My email exchange with BOE's concerning Hart InterCivic eSlate Voting Machines

[MagickMuffin]

Email sent by me:

I have been following the electronic voting machines "human errors" stories ever since HAVA was passed after the 2000 General Election. I have serious concerns about the integrity of the machines.

I have included a link to a video that expresses my concerns. Please take the time to review the video, as it explains how Elections are manipulated by the vendors of these machines. Our votes are so precious and I hate the fact that with electronic machines there are NO way to confirm whether our votes have been manipulated since there are NO paper trail. That IS the main reason that I do not vote early. When I vote I get to choose a Paper Ballot.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKnIghBsU58&fmt=18

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My email was forwarded to the BOE Admin his response:

I appreciate your concerns and thank you for taking the time to let us know about them.

The video you sent deals specifically with Diebold equipment, which is a different company than makes our eSlate and eScan voting machines. Our
vendor, Hart InterCivic, has a very good reputation and their eSlate voting system is the only electronic system that was good enough to remain in widespread use in California after that state's
"top-to-bottom" review.

While we consider Hart a partner in conducting our elections, we are really independent from them regarding software and hardware issues.
They do not have access to our equipment between elections and when rare upgrades become necessary, are done in the presence of Tarrant County staff. We have not had Hart staff on-site for upgrades since some time in 2007.

Several years ago, Hart won the Samaritan Center Ethics in Business Award for its business practices.

I would also like to point you to the document on our website that explains how the eSlate and eScan systems work and why they can be trusted by voters. Tarrant County has had over 1 million votes cast on the eSlate system since it was introduced here in 2001 and we have never lost a vote. You can read the document by clicking the link below:

http://www.tarrantcounty.com/evote/lib/evote/2006/1172006/tarrant_vote_s
ecurity.pdf

Thanks again for the opportunity to respond to your concerns. Please don't hesitate to contact me if I can provide any additional information.

Thanks,


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My second email to the Admin:

Thank you for your response to the email that Germaine forwarded to you about the Diebold voting machines. As I had stated in my email I have been following almost every story that I can find regarding electronic voting machines. I am well aware that we use the Hart InterCivic voting machines, as I have read about their own set of problems in Tarrant County in past elections. Below I have posted some of the information that I have read about the issues concerning voting irregularities.

It was somewhat comforting to know that you claim that no Hart InterCivic employees or contractors have access to our equipment before an election. However, I still have doubts about Paperless Voting Machines.

I called the BOE's office last week to inquire about being able as a Precinct Chair to instruct voters to ask for a Paper Ballot so they could have a record of how they voted. I have inquired about this before. I have two conflicting answers about this. One person told me it was alright to do this, another person told me that I could not do this as it would be considered voter intimidation. I really don't see this as intimidation just to mention using one voting system over another. One system is more reliable and stable than the other, and of course the machines with Paper Ballots can come in handy when and if there is a need for a recount.

While I realize that you weren't the BOE Admin, the article below does point to some fishy activity during the 2006 elections here in Tarrant County. I included the full article about the machines in Tarrant County.

Thank you once again for your response. I hope you will read the article below and reassure me that our Hart InterCivic machines are reliable. Our votes are our only way to express how we want to be governed and if we aren't assured that our voting process is reliable, then it hurts our very Democracy. No matter which Party a voter belongs to we must have faith in our ability to express our rights by knowing that our machines tabulate our votes correctly.

I'm also concerned by the attacks on ACORN by Sen. McCain. He is NOT being truthful with his rhetoric. ACORN does NOT have the authority to register ANYONE. They can allow people to conduct Voter registration drives by letting people fill out APPLICATIONS, however, they go through every application and make determinations whether the applications look valid. If there is something that is questionable they FLAG those applications, before they turn them over to the BOE. ACORN is also required by law to turn ALL applications into the BOE's offices. The BOE's are responsible for actually registering the voters. As a Deputy Registrar I was informed that I could not even talk to an applicant what Party they supported. I'm sure that is the same in most states. The BOE's will NOT be registering Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, or Underdog. It is such a shame Sen. McCain has chosen this path of disinformation.


Blogged by Brad Friedman on 3/13/2006

100,000+ Votes Were Errantly Added by Hart Machines in a Single County in Last Tuesday's Primary via Flawed, Paperless 'eSlate' Touch-Screen System!

Former Hart Employee, Tarrant County TX Election Worker Notified State, Legal Authorities in 2004 About Serious Voting Machine Problems, Procedures...All Warnings and Complaints Ignored
Continuing in an exclusive BRAD BLOG series of Voting Machine Vendor and Election Fraud whistleblowers, another insider, from yet another voting machine company, has now come forward to reveal a myriad of known problems inside both the company and in several states and counties with whom they do business.

During last Tuesday's Primary Election in the state of Texas, scores of "computer glitches" --- as voting officials and electronic voting machine vendors like to refer to them --- were revealed occurred across the state. Many of those "glitches" occurred on electronic voting equipment manufactured and supplied to various counties in Texas by the Hart InterCivic company.

One such "glitch" occurred in Texas' Tarrant County, which encompasses Fort Worth. That "glitch" resulted in some 100,000 votes being added to the result totals across the county's paperless Hart-Intercivic "eSlate" touch-screen voting system.

Election Officials in Tarrant claim they didn't look into the problems on Election Night as the problem emerged because, as reported by the Star-Telegram last week, "they were dealing with a new system, new procedures and some new equipment."

The BRAD BLOG can now report, however, that according to a Hart InterCivic company whistleblower --- who also happened to have later worked as an "election programmer" in Tarrant County --- the problems with Hart InterCivic's systems in Tarrant County, Texas and elsewhere are not new at all. Not by a longhorn long shot.

Letters sent by William Singer of Fort Worth, a former Hart InterCivic "technical specialist" and Tarrant County election worker, to state officials back in July of 2004 warned of exactly such problems. The letters, obtained and published here for the first time exclusively by The BRAD BLOG, reveal that serious problems and concerns of possible election system meltdowns were already apparent with the Hart machines in Tarrant County long ago. However, the warning letters were all but ignored by both election officials and even state law enforcement officials.


The "glitch" in last Tuesday's primary, as reported the Star-Telegram, "caused Tarrant County to report as many as 100,000 votes in both primaries that never were cast." After the problem was discovered, they report, "the local turnout from a possible record high of about 158,103 voters to about 58,000."

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I sent him the full article from Brad Blog, but decided to only post a shorter version here.



I have yet to hear back from the BOE's Admin on my last email. Hopefully he will send me one later on today, as I'm sure they are extremely busy. Yesterday I called the BOE for my MIL's absentee application. I asked the person I spoke with if they had finished their task of registering voters. I was told they are still processing 2000/3000 applications a day, and they hope to be finished this weekend.

[sonias]

1. Good for you MM for engaging your BOE

Hart Diebold/Premire Systems, ES&S - all of them are pretty worthless on security. The Senate Committee on State Affairs had a meeting this past Wednesday to hear concerns about the E-Voting systems in Texas. I think they are finally asking the right questions. My thanks to Professor Dan Wallach who once again stepped up to the plate to testify against these paperless DRE systems in Texas. You can watch an archive of the meeting. The testimony of the Director of Elections starts at about 1 hour and 30 minutes into the hearing. Dan comes up much later.

Senate p/r 10/15/08
COMMITTEE LOOKS AT ELECTION SECURITY

(AUSTIN) -- With the general election only a few weeks away, the Senate State Affairs Committee heard testimony Wednesday related to the security of elections conducted in Texas. Following passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, all polling places in the US are required to offer electronic voting options at elections. State officials testified that the Texas election process is secure and efficient, but later testimony warned of possible gaps in election security.

Ann McGeehan, director of the Elections Division Office for the Secretary of State, testified that there has never been a documented case of voting system manipulation in Texas. Her office has approved three different companies that make electronic voting machines for use in the state, and sets standards for chain-of-custody of voting data, testing of machines and disaster recovery of ballots. Most of the work of preserving the fairness of the electoral process, she said, falls to county elections officials.

There have only been a handful of prosecutions for election related crime in Texas; 28 since 2005, according to Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice Eric Nichols. While there have been instances of people trying to cast votes for others, Nichols said there is no evidence of manipulation of electronic voting machines.

Later testimony cast doubt on the security of electronic voting machines. Dr. Dan Wallach, a professor of computer science at Rice University, called these machines "amazingly insecure". The machines are easy to tamper with, he said, and tampering with one machine can compromise every machine in a given jurisdiction. One recommendation he offered was following the lead of states like California and Ohio, and reducing the number of electronic voting machines in favor of traditional paper ballots.

The Senate State Affairs Committee is chaired by Senator Robert Duncan of Lubbock and vice-chaired by Senator Tommy Williams of the Woodlands. It consists of Senators Leticia Van De Putte, Chris Harris, Eddie Lucio, Jr, Mike Jackson, Rodney Ellis, John Carona and Troy Fraser.

Session video and all other webcast recordings can be accessed from the Senate website's audio and video archive pages.
http://www.senate.state.tx.us/avarchive/ (Pick the 10/15/08 hearing)

Sonia

[MagickMuffin]

2. Thanks for the info, Sonia

I'll have to check it out later, as I've got some errands to run. But I'll review it later on tonight.

:hi: