:shrug: (A True "Bev-Bot" Speaks!)
There are hundreds of us working with BlackBoxVoting.org from Maine to Florida, California to Alaska, and all points in between. We even have a few very active members in foreign countries. There are thousands of other 'members' who visit on a daily basis. If you don't appreciate the effort that we're collectively putting out, feel free to go out and organize something better on your own, but please don't bash the rest of us for working with Bev as part of this 501(c)(3), non partisan, non profit, organization. BlackBoxVoting.org is a lot more than just Bev Harris, and we're all proud of what we've accomplished across the country so far, and proud of what we continue to do every day. We have never stopped , and we don't intend to.
There are a good number of us at BBV.org who have been working non stop on various projects and investigations since well
before the 2004 elections. It takes lots of people and many man hours to file all of the FOIA PRR's, conduct web searches and interviews, take depositions, and otherwise gather the documentation that provides solid evidence of what's really happening in our elections. We're developing the kind of evidence that stands up in court and leads to solid legal actions. There are many such actions that we're involved in, in one way or another, across the country.
What Black Box Voting.org is doing in Florida right now is the result of over a years work and over $7,000.00 in FOIA fees just for that county alone. That doesn't include the legal costs incurred fighting to get them. We have two URGENT actions happening here in California currently and we are working with several local grass roots organizations in various counties to help them co-ordinate their efforts for maximum effect at the state level. Contrary to popular belief we're
supporting local groups by sending representatives to speak at their events free of charge, and BBV.org donates $400.00 worth of books, that can be sold at the event, to help them offset their costs in hosting it. All proceeds raised at an event go to the local group hosting the event.
It takes lots of time and money to arrange 'real world' tests like those performed by Dr. Hugh Thompson and Harri Hursti. Those tests reportedly* cost around $100,000.00, the bulk of that paid for legal wrangling to allow them to happen, the rest on travel, meals, and accommodations to pull them off. (* I say
reportedly because there are complete financial
reports documenting every claimed expense per IRS rules.) Considering the damage that those tests did to the multi million dollar professional PR 'spin' campaign waged by Diebold and a consortium of other vendors, I consider that relatively small amount of money to have been well spent.
I see posts here claiming that Bev is somehow trying to "take credit" for, what are well known as, the "Thompson hack" and the "Hursti hack". It makes my head hurt just thinking about the absurdity of someone trying to imply that Bev Harris is somehow trying to "claim" that
she came up with the
"Thompson hack" or
"Hursti hack", or conversely, that
she and BBV.org had nothing to do with making those tests happen. Perhaps you should visit our web site sometime and get an idea of just how many people you're smearing, who we are, and what we're actually doing. :)
Here's what we're doing in Florida right now.
Posted by Bev Harris on Thursday, February 23, 2006 - 08:49 pm:
Records are being turned over the the Palm Beach County office of the
FBI Friday morning at 9:00 a.m. The internal logs of at least 40
Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and
date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the
middle of the night.
Black Box Voting had to sue former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor
of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004
presidential election.
After investing over $7,000 and waiting nine months, Black Box Voting
obtained the records. The voting machine logs contained approximately
100,000 errors, including 1,475 voting system calibrations while the
polls were open. Palm Beach County listed 4,313 voting machines in its
assignment log.
The most disturbing find though was several dozen voting machines with
votes for the Nov. 2, 2004 election cast on dates like Oct. 16, 15,
19, 13, 25, 28 2004 and on Nov. 2, 2010.
Black Box Voting ruled out the possibility that these were Logic &
Accuracy L&A test results, and verified that these results did appear
in the final totals. In addition to the date discrepancies, most had
incorrect polling times, with votes appearing throughout the wee hours
of the night. These machines were L&A tested, and those results had
the correct date and time.
According to the voting machine assignment log, these machines were
not assigned to early voting locations. The number of votes on each
machine also corresponds with the numbers typical of polling place
machines rather than early voting.
Many of these machines showed unexplained log activity after the L&A
test but before Election Day. In addition, many more machines without
date anomalies showed this log activity, which revealed someone
powering up the machine, opening the program, then powering it down
again. In at least one instance, the date discrepancy appeared when
someone accessed the machine two minutes after the L&A test was
completed.
Voting machines are computers, and computers have batteries that can
cause date and time discrepancies, but it does not appear that these
particular discrepancies could have been caused by battery problems.
The evidence indicates that someone accessed the computers after the
L&A and before the election, and that this access caused a change in
the machine's behavior.
Approximately 4,000 votes were cast on these machines. The vote
pattern and activity pattern appears to be identical to typical
patterns found on Election Day -- All votes on the discrepant machines
were spread over a 12-hour period, the length of time the Florida
polls are open.
A member of the Palm Beach County electronic voting technical
committee asked for the names of the technicians for Palm Beach who
had access to the machines during that time, but the IT person, Jeff
Darden, remained stonily silent and never answered the question.
The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, Arthur Anderson, said
that his staff had looked into the problem and that the votes were
normal, it's just that the dates somehow changed.
Other anomalies
• "Card Stuck" error: Occured at least 70,000 times.
The logs show that these cards were placed in the machine (which
normally "swallows" the card like old-fashioned ATM machines, holding
the card inside until the voting activites are complete, then ejecting
it). The logs show that the card was authenticated, indicating that
the machine believed the card was valid and had retrieved the
appropriate ballot. Just before the vote was cast, the "card stuck"
error appeared.
According to Michelle Shafer, who is now the spokesperson for Sequoia
Voting Systems,
She wrote that a card stuck error stuck error appears "any time an
activation card makes contact with the activator in the electronic
voting unit and comes back out. This happens for the following
reasons:
• A voter does not push the card all the way in so it comes back out
• A voter inserts the card again after haveing already used it to vote
once...
• A voter inserts the card backwards
• The card actually gets stuck in the machine (not typical)
Previously, a Sequioa rep attributed the card stuck error to jiggling
the card while it is inserted, however that doesn't seem to hold up
since it would take a pair of tweezers and considerable manual
dexterity to jiggle it.
As to putting the card in backwards or upside down, the message that
normally appears is probably the "invalid card insertion" message.
Because of the high number of these errors, and because no reports
were produced indicating that any voters had reported the card popping
out while they were trying to vote, Black Box Voting recommended to
Palm Beach that testing should be done to replicate the error, making
sure that the explanation holds water and that there is no adverse
impact on the vote.
A member of the Committee asked whether a testing day could be set up,
but Jeff Darden again sat stonily silent, and despite some prodding,
no such testing appears to be on the horizon.
• AC Power Off Incidents Any of us who use computers know that it is
not a good idea to yank the power from your machine while you are
entering mission-critical data, especially without a backup. (The Palm
Beach voting machines lack voter verified paper trails.)
Dozens of voting machines were turned off during the middle of the
election while the polls were open. Machine # 6359 in precinct 1036
was powered down 128 during the election.
Other power-related issues included "Main Battery not charging" and
"backup battery too low".
• "Unknown event" messages
A handful of machines showed "unknown event" messages, apparently of
different kinds. This is an interesting error message, since the FEC
guidelines frown on undefined exceptions. What is the point of having
an error message if you don't reveal anything about what the error is?
Machine number 5875 in Precinct 1077 showed two different "unknown
errors," listing them as "unknown error 219" and "unknown error 220."
• auto-act election info bad and "auto-act write ver fail" messages
also show up in the logs, with the "election info bad" message
appearing hundreds of times.
• Card encryption bad and Card read fail errors also appeared, with
the encryption error message the more frequent of the two.
• Polls closed and results report messages would be expected to appear
on every voting machine at the end of the voting cycle, but these
revealed problems with poll worker training and procedures at the
administrative/training level. Some logs reported one report printed,
some two, three, four or five, and several not only had no results
tape printed but showed no closing of the polls. (Closing the polls
tells the voting machine not to accept any more votes).
• Simulation not sim task was a message that offered no ready
explanation, and another that left us wondering was the "Maint
Official AT Report" error. Call a maintenance official? Maintain an
official AT report?
• SyErr 23: RC/AT Verify
and Sys Err 31: Vote Not Rec 1 imply a system error of some type, at
least one of which would affect the vote.
• EEPROM failure
Now this is a message you don't want to see on a voting machine. It
happened a couple dozen times.
The logs indicate that poll workers used significantly different
operating procedures from one place to another. One of the least
desirable actions some poll workers were taking was to perform
multiple calibrations on the machines during the day, every few hours.
Hundreds of records were simply missing, not provided at all, making
it impossible to complete a formal audit.
After meeting with the authorities to determine protocols about
releasing the detailed report, Black Box Voting plans to publish a
detail report giving full log details on the 40 machines accessed by
an insider.
------------------------------------------------------------
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE! Send all replies to reply address above.
Use this link to go directly to full article and discussion:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?1954/19421Peace!
Steven P. :kick:
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
