraud" crap from the repeatapublicans sounds like a smokescreen

[nightscanner59]

Last edited Sat Aug 18, 2012, 04:24 PM - Edit history (11)

remember this crappola?:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/machine-politics-in-the-digital-age.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
It's not largely discredited FAUX nooze and their neanderthal followers that worry me about this election, but what kind of dirty tricks has the Tromboney/Ryan/Republican ilk got up their sleeve this damn time???
(Other than the redistricting and polling place supply tricks we all have heard about)
Update: channel surf past as much FAUX as I could stomach just after I posted this!!!:
"Election Fraud" FAUX story they blathered about Jennifer Anniston mailing voter registration forms for
Dogs and Cats (???!)



Wow, research into this is really convoluted... suspending this as it progresses. skip to fun poll I've included below:



From: http://www.cfvi.us/?q=node/28

Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 2006-07. Election commissioners in the Ohio county that includes
Cleveland proposed suing Diebold over the Accu-Vote TSx DRE voting system, which Cleveland
purchased post-HAVA and which failed miserably in the 2006 federal election and otherwise had
problems. Commission Jones said “[h]anging chads were much less of a problem,” and
Commission Dimora argued against any touch-screen voting machine.4 Cuyahoga is in the
process of replacing Diebold DREs with optical scan voting machines.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/dieboldsec-fraud-settleme_n_598627.html
So, they were untrustworthy, without a doubt...


Are the faulty Diebold machines still to be utilized?
What about connections of the new Election Systems and Software of Omaha? Any connections to the Repub's again?
Anyone know if they are committed to delivering a clean election for a change?

IFES - The International Foundation for Election Systems http://www.ifes.org Since 1987, IFES has supplied world governments with election observation and analysis and has developed into one of the world's leading centers of election information and resources. Comment: It appears that the organization was founded and is currently chaired by right wing members of the Republican Party (GOP), although they also have directors that come from the Democratic party.
2010: ES&S has bought Diebold - now counts 80% of all votes!

http://www.theportlandalliance.org/2006/aug/election2006.htm "What is known about the company’s ownership, dug up by Harris, points to a twisty trail of criminality, conflict of interest and non-disclosure. In 1987 the Omaha World-Herald purchased 47 percent stake in the company, and the McCarthy Group bought 35 percent. The Omaha World-Herald, in turn, is owned by the Peter Kiewit Foundation. Harris contends that Kiewit is just about the last company that should have anything to do with an election system vendor. Kiewit and its subsidiaries have been involved in as many as 11 cases of bid-rigging on road contracts and state and federal highway projects. With convictions in Louisiana, South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska, the companies have paid millions of dollars in fines. “Kiewit has connections with both ES&S parent companies and has a track record of hiding ownership when it wants to,” says Harris. “It has a powerful profit motive for getting the people it wants into office and it has broken the law in the past to achieve its goals.”"
ES&S supplied the touch screens for Miami-Dade and Broward counties where the worst machine failures occurred.

http://www.nogw.com/electionfraud.html
Update 1:20 pm satuday. Above largely contained solid GOP-fraud links quickly disappearing in favor of other, unrelated or more appearing to shift blame to democrats. It's an obvious info war zone today I should have copy/pasted to secure file, folks. Maybe I'd better be looking out for sniper fire today...


Holy Moly, DU'ers... There's more and more and more on this.........................., I'm just tired researching for now

So: Fun Poll Re: Fox breaks story about Jennifer Anniston sending registration forms for dogs and cats...

3 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Not that any self respecting dog would vote for Romney anyway with what he did to their cousin...
	0 (0%)
	funny no other networks broke this story....
	0 (0%)
	My cat is so stupid he might vote for Tromboney/Ryan
	0 (0%)
	It's all good, the elections are as tight as a Schrodinger's cat box.
	1 (33%)
	Yes the repubs are up to no good about that all over a-damn-gain
	2 (67%)
	FAUX and the great white way will save us all
	0 (0%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[BlueinOhio]

1. There is more

Research Triad. Oh one of the companies is tied to the butterfly ballots that allowed Bush to win.

[BlueinOhio]

2. My research after Howard Dean lost primary and Kerry the general election (sorry it's long)

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." Joseph Stalin (Russian Prime Minister. 1879-1953)

Abraham Lincoln defined what the United States of America government is, in his famous Gettysburg Address “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” All citizens of the United States have a say in our government but if the citizens do not participate then the government is not by the people. If corporations manipulate the vote then their will, will be done to the determent of us the people. The United States is a republic and not a democracy. A republic is a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them. (1)

The Problem

The election process in the United States needs to be upgraded and the use of electronic voting machines needs to be evaluated. The machines are just not reliable at this time. In the future, when security controls are in place, design flaws worked out, and verifiable paper trail is in place this system of voting will work. The Election Assistance Commission has begun efforts to improve life cycle management of electronic voting systems and improving their security and reliability: 1) Draft changes to existing federal voluntary standards for voting systems, including provisions addressing security and reliability. 2) Develop a process for certifying voting systems. 3) Establish a program to accredit independent laboratories to test electronic voting systems. 4) Develop a library and clearinghouse for information on state and local elections and systems. (2) These steps are not likely to take place until well after 2006 which means these machines should not be used until these controls are in place.

The Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State, James Baker, issued a report that found: “ The greater threat to most systems is not from external hackers but from insiders who have direct access to the machines. Software can be modified maliciously before being installed into individual voting machines. There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries such as gambling, where sophisticated insider fraud has occurred despite extraordinary measures to prevent it.” (3)

Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia are the major manufactures of electronic voting in the United States. They also are contributors to the Republican Party. Four Experts in Computer Science and Voting machines have given this emergency advice In a strongly worded indictment against electronic voting machines used in the 2004 elections, the same ones to be used this November the 8th in California and across the nation. In Ohio J Kenneth Blackwell, Secretary of State has made sure that the Diebold machines are in place in all the counties.

“ Until these efforts are completed, there is a risk that many state and local jurisdictions will rely on voting systems that were not developed, acquired, tested, operated, or managed in accordance with rigorous security and reliability standards – potentially affecting the reliability of future elections and voter confidence in the accuracy of the vote count.” (4)

Dr. Hugh Thompson, Florida Institute of Technology, “ Tabulators are EASILY hacked, both before and during the election. Votes can be changed in as little as 60 seconds if someone has access to the machine. Therefore no one, other than the poll workers, should be allowed into the room where the tabulator is located. (Later in the article there will be a case similar to this occurring in Ohio but from that case you will see that this is not the answer.) Physically and securely transport the data (unlike what occurred in Cincinnati, OH where a photo was taken of the locked ballot boxes being loaded onto a pickup truck with Bush/Chaney bumper stickers.) from where the votes are cast to where they are counted rather than using a modem. Memory cards should be treated with the same security as a box of ballots or a Brink’s truckload of money. (Unlike transporting money there is NO Way to know the content of the Memory Cards as they leave the polling stations, nor does the person receiving the data know what to expect so any tampering on the way can not, in any way, be detected.”(5)

Dr. Avi Rubin, John Hopkins University, ‘ Because of the myriad problems possible at every stage of the electronic voting process and the possibility that the software in the tabulator might be faulty or even rigged, it is a good idea to reconcile the precinct counts by hand to check that the numbers that come out of the tabulator, at the end of the process, match the actual precinct totals.”(6) (In San Diego Ca the electronic voting machine said that the Republican won by a slight margin. The paper hand count showed that the Democrat won by a large margin. In Ohio’s second district a special election was held and the republican (Schmidt, yes the one of SN fame) won by a slight margin in the precincts that had electronic voting machines and the democrat won by a landslide in the precincts that had paper ballots.) Dr. Rubin led a team that analyzed code from Diebold and found flaws that basic training in secure code would prevent. “The only way that vendors are going to produce auditable machines is if they are forced to.” “We still don’t have a process for ensuring that the people writing the code of those machines know what they are doing, or are not malicious.”

Dr. David Dill, Stanford University, “ Law in California and many other states requires that a minimum of 1% of precincts be audited and that more may be. Verification is critical and it is highly recommended that
the 1% + audit is conducted on All system, including votes by mail.”(7) Dr. Dill believes people should be able to verify their vote.

Steven Spoonamore, President, Cybrinth, Inc., “ Voting Tabulators are where the primary hacks are happening, especially in counties where the Republican is already expected to win. Incidence of hacks increases with the level of GOP partisanship and how much control that partisan GOP has over the voting. Also a high correlation with prominent Christian Right anti-abortion operatives. Watch the suspect counties carefully. (In Scioto County Ohio During the last November election there was a power glitch and the democrats who were way ahead were suddenly losing.) Usually they start counting and have some strange malfunction (Power Outage, Humidity Malfunction, Computer Error, Terrorist Threat, (AKA Warren County Ohio), etc.) They often times need to have a technician “reset” the machines (Triad in Ohio), and whether it is done by a technician or remotely, they need some reason so the tabulator with the force balancer can finish counting much later than other counties, you have big cause to worry. The total number of which is known, then “breaks” in favor of the GOP. A ‘Force Balancer’ is where they hold back the vote tallies so that when they finally do report it will be in favor of the ones controlling the machines. ‘Force Balancers’ need to know the total number of votes they have force BEFORE they begin forcing. And only the last county or couple of counties doing that can do that, as they have to know starting ratios and intended finishing ratios. If the Democrat leads across the state, and then suddenly the last counties have huge returns in favor of the Republican, those hard drives should be obtained and searched. Even if they install and erase the code it will still be there until a deep wipe is done.”(8)

The GAO found that “some of (the) concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.” These concerns “merit the focused attention of federal, state and local authorities responsible for election administration.” Congressman John Conyers says, “that in addition to being an issue that goes to the heart of our democracy, this is a consumer protection issue. There are certainly voting machine manufacturers who produce a good product. But by and large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter is getting a lemon – the Ford Pinto of voting technology. We must demand better.” The GAO found many security problems some of which are:
1) Ballots or system audit logs were not encrypted so they could be altered without detection. It is easy to change how the ballot appears so that it’s possible to vote for one candidate and it be recorded for another candidate. By altering the memory cards the election results can be falsified.

2) The voting network can be compromised because not all systems had a supervisory function password; so one machine provides access to the entire network. Locks used to secure the system were easy to be picked and keys made. One machine with a power failure causes the entire network to fail. Background checks on vendor personnel have been a problem (Diebold had 5 employees who were felons.)

3) “The bottom line is until we make a serious commitment to address the significant security and controls concerns we have regarding our voting machines, American citizens have no reason to have complete confidence in our democracy.” Said John Conyers. (9)


USE OF ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES IN OTHER COUNTRIES

Other countries have started to use electronic voting with good results. 100 million people used e voting in Brazil’s 2002 elections. Brazil started testing the machines in the mid-1990’s. They have been using one type of machine for it’s 106 million voters. Brazil has multiple organizations responsible for different aspects of voting equipment development as a safeguard. (10) In 2003 India used e-voting in some state elections and said that by the next parliamentary elections will be fully electronic.(11) In May of 2004 the world’s largest democracy, 650 million people had a chance to vote on almost 1 million electronic voting machines. Only 20% of the votes will be cast in the United States presidential election was electronic. The complexity of the software in the US machines makes bugs or any fraudulent acts hard to spot. Swami Manohar, a computer scientist at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore says that their very simple program would reveal any bugs. The Indian machines just record the number of times a button for a particular candidate is pressed. Manohar believes it was a terrific success. Avi Rubin says, “I do believe that (the Indian) system is much better than the ones in the US, due it is simplicity.” But Rubin says the machines lack a paper print out of each vote cast that would allow voters to verify their choice of candidate or to do a recount. (12)

In the United Kingdom, security and secrecy are the main issues with e-voting. Philip Howe, who is the e-voting champion in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which is responsible for upgrading UK’s electoral program. In May 2000 32 local authorities used new methods of voting. There were three tests of e-voting machines, which have been 27 pilot schemes with e-voting machines in polling stations and also
remote e-voting via the Internet, telephone, text messaging and interactive digital television. By May 2003 about 1.5 million people were able to vote electronically. The government “is aware of the need to ensure that accurate election results are produced, and to give voters and electoral administrators confidence in them.” There are external organizations to perform quality assurance tests of the technology used in each pilot. The government has access to the computer programs used by the suppliers. Officers in charge of constituency elections can test the systems to make sure they are usable. Then the system is locked down to prevent manipulation. The system logs are monitored during the voting so that any evidence of hacking or other fraudulent activity can be identified. A paper record of votes cast can be used if a recount is necessary. The paper votes are kept secure. The independent Electoral Commission oversees the election. Hope said, “Together with our own assessments of the pilots, these recommendations inform a continual process of improvement in e-voting technology and implementation.” (13)

ISSUES WITH USE OF ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES WITHIN THE UNITED STATES
PROBLEMS WITH ‘TOUCH-TONE’ SCREEN VOTING MACHINES

The Election Protection coalition is a group of volunteer poll monitors, reported more than 1100 voter complaints about the electronic voting machines. In Florida and Texas voters reported that when voting for one candidate on a touch screen machine caused a cross to appear in another candidate’s box. Avi Rubin says that the biggest threat comes from software problems that affect the outcome in an undetectable way. “If we continue to use the kind of insecure machines that were used in this election, it is only a matter of time before someone exploits them.” (14)

In 2002 touch-screen machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems were involved in a disaster in a local election in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. The system registered only 36,000 votes out of the 48,000 that had been cast. The problem occurred after the votes were downloaded from individual machine’s memory cards to a tabulator: a software bug. The tabulator ignored all votes cast above a certain threshold. The problem was found just before the vote was certified. Sequoia technicians retrieved the missing votes. “It shakes one’s confidence to know there was a problem this basic in the system.” Says Dill. (15) On machines made by Sequoia, people who chose a straight party ticket then tried to select that party’s presidential candidate actually were deselecting their presidential choice. A massive 10% under vote was registered in one county. (16) The New Mexico race was very close. The official canvass at http://www.sos.state.nm.us/PDF/Gensumm_04.pdf showed that 5988 more votes for Bush than Kerry but there is evidence of 18,997 missing votes. There were 775,301 total voters now subtract 370,942 for Kerry + 376,930 for Bush + 1226 for Cobb + 771 for Peroutka+2382 for Badnarik+ 4053 for Nader that leaves 18,997 outstanding votes. There are 33 counties in New Mexico. In the 11 optical scan counties only 338 votes were missing. In the other 22 counties using e-voting there was 18,659 votes missing. And it was noted that in those counties that the more votes for Kerry the more missing votes there were. (17) In a
conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis, John Kerry confirmed that he lost in every precinct that had a touch screen voting machine.(18)

NEVADA

In December 2003 Nevada said it was buying voting machines and demanded paper receipts for all voters. Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller said he received an overwhelming message from voters that they do not trust electronic voting. In November 2003, the California Secretary of State, Kevin Shelley said that California would require touch screen voting machines to provide a “voter-verified paper audit trail.” Senators Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA.) have introduced bill The Count Every Vote Act. Representative Rush (D-NJ) also has introduced a similar bill. (19)

CALIFORNIA

The State of California issued two reports on the technology used in the March presidential primaries.
The reports support the computer scientists and election officials who have stated that the electronic voting
machines are unreliable and open to fraud. The first report deals with numerous problems with reliability. 55% of the polling stations in San Diego County could not open on time because of malfunctions with the machines manufactured by Diebold Election Systems of North Canton, Ohio. There is no estimate of how many people were turned away without being able to cast their ballots. “These voters were completely disenfranchised,” the report says. The second report details an investigation of Diebold. The state officials say the company flouted certification laws, failed to obtain federal certification for it’s machines, and installed uncertified software on machines in 17 counties. Diebold jeopardized the conduct of the March primary. (Kind of make you think who really won the democrat primary, just an observation: Kerry would draw some people but Howard Dean on other brought out thousands of people) California law will require e-voting systems to produce a verifiable paper trail by 2006. Diebold Election Systems allegedly told California State officials that it’s Accuvote-TSX machines were federally “qualified”. Bill Lockyer, the state attorney general is suing Diebold for false claims about its products after Kevin Shelley decertified the machines in April 2004. (20) Chairman and CEO Walden W. O’Dell told reporters after an annual shareholders meeting “we will help in California if we are allowed. If we are not, we won’t. I think whatever goes on in California is separate from what goes on in other states. Each State will make theirown decisions.” O’Dell said that Diebold remains confident the machines are safe and secure.(21)

Kevin Shelley the Sectary of State of California is feuding with county officials statewide and facing allegations that he misused federal voting funds to hire consultants for partisan political work. California had received $180 million in federal voting money in 2004. Shelley has been reluctant to release funds and organize programs for voter education, train poll workers and provide services to military and overseas voters. A computerized databank to keep track of registered voters has to be operating by January 2006 or get a federal penalty. The California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit group that monitors new voting technology is urging voters to request paper ballots that can be audited if a recount is necessary. Kim Alexander, president of the Davis-based foundation said, “ Voters who do not want to entrust their ballots to risky, in auditable technology have a choice.” California has a history of computer system failures as well attempts to automate parts of the prison and welfare programs. California stopped its lottery computer system in 1993, stopped the Department of Motor Vehicles system in 1994. (Ohio BMV computer system randomly chooses people to revoke their licenses. This has happened to my son, a neighbor and people
I know at work) The biggest failure was a system required by federal law to track child-support payments,
it cost the state $220 million.(22)

There was a California summit on voting equipment in November 2005. The speakers had conflict of interest and consumer groups were not allowed to participate. Republican California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson called for the “Voting Systems Testing Summit.” A nonpartisan coalition of 25 California election integrity groups held a press conference November 28, 2005 outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Sacramento where the summit was located. The state had presentations in favor of electronic voting out numbering the critics. Sherry Healy, a member of the California Election Protection Network steering committee said, “This smacks of Dick Chaney meeting with the energy companies and locking out opposing interests of environmental groups. Diebold and other vendors selling electronic voting equipment have been invited to attend, along with all 400 members of the California Association of Election Officials. It costs one hundred and seventy five dollars a ticket and will picked up by the state.” The panels were stacked with pro e-voting advocates. (23)

FLORIDA

In Florida, paperless machines will be used in 15 of the state’s 67 counties. Congressman Robert Wexler has filed a lawsuit arguing that this is unconstitutional since there cannot be a recount if one is needed. (24) In Broward County, Florida, a central election warehouse, a place where the voting machines are stored and the precinct vote tallies are combined, for a recount in December 2002. The building’s loading dock was opened to the outdoors, permitting easy unauthorized access to the voting machines. The control center for tallying all the votes was a small computer room the door was ajar and no log was kept of who entered. (25) Rep. Tom Feeney (R Fl) asked Clint Curtis make software for “vote rigging’” while working at a software design and engineering company in Oviedo, Florida. In an affidavit he claims to be technical advisor and programmer at Yang Enterprises Inc. Feeney had run for Lt governor with Jeb Bush in the 1994 unsuccessful attempt. Curtis was a registered lobbyist for Yang Inc. Feeney had inquired if the company could build a “vote fraud software prototype.” Curtis said “ He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected.” Curtis, who is a Republican, thought that Feeney’s interest was to stop the Democrats from using “such a program to steal an election”. (26)

NORTH CAROLINA

In one North Carolina County, more than 4,500 votes were lost when officials tried to store more votes than the computer was designed for. The votes were lost permanently. (27) North Carolina since the irregularities of the 2004 election now require that vendors of electronic voting machines must place all source code in escrow by law. Diebold objects that they might have criminal sanctions brought against them if they fail to turn over their code. Diebold argued for an exemption before Wake County Superior Court Judge Narley Cashwell. The judge would not give Diebold an exemption and Diebold is withdrawing from the state. Diebold says that the machines contain Microsoft software, which they can’t turn over to state election officials. MS could possibly licensed software to Diebold with the provision that the company withdraws where law requires the release of it source code. A better reason is that Diebold is using this as an excuse to keep its bugware away from government regulators. If North Carolina were to reject Diebold it would make other states suspicious. So withdrawing will they hope not draw attention. (28) (Why does Diebold have anything to hide?) Diebold has decided to stay involved they have voting machines in 20 North Carolinian counties. “You are really asking for trouble. It’s going to destroy the confidence of the citizens of the state.” Says Joyce McCloy of North Carolinia Coalition for Verified Voting. (29)

GEORGIA

In Georgia in the 2002 elections to elect a governor and state senators, votes were recorded on a $54 million suite of new touch-screen machines. When the election was recounted 10% swing towards the republicans. The Election Protection coalition, a group of volunteer poll monitors, reported more than 1100 voter complaints about the electronic voting machines.

Once, again, Florida and Texas voters reported votes for one candidate on a touch screen machine
appearing in another candidate’s box. Avi Rubin says that the biggest threat comes from software problems that affect the outcome in an undetectable way. “If we continue to use the kind of insecure machines that were used in this election, it is only a matter of time before someone exploits them.” (30)

KANSAS

Connie Schmidt an Election Commissioner of Johnson County, Kansas, had said in 2002 after August primary election that 99% of the voters were pleased with the Diebold Machines. “They’ve been extremely reliable, and we’ve received tremendous feedback from voters.” This was after Schmidt found out that the Diebold touch-screen machines had under and over reported hundreds of votes and had to direct the Board of Canvassers to order a hand recount where vote totals changed dramatically. (31)




OHIO

Last November during the 2004 presidential election in Lucas County Bernadette Noe (Wife of Tom Noe Ohio’s coingate scandal.) served as chairman for the Lucas County Republican Party and the Lucas County Board of Election’s disrupted the ballot count. Mrs. Noe advocated the use of Diebold’s optical scanner system. In April 2004 Bernadette and another Republican board member voted to approve a $350,000 contract with Diebold. The contract was no bid. When the Democrats revealed a cheaper bid the board was forced to open the contract for bidding over Mrs. Noe’s objections. Diebold got the contract. One Ohio election official reported that a Diebold lobbyist offered him $10,000 to get a county to buy Diebold machines the money was given to the local Republican Party. In April 2005 the Toledo Blade ran a story about how Bernadette accepted $65,000 in loans for the party from her husband. She also involved in a scandal for allowing an aide to Ohio governor Bob Taft (R) to stay in her vacation home at a reduced rate. “It’s going to cost us more than we thought it would, but it’s going to be a fair election. I am confident with the system we will have with Diebold.” “Every vote is going to get counted, and it is going to be an efficient election.” Mrs. Noe said.

Richard Weghorst, Ohio’s Director of Campaign Finance wrote a memo about the fact that Mrs. Noe sent twelve “partisans” into a warehouse on Election Day. The Board was “directly responsible for the inefficient and unorganized election process” They failed to lock and secure ballots and voting machines; manipulated the three percent hand recount; and did not remove Ralph Nader from county ballots. The most important event as Mr. Weghorst described as “a note-worthy incident relating to security” on the evening of the election. Mr. Weghorst was present at the local warehouse where ballots were being tabulated reported that “two groups of partisan volunteers totaling approximately twelve people” arrived whose “purpose for being there was not immediately known or requested.” The volunteers were there from Mrs. Noe request and refused to leave. Mr. Weghorst called the police to remove them from the warehouse. Robert Diekmann, a Diebold employee was at the warehouse also.

Mrs. Noe was involved in another incident where she brought in Republican volunteers to “assist” in processing returned voter confirmation postcards. On her authority and other board members the partisan volunteers were allowed to copy the returned cards. They were caught peeling the return stickers off the voter confirmation cards by a Lucas County Democratic official and told to leave. Mr. Weghorst found that they were not supervised. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said, “ The facts that have come out indicate a culture of corruption in the Ohio Republican Party. An investigation such as this, which is rife with conflicts of interest, begs for the appointment of an independent prosecutor who would be immune from the partisan gamesmanship we have seen so far.” Mrs. Noe resigned from the Lucas County Republican Party and from the Board of Elections in December 2004. (32) Catherine L. Buchanan gave sworn testimony on 12/14/05 that Diebold Optiscan machines were being re-programmed. (33)

Fulton and Henry Counties officials confirmed that Triad had remote access to tabulating computers controlled by the Boards of Election. The Officials stated, “Your company did not come into the Board of Election to adjust the tabulation software, because it could be, and had been done remotely.”(34)

Mercer County an observer reported that a Triad technician had been at the Board of Elections the day prior to the recount. The technician was there during the recount. The technician reported that he had disassembled the tabulator at 7:30 on the morning of the recount. He said he had replaced a box containing a switch, and then made a remark that he didn’t have anything to do with the software, that he’s just a hardware technician. In Van Wert County a recount observer said “ When asked if Triad had serviced the machine, the deputy director and a board member stated that they had serviced the machine over the phone via modem on December 9.” Hardin County an observer seen a Diebold technician the day before alone with the tabulators testing the machines. (35)

Shelby County Kay E Baker, Director of the Shelby County Board of Elections indicated in a letter to Harvey Wasserman of Columbus, Ohio “tabulator test decks were discarded after the election…” The destruction of these test decks appears to be a violation of state law. Allen and Champaign observers noted that ballots were not secured they were in open containers, tin containers not sealed or locked. Clermont County some ballots had stickers, the Kerry vote was covered with a sticker. Coshocton County ballots were handled prior to the recount. They had already been counted without the presence of witnesses. In Cuyahoga County the ballots were not in random order, they had been sorted. Fairfield and Monroe Counties a full recount should have been ordered. The second hand count of the 3% sample did not match the machine vote totals. Greene and Huron Counties performed hand counts until the results matched the electronic count. Allen County recount observer requested, but were not permitted to inspect the voter registration books and told that they were not allowed to see the absentee or provisional ballots until January 10, 2005. (36)

Auglaize County an unauthorized former ES&S voting machine employee was caught on the ballot-making machine prior to the election. (37) Observers were not allowed to see the absentee ballots. A witness inquired as to the capability of the DRE to print an image of the ballots as cast. When the witness requested that images representing 3% of the ballots cast be printed the Director of the Board of Elections denied the request. (38) Mahoning County Election Officials confess that about 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to Bush and Franklin County had similar problems. Also in Mahoning County one machine had a negative 25 million votes for Kerry supposedly that was fixed. In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, an “electronic transfer glitch” gave Bush 4000 extra votes when only 638 people voted. Franklin County voters swore under oath that their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without any paper trail. Miami County at 1:43 am after Election Day that tabulator reporting 100% of the vote 19,000 more votes arrived 13,000 was for Bush at the same percentage as prior to the additional votes statistically impossible. In Cleveland large implausible vote totals turned up for obscure third party candidates in traditional Democratic African – American wards. Shelby and other counties admit to discarding records and equipment before any recount could take place. (39)

Champaign County the observers requested signature books, poll books, late or voided absentee ballots and rejected provisional ballots. They only got to see poll books for 2 precincts. (40) The Licking County Board of Elections denied recount teams to inspect the voting machines and how the ballot assemblies to insure correct rotation of candidate names. Also they were not allowed to check rejected provisional ballots to determine if denials were justified. (41)

Perry County recorded more votes than voters. Butler County and other counties recorded more votes for an under funded Democratic candidate for the State Supreme Court than were recorded for the Democratic Presidential Candidate. In Warren County officials excluded members of the press from observing the counting on election night claiming that a FBI agent had warned of a terrorist attack but the FBI had no such a warning. (42) Warren County is a Republican County. (43)

In the November 2004 presidential election Scioto County showed no votes for the green party and yet there is at least one person I know that did vote and there probably was more than that one person. In Columbus, Ohio one suburb president Bush was awarded more than 4,200 votes even though records showed only 638 voters cast ballots. (44)

On December 13, 2004 Sharole Eaton, the Hocking County Board of Elections Deputy Director, swore out an affidavit that read “ the realization that this company (Triad) and staff would do anything to dishonor or disrupt the voting process is distressing to me and hard to believe. I’m being completely objective about the above statements and the reason I’m bringing this forward is to hopefully, rule out any wrongdoing.” (45) Triad Governmental Systems, Inc., based in Xenia, OH, is a national corporation that sold computer-based systems for vote tabulation to about half of the counties in the state. Todd Rapp, President of Triad has been a consistent contributor to Republican causes. In addition, a Triad affiliate, Psephos Corporation, supplied the notorious butterfly ballot used in Palm Beach County, Florida, in the 2000 presidential election. After 9 years of fighting the FEC, Carol S Malenick’s Triad Management Services Inc., under court order to complete a comprehensive disclosure report, filed a registration statement as a political committee and a report indicating it raised $3.86 million from 1996 through 2000. However, the submitted forms were not signed and the reports did not disclose any donor names or addresses. The report lists only dates and amounts for 179 contributions. There were 9 contributions of $100,000 or more, and one as high as $300,000. Since there are no names or aggregate totals of donors, many of the contributions may have been from the same person. Litigation records indicate that Robert Cone was the primary source of funds in 1996. Triad indicated they paid Citizens for the Republic Education Fund $505,853 from 1996-2000. Triad paid Baker and Hostetler $455,175 for legal fees. The accounting firm was Gilbert and Wolfand. (46)

Michael Barbian, Jr., a technician from Triad showed up on December 10, 2004 before the recount and made several adjustments to the tabular and computer before the recount and that Hocking County was the subject of the initial Ohio test recount. He told the election officials Lisa Schwartze and Sherole Eaton how to manipulate voting machinery to ensure that a preliminary hand recount matched the machine count. The cheat sheets told them how many votes they should find for each candidate, and how many over and under votes they should calculate to match the machine count. In that way, they could avoid doing a full countywide hand recount mandated by state law. If true, this would frustrate the entire purpose of the recount law – to randomly ascertain if the vote counting apparatus is operating fairly and effectively, and if not to conduct a full hand recount. By ensuring that election boards are in a position to conform their test recount results with the election night results, Triad’s actions may well have prevented scores of counties from conducting a full and fair recount in compliance with equal protection, due process, and the first amendment Several times during his interaction with Hocking County voting machines, Mr. Barbian telephoned into Triad’s offices to obtain programming information relating to the machinery and the precinct in question. It is now known that Triad officials have intervened in other counties in Ohio - Greene and Monroe, and others. Mr. Barbian himself has admitted to altering tabulating software in Hocking, Lorain, Muskingum, Clark, Harrison and Guernsey counties. Todd Rapp, President of Triad, also has confirmed that these sorts of changes are standard procedure for his company. Mr. Barbian’s activities were official policy of Triad. Rapp explained during a Hocking County Board of Elections meeting: “The purpose was to train people on how to conduct their jobs and to help them identify problems when they conducted the recount. If they could not hand count the ballots correctly, they would know what they needed to look for in that hand count. Barbian noted that he had “provided [other counties] reports so they could review the information on their own. In addition, Douglas W. Jones, a computer election expert from the University of Iowa, reviewed the Eaton Affidavit and concluded that it described behavior that was dangerous and unnecessary:” I have reviewed the Affidavit of Sherole L. Eaton (“the Eaton Affidavit”), the Deputy Director of the Hocking County Board of Election, as well as the letter of Congressman John Conyers to Kevin Brock, Special Agent in Charge with the FBI in Cincinnati, Ohio. In light of this information, and given my expertise and research on voting technology issues and the integrity of ballot counting systems, it is my professional opinion that the incident in Hocking County, Ohio, threatens the ability of the presidential candidates, their witnesses, and the counter-plaintiffs in the above-captioned action, to properly analyze, inspect, and assess the ballots and the related voting data from the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. It is my understanding that 41 of Ohio’s 88 counties use Triad voting machines. As a result, the incident in Hocking County could compromise the statewide recount, and undermine the public’s trust in the credibility and accuracy of the recount. We have received several additional reports of machine irregularities involving several other counties serviced by Triad, including a report that Triad was able to alter election software by remote access:”

• In Union County, the hard drive on the vote tabulation machine, a Triad machine, had failed after the election and had been replaced. The old hard drive was returned to the Union County Board of Elections in response to a subpoena.

• The Directors of the Board of Elections in both Fulton and Henry County stated that the Triad Company had reprogrammed the computer by remote dial-up to count only the presidential votes prior to the start of the recount.

• In Monroe County, the 3% hand-count failed to match the machine count twice. Subsequent runs on that machine did not match each other or the hand count. The Monroe County Board of Elections summoned a repairman from Triad to bring a new machine and the recount was suspended and reconvened for the following day. On the following day, a new machine was present at the Board of Elections office and the old machine was gone. The Board conducted a test run followed by the 3% hand-counted ballots. The results matched this time and the Board conducted the remainder of the recount by machine.

• In Harrison County, a representative of the Triad Company reprogrammed and retested the tabulator machine and software prior to the start of the recount. The Harrison County tabulating computer is connected to a second computer, which is linked to the Secretary of State’s Office (J Kenneth Blackwell) in Columbus. The Triad technician handled all ballots during the machine recount and performed all tabulation functions. The Harrison County Board of Elections kept voted ballots and unused ballots in a room open to direct public access during daytime hours when the courthouse is open. The Board had placed voted ballots in lockable and, at another point, was said to be unlockable.

Computers are to be considered “ballots.” Triad’s interference with the computers and their software would violate the votes being secure and in effect were tampered with. Any modification of the election machinery may only be done after full notice to the Secretary of State. No such notice was given to J Kenneth Blackwell. Re-counters could have been given the full ballot and been simply instructed not to count the other races recorded. The service company employees could have waited to alter the software program until the official recount began in the presence of the board and qualifying witnesses. Neither of these scenarios occurred in the present case. According to J Kenneth Blackwell’s own directive, coupled with Ohio Revised Code § 3505.32, prohibits any handling of these ballots without bipartisan witnesses present. (47)

Republican Director Lisa Schwartze said that Sherole Eaton had until June 30 to resign or be fired and “that came from the board.” Although bi-partisan the Hocking County Board that pressured Eaton continues to act under the direct threat from J Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell administered the 2004 election while serving as the state’s co-chair with Tom Noe for the Bush-Chaney campaign. In a letter dated October 5, 2004 to Republican Chair of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Robert Bennett, Blackwell threatened to remove any board member who refused to follow his direct orders. This undermines the Republican argument that the election was fair because both Democrats and Republicans served on the board. “Be advised that your actions are not in compliance with Ohio law and further failure to comply with my lawful directives will result in official action, which may include removal of the Board and it’s Director,” Blackwell wrote to Bennett. There was a Congressional hearing about the voting problems in Ohio. Blackwell refused to leave the state. (48) Rep. Robert Nye (who was indicted over Abramoff) arranged the hearing in Ohio. The letter was mentioned at the hearing. The letter makes it clear with the threat of lost salary the claims of bi-partisanship was for show only. (49)

"Yesterday was the first of what I hope are many victories for Sherole," Karla Van Bibber, who is Sherole's niece "The expressions on the board members faces when given the court injunction was priceless." Illegal under Ohio law. "Their sputtering and faltering and lying was unbelievable," she said. "It's amazing how the arrogance we see in the Bush administrations has filtered down to the local level as it has." Logan Daily News reported the following: The spectators sat quietly for the most part as the board went through its agenda and discussed Diebold voting machines, TRIAD voting software, splitting precincts, and moving into the Huls Building. Then Arnebeck asked to address the board "on a point of order." "We filed a complaint for a declaratory judgment and preliminary and permanent injunctive relief against any action to terminate or replace Sherole Eaton as deputy director," Arnebeck said. "All I want to do is serve the board with a copy of the order to restrain it from taking any further action on this matter until further action of the court." Spectators in the room applauded as Arnebeck laid the order on the desk before Robinette. Evidence has surfaced that the "Democrats" on many of these boards are Democrats in name only.

In describing information that Davis received from Eaton, who "intimated" to him that a replacement for her has already been chosen, the replacement is described as "A part-time BOE employee who has been an active Republican but who registered as a Democrat in the last primary election, presumably in order to qualify as a candidate for Sherole's position." Republican members of the Board, Lisa Schwartze, admitted that she conducted Republican Party business during working hours and on Board of Election property. (48)
Two election officials in Cuyahoga County were indicted on improper handling of ballots. Kathleen Dreamer manager of ballot department and Rosie Grier the assistant manager were charged with 6 counts each. Richard Kerger a Toledo lawyer witnessed the recount on the behalf of third party candidates charged that election officials failed to randomly select precincts that were to be counted by hand and compared to the ballots tabulated by the machines. (50)

New analysis of the precinct –level Ohio exit poll data provides evidence of large-scale vote miscount in Ohio during the 2004 presidential election. 6% of Ohio’s exit polled precincts had impossible vote counts and 57% had significant discrepancies (a less than 5% chance of occurring in any one precinct.) The full report is available at http://electionarchive.org/ucvanalysis/oh/ohio-exit-polls-2004.pdf In two Ohio precincts, even if all voters who did not complete exit polls had voted for Bush, the total Bush vote count would have been less than the official count. In a third precinct all voters who did not complete exit polls would have had to vote for Bush to equal the official vote. Unless Bush voters lied much more than Kerry voters on exit polls, or massive exit poll error occurred that was not detected by the pollsters, the results are mathematically impossible. The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) urges:
public release of all detailed exit poll data and methodologies by Edison/Mitofsky so that independent analysts may determine whether possible vote fraud occurred.
routine public posting on the Internet of accessible detailed election results (at the precinct level broken out by absentee, early, provisional, and Election Day counts) by local election officials as soon as polls close, to enable independent analysts to identify precincts with possible vote count errors in time to contest elections.
routine independent audits of vote count accuracy in all elections to detect and correct errors that might be deliberately or innocently introduced by insiders
widespread media coverage of this vitally important issue.
The data that NEDA used was provided in the Election Sciences Institute (ESI) June 6, 2005 report, “Ohio Exit Polls: Explaining the Discrepancy” (51)





NECESSITY FOR A PAPER TRAIL
Or
WHO SAYS ALL COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS and/or /HACKERS ARE HONEST?

The United States is supposed to be a democracy. It is supposed to be for the people by the people. Yet in the case of the 2000 presidential election it was determined by 537 votes in Florida and one decision from a GOP packed Supreme Court. The use of electronic voting machines in the 2004 presidential election has been a big mistake, particularly in Ohio. Dr. David Dill said, “ If the presidential election is decided by electronic voting in some swing state, one could imagine a bitter fight with no way to resolve it. We could be entering uncharted waters with this election. People will not take a funny electronic result lying down: there will be challenges.” (The Russians showed more emotion over their election than here. We seem to be asleep. Here’s a thought to try out; the machines were programmed so as to not be able to verify simple malfunction or deliberate manipulation. The fraud has to be proved.) $4 billion of funding has been allocated to pay for thousands of new machines. (With most of the money going to Bush GOP supporter Walden O’Dell and Diebold) Independent studies have identified problems with voting machines that could lead to vote tallies being mistakenly altered or deliberately tampered with. The flaws affect both the hardware and software of machines made by two companies: Diebold Election Systems and Sequoia Voting Systems. (52)

Over half the votes in the US elections are cast and processed by machines designed by Diebold Electronic Systems, based in North Canton, Ohio. In July2003, Computer scientists from John Hopkins University and Rice University in a report uncovered security flaws in the software that runs Diebold machines. Diebold said that the problem was fixed. Academics and students at 40 different US universities say otherwise. Memos have been posted online leaked by Diebold employees that confirm the security flaws, but highlights a host of additional problems. An admission from Diebold engineers that the software allows employees to fake thousands of votes. The relevant testing authority never approved that software upgrades already used in elections. Diebold has threatened any university posting the material with legal action and breech of copyright. Security experts say open-source software must be used to run the machines to safeguard the democratic process. (53)

A “Diebold Insider” has came forward about the company’s “upper management” and “top government officials” being aware of an “undocumented backdoor” in the main “GEM Central Tabulator”. The National Cyber Alert System: Cyber Security Bulletin SB04-252 was issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) a division of Homeland Security. The Insider said that technicians, and at least one lead programmer knew about the security flaw, the company told them to keep it quite. “Diebold threatened violators with immediate dismissal.” “In 2005, after one newly hired member of Diebold’s technical staff pointed out the security flaw, he was criticized and isolated.” Diebold created a Culture of Fear” to assure that employees kept quite. “Diebold’s upper management was aware of the access to the voter file defect before the 2044 election but did nothing to correct it.” The Federal Government knew about the documented flaw and did nothing about it. “I believe that top Government officials had an understanding with top Diebold officials to look the other way, because Diebold was their ace in the hole.” The alert “showed that the Department of Homeland Security headed by a Cabinet level George Bush loyalist was very aware of the ‘threat’ of someone changing votes in the Diebold Central Tabulator. The question is why wasn’t something done about it before the election?” “A very serious problem…. one malicious person can change the outcome of any Diebold election.” “I have seen these systems connected to phone lines dozens of times with users gaining remote access. What I think we have here is a very serious problem. Remote access using phone lines eliminates any need for a conspiracy of hundreds to alter the outcome of an election. The Insider says that future democratic elections in the United States are at stake and feels that the problem will not be corrected until Congressional action forces the company to do so.

Diebold has held onto this theory (publicly) for years, but Diebold has lied and has put national elections at risk. Remote access using this backdoor means that one malicious person can change the outcome of any Diebold election.” Diebold Spokesperson David Bear of the PR firm Public Strategies claimed to have never heard of the Cyber Alert issued by US-CERT he said that it was “an unverified allegation.” “The GEMS software has been used in hundreds of elections and there’s never been a security issue.” Diebold machines have never lost a single vote.” The insider says “you can enter and manipulate the file without even entering into Gems. Gems sit on top of this database and it pretty much feeds information down to the database from GEMS. It’s almost like you’re on the first floor of your house and all of your operating equipment is in the basement so that anything that happens on the first floor ends up downstairs. Well, downstairs has a wide open door to it. So we’re dumping all the votes downstairs and that’s wide open to the rest of the computer system.” (54)

In October 31,2003 in an effort to “sell” the machines to Maryland, Diebold Election Systems President Thomas W Swidarski is quoted in section titled “Security Is Key”, Diebold has fine-tuned its computerized system so that it meets stringent security requirements. “We have independent verification that the Diebold voting system provides an unprecedented level of electronic security. This is crucial to maintaining the integrity of the entire voting process.” (55)

Dr. Rubin received some leaked software code for one of the electronic voting machines that were used on Election Day 2004. He found security problems. “When you protect data you use something called encryption. And they, instead of using state-of-the-art encryption which works pretty well, they used something that was obsolete and broken many years before. They had used incorrect cryptography, so the ways they were trying to protect the vote tallies were wrong, and there were certain things that they needed to do in there that weren’t done. So we were really surprised, one, by poor quality of the code in general, and two, by the lack of understanding of basic security by the people who wrote it.” He wrote a report about the machines from Diebold. His home state Maryland purchased 16,000 of them for $55 million.

Concerns that whatever the problems of paper based voting electronic voting has fundamental flaws. The flaws include a lack of transparency in counting votes and problems with carrying out a proper recount (Case in point Hocking County Ohio) or guaranteeing no voting fraud has occurred. (56)

Maryland hired two outside companies to analyze the machines. Mike Wertheimer, Director of Research of RABA Technologies worked for the National Security Agency for 21 years before joining RABA. RABA set up the system the way it is going to be ran on Election Day. Wertheimer and his team voted multiple times, changed other people’s votes, and erased votes. “ At the end of the day, these machines aggregate all their votes, and one of the machines is connected to a modem – a regular telephone line and a modem like on your home laptop. And it phones in all of the results of the precinct in that county. We discovered…. because the cryptography and the authentication (were) not put in properly, that we could intercept that call, as it were. In other words, we could have the machine call our computer, and when it called our computer we asked it,’ What’s your name and your password?’ and it was happy to tell us. We changed the votes that it was sending to us and then we transferred them to the county computer- which was a mock-up, which was actually computer sitting in our spaces, of course. And we changed the election results on the fly. Everyone on my team feels they could actually log in and change an election in a state using one of these machines. It’s a spectacular statement…by people who are not prone to exaggerate.” Dr. Rubin and Mike Wertheimer both believe that the electronic voting machines work best if they printed a paper record that is used for the official count. (57)

So RABA has recommended various short-term solutions, such as tamper tapes and increased supervision of the machines. David Bear, a spokesman of Diebold says the RABA findings: “The report said no software changes need to be done prior to the elections and that voters should feel safe, secure and accurate in their votes in March.” Wertheimer disagrees. “That is the most selective reading of our report imaginable.” (58)

Dr. David Dill says, “ Every computer program of reasonable size has bugs. Testing can reveal the presence of bugs, but not their absence.” This means that no matter how well an election seems to go that there is no way to verify that the machines have counted the votes accurately. This is true if there is deliberate fraud. This is true in banks and other financial institutions.” (59)

As for the Security and background checks of the personnel who work on the electronic voting machines this has been a problem. Take this case in point. Diebold employed at least five convicted felons as managers. The convictions include cocaine trafficking, fraudulent stock transactions, and the most alarming a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records. Jeffery Dean wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems Inc. Diebold took over GES in 2002. Before hired by GES Dean served time in a Washington correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files. GES produces the operating system that touch-screen voting terminals use. Programmers say software bugs, hackers or electrical outages could cause more than 50,000 touch screen machines used in precincts across the nation to erase or change votes. (60)

Will Doherty, president of Verified Voting, recommend that 2 to 3 % of all electronic votes be validated against their paper equivalent to ensure that the vote-tallying software has not been corrupted. “Then you have a way of determining when an error happened and the opportunity to correct it.” Says Charlie Strauss, a computer scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. An electronic recount raises an ethical problem. Only the company technicians, rather than the election officials are qualified to fix the software, but then the changes are not certified. “A paper recount would have made everyone less queasy.” Says Strauss. (61)

Election Day, November 8th 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was told that he had already voted when he went to the polls to vote in a special election that he had arranged. He was told that he would have to use a provisional ballot, but then he was allowed to use a regular ballot. Anyone else would have had to use the provisional ballot. Los Angeles County Registrar, Connie McCormack admitted that someone “breached protocol in advance of the election.”(62)


Ted Selker of MIT visited several precincts during Nevada’s state elections in 2002. He saw several things that bothered him about the set-up. There were unsecured printer cables, Use of thermal printing paper.
“I saw three people looking at the paper trail on Election Day.” He saw an election official open a printer take out a roll of jammed votes and cut them up with scissors. (63)

Douglas Kellner, Commissioner of New York City’s Board of Elections says that electronic voting machines are threatening democracy. “To me it is a fundamental part of democracy that the votes be counted in a completely honest and transparent process."”(Unlike Warren County Ohio) “With e-voting, we turn over the vote counting process to computer programmers, who in effect count the votes in secret. We have lost a fundamental part of our democracy.”(64)

Walden O’Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., stated in a fund raising letter that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” He was selling his voting machines to the Republican controlled state of Ohio. O’Dell went to a Ranger and Pioneer (Bush’s have and have mores) meeting in Crawford Texas. Then he sent out invitations to a 1,000-dollar a plate fundraiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party’s federal campaign fund in Columbus, Ohio. (The Bush/Chaney state director happens to be none other than J Kenneth Blackwell who just happens to oversee the elections.) “ Ordinary Ohioans may infer that Blackwell’s office is looking past Diebold’s security issues because its CEO is seeking $10,000 donations for Blackwell’s party – donations that could be made with statewide elected officials right there in the same room, “ said Senate Democratic Leader Greg DiDonato. (65)

OHIO THE HEART OF IT ALL or
HAS ANYONE NOTICED IT’S NOT BEATING

On November 8,2005 there were five proposed amendments. One was $2 billion in state spending. The Christian Right was opposed to it because they thought some of the funds would go to stem cell research. This is the same group that thought stem cell research would cure Terri Schiavo, the woman in Florida who was in a persistent vegetative state. Governor Taft’s Administration was pushing the amendment. The bond issue was seen as being a GOP slush fund. The Columbus Dispatch on Sunday, November 6, 2005 showed Issue 1 passing with 53% of the vote. Official tallies showed it passed by 54%.

Issues 2-5, which was to reform Ohio’s electoral process. The Columbus Dispatch headline showed “3 issues on the way to passage.” The issues were 1,2, and 3. Reform Ohio Now, a bipartisan effort, backed the issues 2 through 5.

Issue 2 was to make it easier for Ohioans to vote early, by mail or in person. By Election Day much of the issue had already been put into law by the state legislature. The Christian Right opposed this amendment. There was wide bi-partisan support from Ohio citizen groups. The Columbus Dispatch poll showed that it was going to pass by 59%for 33% against and 8% undecided. It was defeated by 63.5% against, 36.5% for. This is a statistical impossibility. Support for the issue had to drop 22% over night and all 8% voting against.

Issue 3 involved campaign finance reform. Ohio’s Republican legislature raised the limits for individual donations to $10,000 per candidate per person for anyone over the age of 6 years old. The law also allows direct campaign donations from corporations, which was banned by federal law since Theodore Roosevelt’s Administration. The Christian Right also opposed it. And thou shalt take no gift; for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous. Exodus 23:8. Benito Mussolini is quoted as saying, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” This issue drew wide range of support from bi-partisan groups and newspapers around the state. The Dispatch showed that 61% were for and 25% against. It was defeated 33% for and 67% against. Again the results are a statistical impossibility.

Issue 4 was to end gerrymandering. The Dispatch showed 31% for and 45% against and 25% undecided. The election results were 30%for and 70% against. Issue 5 was to take the administration of Ohio’s elections away from the Secretary of State, giving control to a bi-partisan commission. This was prompted by J Kenneth Blackwell’s Administration of the presidential election while being co-chair of Ohio’s Bush-Chaney campaign. Diebold’s CEO held a $1,000 a plate fundraiser for Blackwell in Columbus, Ohio. The Dispatch had showed 41%for, 43% against and 16% undecided. The official result was 30% for and 70% against. The Dispatch’s polling has been accurate. The Dispatch is a powerful, conservative newspaper, which endorsed Bush in 2004. Ohio has been essential to every Republican candidate since Lincoln. (66)

The Sunday Dispatch November 6, 2005 headline “44 counties will break in new voting machines.” Forty-one of the counties “will be using new electronic touch screens from Diebold Election System.” According to General Accountability Office report all the electronic voting machines are easily hacked. The vote can be manipulated. Vote switching is easily done. The touch screen machines were brought in by Blackwell, he vowed to take the state to entirely electronic voting. (67)

SCIOTO COUNTY

In Scioto County, Ohio it was the first time the vote there was held completely with electronic voting machines that were manufactured by Diebold. Steve Mowery, Scioto County Board of Elections Chairman said this about the November 8, 2005 election, “They failed miserably. I don’t want to sound like we are casting blame, but I don’t know how else to answer these questions.” Remember what Steven Spoonamore, President, Cybrinth, Inc said at the beginning of this report about the “last county” Scioto County is traditionally Democrat! People gathered around the courthouse at 10 PM to hear the results. Even at 1 AM on Wednesday there still were no unofficial results. (68) The voting machine used in Morgan Township where I voted used an optical scanner. I filled out a form like the tests you take in school fill in the oval. After filling out the paper I took it over to put in a machine that looks like a paper shredder I kid you not! I asked the election volunteer about what happens next. I was told that the machine was to be taken to the courthouse to have the forms tabulated. I was assured that the machine was going to be secure and guarded as the paper ballots were.

Poll workers informed a friend during the November 8, 2005 election that if he wrote in a candidate for the city councilman he would not be able to cast a vote for the mayor race candidates. This occurred in Portsmouth Ohio in Scioto County.

Scioto County Board of Elections had results of the tallies just before 5 am Wednesday. The first precinct arrived at 8pm Tuesday at the Courthouse. In a meeting Wednesday Steve Mowery, Scioto County Elections Board Chairman, had a list of problems that included the discharge of Diebold’s local manager three weeks before the election. The replacement was inexperienced, malfunctioning machines, two machines when five was promised, absentee ballots were to large for the scanners, one scanner malfunctioned, one memory card was not formatted. Diebold and Dayton Legal Blank Inc. were at the meeting. “The Diebold Vice President of Operations, from Texas, who was in Columbus for the Ohio election was present for the Scioto County meeting.” said Rodney Barnett, Elections Board Member. Secretary of State Blackwell on November 9,2005 reported that more than 3 million (39.7%) of Ohio’s 7.7 million registered voters participated in the election. (69)
Scioto County board of elections director Nancy Shephard Republican (70) said that the optical scan voting system will eventually work. She said, “ I thought it would click right through, but we had people working their first election, and some weren’t used to dealing with the computer. Actually, once we got the memory card worked out, we moved right along.”
“ I would have liked to have seen the optical scan and the touch screen used,” Mowery said. Mowery also commented on privacy during voting. “ We’ve had reports that some poll workers hovered over the voters, and we certainly don’t want that, our poll workers did a good job, but there was just a lot to learn.” The board of elections had one month to train 450 poll workers. As of November 15, 2005, Nancy Shepard said that the provisional ballots had not been counted. (71)
Diebold Inc. and Dayton Legal Blank Inc has accepted the blame for the delayed results from the November 8th Election. “When things go as poorly as they did, the board of elections will face a lot of criticism, and in this case I think it’s unfair,” said Scioto County board chairman Steve Mowery. ”We want to make sure we understand the problems and the process as well as you do”, said Bob Urosevich, Diebold’s director of strategic planning. “It was a surprise to us that it went so poorly.” (72)
OTHER COUNTIES
Lucas County, Ohio did not get their results in until November 9, 2005. Lucas County used the touch screen voting machines. WilliAnn Moore, the president of the Toledo branch of the NAACP, she is planning to file a complaint with Mr. Blackwell about Tuesday’s election, claiming black-majority polling places were not properly run. City Councilman Michael Ashford agreed. The county did not have enough machines. David Bear, a Diebold spokesman said the company tried to facilitate the priorities determined by the board rather than to dictate how many machines should be used. (73)
In Ross County, Chillicothe, Ohio the old paper ballots was used. Wood County, Ohio officials had problems with the new machines their results were not totaled until 6:30 am November 9, 2005. Deputy Director Debbie Hazard said that votes from five polling locations were counted by hand because workers had set five machines so that the results could not be stored on a memory card. Sandusky, Ohio the optical scanners refused to accept hundreds of votes because of a printing error, they had to be hand counted. Dayton’s Montgomery County results were not ready until 7 am November 9,2005. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, used punch cards finished at 3:45am. A problem with this election was the use of a “rover” to collect Diebold memory cards. The memory cards were transported to a central location to be read by a tabulating machine. (74)


SUBSIDARIES AND FAMILIES or THE GODFATHER CONTINUES
Dayton Legal Blank Inc was bought by BRC, Business Records Corp in November 1985. BRC was a subsidiary of Cronus Industries Inc. Cronus Industries Inc., which was owned by a group of wealthy Texas power brokers. BCR specializes in providing election services and land records management to state and local governments and municipalities. On July 11, 1996 The United States of America Before the Securities and Exchange Commission brought proceedings against Alexander Sheshunoff, Sr. for violation of Section 21C of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, violated Section 10 (b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5. From July 1990 through April 1995, Sheshunoff executed buy orders for BRC stock at or near the close of trading on Stock market. It is an attempt to influence the closing price of a traded stock. This is considered stock manipulation. (75)
Howard Ahmanson and Richard Mellon Scaife have given hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades to political right wing projects including bankrolling investigations into President Clinton’s sexual indiscretions The Independent reported. Maybe they should investigate George W. Bush, Condoleezza (or should that be Condisleeza), made a Freudian slip. New York Times DC bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Bumiller, had a dinner party where Rice said “As I was telling my husb-“ when she stopped herself then said “As I was telling President Bush.” (hmmmmmmm) Mr. Ahmanson uses his fortunes to promote traditional family values, Christian right wing agendas. The agenda advocates mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards (Maybe they should start with Bush since he is an alcoholic, but first Mr. Ahmanson should try reading the words printed in red in his Bible. There are two commandments according to Jesus one is to love God and the other is to love one another.)
The Ahmanson family sold their shares in American Information Systems to the McCarthy Group and the World Herald Company, Inc. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems bought Business Records Corp. to become ES&S.
In 1996, Hagel became the first elected Republican Nebraska senator in 24 years. He won against the very popular Democrat Governor Ben Nelson. Hagel did surprisingly well in an election where the votes were verified by the company that he was invested in and was chairman of. In both the 1996 and 2002 elections, Hagel’s ES&S counted 80% of his winning votes. This information was kept secret from the public. (76) Corporate America loves Hagel. Business execs see him as an advocate of internationalism and free trade. Hagel has 100% rating from Business -Industry Political Action Committee. “He is a man of strong convictions who’s willing to fight for what he believes in,” says Lonnie Taylor, the Chamber’s chief congressional lobbyist. “He looks like a President or Vice-President.”(77) “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Benito Mussolini.
On May 23, 1997. Victor Baird, who resigned in January, 2003 as director of the Senate Ethics Committee, sent a letter to Chuck Hagel requesting “additional, clarifying information” for the personal financial disclosure report that all lawmakers are required to file annually. Baird required Hagel to identify and estimate the value of the assets of the McCarthy Group Inc. Hagel did not report the company’s assets. Senator Hagel’s involvement with electronic voting systems is a conflict of interest on election reform issues. ES&S and Diebold made large profits from the election reform legislation enacted by Congress in 2002. (78)
Bob Urosevich was the Programmer and CEO at AIS, before being replaced by Hagel. Bob now heads Diebold Systems and his brother Todd is a top executive at ES&S. Bob created Diebold’s original software. The brothers originally funded by neoconservatives control 80% of electronic voting in the United States.
In Maryland the voters were reassured when the state hired SAIC to monitor Diebold’s system. SAIC’s former CEO is Admiral Bill Owens. Owens served as a military aide to both Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, who works with George H W Bush at Carlyle Group. Robert Gates, former CIA Director and close friend of the Bush family, also served on the SAIC Board. (79)





IS OUR FREE ELECTION SYSTEM WORTH LOSING FOR PROFIT

Dr. David Dill says, “People who win elections have control over a lot of assets. When you are talking about the US national government, it’s hard to get into numbers bigger than that, while staying on this plant.” With contracts to supply and service the machines the public need to exercise caution. Douglas Kellner says, “We are talking about several billion dollars a year.” In fact some companies are involved in running elections in the US should cause alarm. The NC General Assembly approved $36 million to help counties buy the new machines. An optical scan system runs from $4,500 to $5,500 and electronic recording machines are from $2,900 to $3,800. The electronic machines end up costing more because the units are required at each precinct. (80)


Ted Selker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a proponent of e-voting says “ (the companies) hook their network to the voting machines on the day of elections to watch things and make sure things go well. We can’t have that.” (81)

Private companies have control over public elections Diebold in case with the owner guaranteeing Ohio’s electoral votes and giving huge donations is cause for suspicion. The point is that there is no way to prove an election has been fair. There is no way to perform an independent recount says Rebecca Mercuri, an e-voting expert at Harvard University. The computer prints out what is stored on the memory and cannot be checked against what the voter’s intentions were. Mercuri and others say that a paper trail to be logged alongside every electronic vote. (82)

The Government Accountability Office report confirms stolen election. CNN reported “more than 57,000 complaints” to the U. S. House Judiciary Committee. The report found “some of (the) concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.” The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to count and tabulate the votes. The GAO confirms:

Some of the electronic voting machines “did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.” 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, seven times Bush’s official margin of victory.

“It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate.”

“Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.” Easy to change election results on the memory cards leaving with no evidence
.
Access to the voting network was easily compromised because the digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password protected. Access to all the machines in the network.
The issue of the same user ID and password compromised access to the voting network.
The system was not protected. Locks were easily picked and the keys were easy to copy.
The DRE one machine that had a power failure could cause the entire system to fail. Sort of like the old Christmas light strands.
Problems with security protocols and background screening for vendor personnel.
The GAO findings confirm that the Ohio electronic voting network was vulnerable enough to allow a small group to turn the whole vote count using personal “home” computers with simple software. (83)
SO NOW WHAT SHOULD WE DO? SINCE:
1.) 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold & ES&S
2.) There is no federal agency with regulatory authority over the voting machine industry.
3.) The vice-president of Diebold and the President of ES&S are brothers. Bob & Todd Urosevich
4.) The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”
5.) Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who became Senator based on votes counted by his machines, owns 35% of ES&S.
6.) Diebold’s new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
7.) Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
8.) None of the international observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
9.) 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen systems.
10.) Bush’s Help America Vote Act of 2002 has as it’s goal to replace all machines with the new electronic touch screen systems.
11.) Triad’s affiliate, Psephos Corporation, supplied the notorious butterfly ballot used in Palm Beach County, Florida, in the 2000 presidential election.
12.) Republican Senator Chuck Hagel lied about owning ES&S stock.
13.) Exit polls for the 2004 elections were accurate within 1% or less in areas where ballot machines were used.
14.) Major exit poll data discrepancies were noted in counties where touch screen machines were used, in Ohio and Florida.
15.) In Ohio Sectary of State J Kenneth Blackwell ran Ohio’s presidential election while acting as co-chair with Tom Noe of Bush-Chaney Campaign.



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[nightscanner59]

3. Much like my own, researching this gets long and convoluted

Seems likely vote-flipping is likely done in relatively small increments throughout the country. I'm wondering how massive an effort the GOP'ers in bed with each other will put into delivering this election to Tromboney/Ryan just to get their taxes cut. Thank you for the info, many parts of that have the hair on the back of my neck standing up too, largely vindicates my suspicions about ES&S and Diebold.
There is some old behavioral research about greed in general I'm going to branch off into, capable of truly embarrassing the GOP greedy.

[nightscanner59]

4. Whoa, the wind turns quickly. Last night much tons of one of my links were different.

Update 1:20 pm satuday. Above largely contained solid GOP-fraud links quickly disappearing in favor of other, unrelated or more appearing to shift blame to democrats. It's an obvious info war zone today I should have copy/pasted to secure file, folks. Maybe I'd better be looking out for sniper fire today...

[BlueinOhio]

5. Nightscanner

I've been bring this up every time I can. Seems to fall on deaf ears. I'm glad you posted on this subject. As you can tell it is not a theory just plain fact. There has been a few more things since then. I think they did not dare try it to soon after 2004 election. Howard Dean was on a show that they hacked the machine on TV.

[Coyotl]

6. Investigate who the poll workers are. If you want to fix elections, get on the inside.

Does not matter the technology or much else, if you do not have honest poll workers. It only takes a few people in the controlling positions to fix elections.

[nightscanner59]

9. LOL, good idea, although the 85 year olds running the 08 polling place I went to

could barely operate their cell phones aside from inputting fix codes. What that did flag suspicion of a quiet place ripe for a voter- programmer to input the flip code. It was in a red state, and polling places and machines were plentiful... I wish I'd taken the day off and monitored the activity.
DON'T INTERNET VOTE IF THAT BECOMES AVAILABLE... spread the word.
Exit polls. Lots of them. Count the bodies going in to vote, at least, if they don't stop at exit poll since registrations provide their own paper trail. Absentee ballots have the mailed paper trail too, and prosecution has happened when a load of them found in trash!!! (link withheld... for now) Overturn these quiet nooks where oversight is lacking and we'll add up prosecutable evidence. It has happened, just not enough.
We've got wide enough a gap I suspect will get wider, so turning up the heat on this idea is necessary to BUST them if it becomes necessary for the shills to flip 1000 votes somewhere.
Its going to take work like this to keep all of us from paying the likes of Mitt's taxes for him.

[Doctor_J]

7. no, their best weapon is to send the perpetrators to real prison

"energizing the vote" among people who can't vote is not only useless, it completely abandons both the rule of law and the millions of people who want to vote and can't. OTOH if a few of these criminals were sent into the general population of a federal prison, behavior modification would be swift.

Your claim that justice cannot be meted out is a very big reason democracy is dead.

[nightscanner59]

8. Agreed, but energizing may spur the apathetic to register, even a few can make a difference--

I've succeeded in talking my struggling cousin and wife in Texas into voting for the first time. She started down the FAUX path about a year ago, but after losing their home... eh... Rombley's garbage doesn't resonate anymore. She realized the racist birther garbage was bullshit as she comparison shopped ("channel surf, girl!", I said, "don't put your eggs in one basket!&quot She's not the brightest crayon in the box, but she got educated to the Koch/GOP/Greed machine that fully linked up to the mechanism that foreclosed on her home. Now the tiny room they have to stay in with hyperactive child until he can get employed again has made a prison of her father's choices in the past, and she calls me with updates from more accurate sources.
Ron Paul has got this one right: set up exit polls, exit polls, exit polls, because I believe there are a lot more sensible swing voters out there who are hurting financially due to corporate greed policies and will surface as we get closer in to election time. I may travel to a UNDISCLOSED HERE red state polling place to vote, if I can afford to fly and exit poll voters there. I'm covertly continuing my investigations in a secure file, have voted with my wallet for now, have a protest to attend tomorrow and bring reg. forms-- These adjustments must be being made in relatively small increments during a relatively close race to avoid detection but detect this we MUST try to do so. Some exit pollers have managed to remove some of the dirty politicians... again, won't post link here.
All the more reason to utilize search tools, dig up the dirt, there's a ton of it available and some of it likely iron-clad, but I just learned a hard lesson to keep the majority of research to myself in secured files. I just saw for myself--several links from stuff I posted here disappeared, other I didn't copy/paste is intact. I had a few clean hours of finding dirty stuff, then between early this AM and just afternoon while emailing away some links, rechecks of some sites with damning evidence turned up something completely different?!?? (Jesus Saves site where one was, three other links from links I posted here now dead)
Such actions will probably be discovered by the original site poster's -- and I've emailed two of the ones I could find. There was plenty more I was just reading late night without copy/pasting the link. Another hard lesson in "loose lips sink ships" for me.