Wisconsin Ballots are Tabulated by Computer Optical-Scan Systems

[We Want Peace]

Wisconsin votes on mostly paper ballots --- are tabulated by computer optical-scan systems like the ones in Palm Beach County, FL which, in March of this year, had named several losing candidates to be the "winners". And like the ones in New York City which, in 2010, managed to toss out thousands of valid votes, including as many as 70% in one South Bronx precinct. And like the ones in Oakland County, Michigan where officials found the same machines failed to count the same ballots the same way twice in 2008. And like the ones in Leon County, FL which, in 2005, were hacked to entirely flip the results of a mock election.

In Palm Beach County, FL the failure was discovered during a state mandated post-election spot-check of 2% of the paper ballots. In New York City, it took nearly two years before the failures were discovered after the New York Daily News was able to examine the paper ballots via a public records request. In Oakland County, MI, election officials were lucky enough to discover the failure during pre-election testing. And in Leon County, FL, the hacker --- a computer security expert --- revealed the op-scan system flaw he exploited to flip the results of the election in an Emmy-nominated HBO documentary.


http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9332#more-9332

[Ellipsis]

1. .

[GarroHorus]

2. It's so ovbvious you'd better believe it!

Colonel Mustard stole the votes in the study with the lead pipe!!!!!

[SidDithers]

5. Now there's an interesting thought...

Sid

[ProdigalJunkMail]

11. indeed... n/t

[cali]

3. you really are spamming, dear.

how many threads on this have you started this morning? 10? 12?

[SidDithers]

7. An even dozen since yesterday...nt

Sid

[badtoworse]

4. So how come no WI Democrats are screaming about it?

[SGMRTDARMY]

6. I've been asking for proof of voter fraud from this poster

and so far, nothing but accusations.
At this point I think we all know what he is.

[2pooped2pop]

8. voter fraud is not a problem

election fraud is.

In one recent election, (not wisconsin) Bender, the cartoon robot won a county seat or some such position.

Easily hackable for a reason. Period.

[RobertEarl]

13. Yeah

Just imagine if the billionaires got the idea that if they owned the voting machine companies they would be the ones who counted the votes.

Good thing they never considered buying the voting machine companies.

[shcrane71]

16. Ooo be careful... better not say such things. nt

[SGMRTDARMY]

22. Ok, so put the proof out there that there was election fraud.

[2pooped2pop]

40. Bender wasn't running

election was stolen remotely. Do you really think they have a system so easily hackable by accident? The voting system of the United States of America? You think that is just, well, maybe a glitch?

No, it is not a coincidence.

[We Want Peace]

10. I posted this for you all who seem to have no understanding of how voting works

" Wow, I had no idea that they used online voting yesterday


OOPS, they didn't, so that study has nothing to do with any election anywhere as it was a study of an online voting system."

[GarroHorus]

18. You obviously have no idea how the system in your silly study works

It was an ONLINE VOTING SYSTEM.

I'd say educate yourself but that would be useless. Instead I'll just say obvious troll is obvious.

[GarroHorus]

12. No evidence and a spamming of a vote hacking article for online voting

So a redirect when asked for evidence. The study the poster cites has absolutely nothing to do with any voting system anywhere.

[We Want Peace]

14. it describes how they hack the vote with optical scanners, which are what they used in Wisconsin

your comments are a bit bizarre, are you having trouble with reading comprehension?

[GarroHorus]

15. It describes how they hacked an ONLINE VOTING SYSTEM

That is a system that has been proposed but not put in place ANYWHERE!

I'd tell you to get your facts straight but you apparently care nothing for facts but only want to gin up some false outrage and convince people there's no reason to vote because it's rigged anyway.

[We Want Peace]

20. so the ballots are not put through optical scanners and sent through a central tabulator?

??

[GarroHorus]

21. The central tabulators are not exposed to the internet through an online voting front end

In the study you cite, they hacked in through the online voting front end then changed the votes in the central tabulator.

In Wisconsin there was a central tabulator in each district that counted the optical scan votes, but there was no online voting front end connected to those tabulators, ergo, no way for anybody to get in and hack the vote. Each district reported their vote tallies up to the election offices for final tabulation.

So in order to flip the election, all central tabulators in all Wisconsin districts would have to be compromised from the inside, requiring a massive conspiracy in order to carry out on the scale of the win last night. If the vote difference was only a few hundred, then it would require only a district or two but the difference was hundreds of thousands of votes, so a massive state wide conspiracy would be required.

So please, stop spamming your nonsense until you understand how the study worked that you keep citing as evidence because it is evidence of nothing.

[eomer]

23. What study are you referring to? (link please)

The study the OP is referring to is, I believe, the hack in Leon County, Florida by Harri Hursti. Your representations of it are not accurate. It was not an online system that was hacked but rather a standalone optical scanner. And it's not true that the hacked machine was never used in an election. On the contrary, it was one of the machines that had been in regular use in Leon County.

The hack was on the optical scanner and then the hacked results contained in that scanner were carried through to the central tabulator by the regular upload process so there was no way to detect the fact that the vote totals had been altered barring a person looking at the actual paper ballots.

Here is a description of the Leon County hack:
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=798&Itemid=51

[GarroHorus]

24. Different study from the BBV thing you've linked to

I must apologize. I discount anything connected to Black Box Voting due to the huckster, Bev Harris, so I discount your 2006 article completely If you have somebody duplicating what they did more recently, I'll look at it but what you've linked to is something facilitated by Bev Harris, so I cannot accept it.

The OP has been spamming a Michigan state study where they hacked into a proposed online voting system for 48 hours, switching votes on the central tabulator. I've tried to explain how that is different from what Wisconsin uses, but the OP ignores it.

[Ellipsis]

25. eomer knows his stuff. BEV did'nt write it. I'd read it.

It's a classic. IF you don't know it, you don't know dick about election fraud... poser.

[GarroHorus]

26. Direct quote from the article

"The Leon County Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, authorized a "test" of his Diebold voting system to see if election results could be altered using only a memory card. Harri Hursti (photo at right), a computer programmer from Finland, who has been working with Black Box Voting, facilitated the test and it has come to be known as the "Harri Hursti Hack."

Working with BBV causes me to discount the findings right out. BBV goes after whoever loses the most recent election to convince them of election fraud to gain donations. They are hucksters.

Got anything peer reviewed? Something from a more legitimate IT source? Anything?

And let's assume we take what was given in that article to be factually correct and a hole that exists on the voting machines in Wisconsin.

To achieve what was achieved last night would require 3000 memory card switches on 3000 machines statewide. That's a masive statewide conspiracy.

So, it's definitely an issue to look into in any close election, and a close election would automatically result in a recount so the paper ballots would be examined, but certainly an election cannot be flipped by hundreds of thousands of votes in the manner described in the linked article without a massive statewide conspiracy.

[Ellipsis]

27. Duh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hursti_Hack Lots of info out there.

Most of the state here uses opscans with leading edge's for the handicapped.

[GarroHorus]

28. I stopped reading it when I got here

The participants were:

Ion Sancho, Supervisor of Elections, Leon County, Florida.
Thomas James, Information Systems Officer for Leon County, Florida
Bev Harris, Black Box Voting founder

No need to read any further than that.

[Ellipsis]

29. Really.... LOL, Poser. Harri Hursti Explains the Hursti Hack to the NH Legislature

[GarroHorus]

30. He's connected to Bev Harris

I cannot accept anything he says as credible.

[Ellipsis]

32. assumptive, misinformed, and a potential liar.... by your logic so is HBO, poser.

Harri Harras Hursti (born July 10, 1968 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish computer programmer[1] and former Chairman of the Board and co-founder of ROMmon[2] where he supervised in the development of the world's smallest 2 gigabit traffic analysis product that was later acquired by F-Secure Corporation.[3]

Hursti is well known for participating in the Black Box Voting[4] hack studies, along with Dr. Herbert "Hugh" Thompson. The memory card hack demonstrated in Leon County is popularly known as "the Hursti Hack". This hack was part of a series of four voting machine hacking tests organized by the nonprofit election watchdog group Black Box Voting in collaboration with the producers of HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy. The studies proved serious security flaws in the voting systems of Diebold Election Systems.


...you're just the other half of the duet.

[GarroHorus]

36. I biught into that Bev Harris garbage after Kerry lost

I won't be commerce again.

[eomer]

37. The Hursti hack and others like it prove a point - that there are no standards in place to assure

that election systems are secure.

The specifics in any particular election could well be different since the systems used are insecure and hackable from top to bottom. Especially if inside actors are considered then the hacking of any election is very plausible. Are you actually claiming it's not?

[GarroHorus]

41. I am claiming it is not any more than any system ever in recorded history.

No matter the system, there are ways to commit fraud. I claim that widespread computer fraud in elections is a myth.

If it's going to happen, it'll happen in a close election at a Kathy Nickolaus level, not via a statewide massive conspiracy.

[Ellipsis]

38. Pardon?

Bev has nothing to do with Hursti

[GarroHorus]

39. That's not what the article or the Wikipedia entry says n/y

[Ellipsis]

44. You have no knowledge unless it's fed to you and your'e still way off base.

You really shouldn't comment on Election fraud if you're trying to give the impression that you have background knowledge on it.

You don't have a clue.

[GarroHorus]

47. I'll damned well comment on the hucksterism of claimed election fraud.

It's a con. Always has been and always will be. It plays to basic human nature where people cannot accept the fact that they lost and that a majority of people disagree with them.

So go ahead, send more dollars to Bev Harris or Brad Blog if it makes you feel better. I'll sit back and laugh at the conmen making their dollars.

The Black Box Voting claims are as ludicrous as the GOP claims of massive voter fraud.

[BradBlog]

52. PLENTY of Peer Reviewed Science on this for ya...

Got anything peer reviewed? Something from a more legitimate IT source? Anything?

I'm sorry you feel it's wise to put someone's personality you dislike, over the VERIFIABLE SCIENCE they help produce. But since you asked, the following independent studies may help you. They ALL follow on the work of Harri Hursti, Bev Harris and BBV, and go many steps further in warning about the flaws in optical-scan technology, specifically Diebold/Premier op-scan technology and central tabulator, but I'm happy to provide other files from the same and different studies of op-scan system made by other companies if you are unable to use Google yourself:

CA (after Leon County "Hursti Hack" seen in Hacking Democracy):
http://www.votetrustusa.org/pdfs/California_Folder/DieboldReport.pdf

CA's "Top to Bottom Review" of E-voting systems:
Executive Summary: http://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/ttbr/red-diebold.pdf
Decertification (and reasons why): http://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/ttbr/diebold-102507.pdf
Source Code Report: http://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/ttbr/diebold-source-public-jul29.pdf
Red Team Report (HACK TESTING!): http://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/ttbr/red-diebold.pdf
Documentation Review Report: http://www.sos.ca.gov/voting-systems/oversight/ttbr/diebold-doc-final.pdf

OH's EVEREST Study:
Premier System Executive Summary Report: http://web.archive.org/web/20101227142224/http:/www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/upload/everest/11-PremierExecSummRpt.pdf
Premier System Technical Manager's Report: http://web.archive.org/web/20101227142224/http:/www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/upload/everest/12-PremierTechMgrReportRedacted.pdf
Premier System Technical Details Report: http://web.archive.org/web/20101227142224/http:/www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/upload/everest/13-PremierTechDetailsRedacted.pdf

You're welcome.

Brad

[2pooped2pop]

43. there's plenty of shit out there on hacking our glorious

voting system. You go ahead and believe it's all fine or make up a new excuse why you can't possibly believe any study but that just makes you what the republicans are counting on.

Check out bradsblog.com He did a lot of research into the stolen 2004 election.

[GarroHorus]

45. There's nothing credible out there about massive hacking of election systems

There's a lot of blog posts and the huckster crap from Black Box Voting.

Yeah, Bev Harris is a con artist. She conned Democrats after Kerry lost, then started conning Republicans after the Democrats won the House in 2006 and continued conning them after Obama won.

Now, apparently, she's back to conning Democrats because both sides simply cannot accept the fact that they lost.

[Ellipsis]

49. A lot of us did. I KNOW BRAD"S POSTS WELL AND HAVE CONVERSED WITH HIM, POLITELY I MIGHT ADD.

See, I can even post in all caps like he used to in his OP'S here. (I kid)



I've been to Brad's site many times and have listen to Brad on the radio, Brad's a good guy.

[BradBlog]

48. It seems you don't actually know what you're talking about here.

In Wisconsin there was a central tabulator in each district that counted the optical scan votes, but there was no online voting front end connected to those tabulators, ergo, no way for anybody to get in and hack the vote. Each district reported their vote tallies up to the election offices for final tabulation.

So in order to flip the election, all central tabulators in all Wisconsin districts would have to be compromised from the inside, requiring a massive conspiracy in order to carry out on the scale of the win last night.

First, many of the central tabulators are, indeed, accessible via the Internet. Second, a "massive conspiracy in order to carry out on the scale of the win last night." Such a "conspiracy" wouldn't have to be massive at all. Third, If you read the article that the OP links to (it's written by me), you'll have links to all of the op-scan failures mentioned in the piece, which include many MALFUNCTIONS of op-scan systems and tabulators, as opposed to only the hacks you seem to think are needed for the election results to be incorrect.

[GarroHorus]

50. Had no clue you posted here.

Read your blog once. I put it right up there with the birther sites.

[Ellipsis]

51. OH..... noesss busted, POSER. TROLL.

[GarroHorus]

53. Because I don't buy into the conspiracy theory bullshit?

If that's trolling, then I'm a troll.

I don't buy into anybody's conspiracy theory bullshit, I don't care what they claim about their political stances.

I never bought the truther bullshit. I bought into the Bev Harris bullshit for a while until I discovered just how much of a scam it was. Learned my lesson there. Won't go back. I damned sure wouldn't buy into the Birther bullshit.

We can go on about this, but conspiracy theory bullshit from the left (Oh noesssss!!! BBV MASSIVE FRAUD) or the right (ILLEGAL ALIENS IS STEALING MY ELECTION!!!!) about elections are hjust that, conspiracy theory bullshit.

on edit: I see I can do one thing, I can ignore the conspiracy theorists here.

[Ellipsis]

54. Then we agree. Don't change the frame, pal. I just said you were talking through your ass.

...and you are.





You going to come you might want to listen to what the other person is saying not make it up as you go along.

[BradBlog]

56. What "conspiracy theory bullshit"?

That's a pretty serious charge, so please be specific. Thanks!

[shcrane71]

17. Trolls always have problems with reading comprehension. nt

[Freddie Stubbs]

9. They are obviously sell-outs

[shcrane71]

19. Dems and Repugs agree... No need for a hand recount.

Whew... now that we've got another pesky election under our belt let's have a fundraiser! These bills aren't going to pay themselves.

[bleever]

31. Wow, lots of criticism of anyone who points out the essential flaws in a system

that has been proven to fail.

[ananda]

33. Really, the only solution is paper ballots..

.. which are kept on record.

[Ellipsis]

35. Most of the state votes on paper , but yes read by opscans, the ballot does stay on file.

...hand counted would always be my preference.

[Ellipsis]

34. ....you had to be there. Vanquished troll.

You know I agree with you but this is just stirring the soup.

[LadyHawkAZ]

42. It's so much easier to believe

that a few evil shadowy people are hacking voting machines and changing vote counts every time we lose an election, than to believe that so many people really are that stupid. Don't you agree?

[2pooped2pop]

46. actually I believe it's a combo.

fuckers are stealing the vote, and it's made ever so easy by public made stupid by the rightwing controlled media.

[LadyHawkAZ]

55. Some elections have been stolen

this wasn't one of them. 2000 Florida- definitely. 2004 Ohio- definitely. 2012 Wisconsin- nope. Stupid people.