Election Fraud and Reform News, Monday 01/02/2006

Start the Year with a Memory from 1988…National Bureau of Standards Report:

It is proposed that the concept of internal control, almost universally used to protect operations that produce priced goods or services, be adapted to vote-tallying, a non-priced service. For software, recommendations concern certification, assurance of logical correctness, and protection against contamination by hidden code. For hardware, recommendations concern accuracy of ballot reading, and design and certification of vote-tallying systems that do not use ballots. Improved pre-election testing and partial manual recounting of ballots are recommended operational procedures.

” Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying “
Ray G. Saltman, National Bureau of Standards, 1988

It’s been known for YEARS and YEARS, and YEARS. They think we’re chumps.

Have a fanatic, I mean fantastic New Year!!! We will prevail.

Never forget the pursuit of Truth.
Only the deluded & complicit accept election results on blind faith.

Election Fraud and Reform News Monday 01/02/06

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.

If you can:

1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.

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All previous daily threads are available here:
http://www.independentmediasource.com/DU_archives/du_2004erd_el_ref_fr_thr_calenders.htm

Please

"Recommend"

for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

This is one outstanding book. I cannot recommend it too highly. {link: www.amazon.com/gp/product/078671591X/104-6392133-1527111?v=glance&n=283155 | Worth the time and money. You will see variations of every type of fraud you’ve heard discussed in 2000 and 2004. This book makes it clear that the presumption of a clean election is a naïve one indeed. I am autorank and I endorse this book.


http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/entertainment/books/13513320.htm
Posted on Sun, Jan. 01, 2006
BOOK REVIEW

Vote fraud is a serious problem, despite jokes

By Reviewed By Al Smith
SPECIAL TO THE HERALD-LEADER

<snip>

Although this is a national story, from George (Washington) to George (W. Bush), Kentucky's contributions to what Campbell calls "the long sordid tradition" of thwarting majority wishes are numerous: a 19th-century constitutional ban against ministers holding political office (because so many were opposed to slavery); elections by stand-up "voice" vote until the Civil War; the 1900 assassination of a Democratic nominee for governor, William Goebel, because Republicans feared his challenge to their nominee's apparent victory would prevail (they were right: Goebel was sworn into office on his deathbed); and the 1905 theft of a mayor's race in Louisville that was so blatant the courts overturned it, only to see the Louisville bosses, the Whalen brothers, return to power in the next election.

So what to do about buying votes, stuffing or destroying ballots, moving poll locations, transposing results, importing illegal voters, and suppressing and sometimes killing voters? Campbell, an associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky, offers these suggestions:
• Make absentee ballots "the rare exception." Our civic life is nourished by voting in public places, rather than by Internet or mail.
• Abolish the Electoral College and its "winner-take-all" opportunity for fraud at the presidential level.
• Expand campaign-free zones around precincts to discourage buying or intimidation.
• Insist that the courts energetically dismiss illegal votes and understand that fairly counting votes is as much a civil right as casting them.
• Finally, beware of any claims that technology offers a foolproof shield against fraud. As Doc Beauchamp hopefully suggested when voting machines were introduced in Kentucky: "What we need now is fewer precinct workers and more mechanics."

about the 2004 election. It's a short section that highlights the unverifiability of the count, and the persistent doubts of people from different political persuasions.

Looks good.

This is an informed, intelligent piece on election fraud and touch screens. We’re seeing a lot of these. Good news for all of us.

http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2006/01/news/
News & Politics > Voting 2.0

Voting 2.0
Will Your E-Vote Count?

By Cheryl Gerber | Illustrations By Dash Shaw

Imagine this: A Trojan Horse unleashes thousands of illegitimate votes and disappears without a trace, election commissioners bypass laws, uninvestigated computer glitches and easily picked locks in voting systems, no federal oversight holding e-voting vendors accountable—yes folks, elections can be stolen.
<snip>
"Maryland, where I live, uses Diebold DREs, which are an ideal opportunity for cheating," said Dr. Avi Rubin, Technical Director, Information Security Institute, Johns Hopkins University. "In fact, you couldn't come up with a better opportunity for cheating. There's no ability to audit or recount, and the entire process takes place inside the computer, which is not transparent."
In May 2004, Rubin co-authored an analysis of electronic voting systems, raising concerns about lack of security, for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world's largest professional organization for technical standards. He also served in 2004 as a poll worker and election judge in Baltimore County, Maryland, where he lives. These and other experiences have only served to raise his concerns about the possibility for cheating via the use of electronic voting machines.

How stupid can you be but maybe not. For every one of these cases uncovered, there are probably 10 that are not covered, never found out. This type of fraud, from dead men voting to lifeless machines switching, is endemic to our system of of elections. Think not, do some reading.

http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/Opinion-story.asp?ID=2418

Publish Date: 12/31/2005

Election fraud in Tennessee concerns voters

Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press:

Unfortunately, there are increasing signs that the recent election to fill a vacant Tennessee state Senate seat was anything but ideal.

The vacancy in Senate District 29 occurred when state Sen. John Ford, 31 years a member of the Legisla-ture, resigned after being indicted on bribery and extortion charges.

<snip>

But then, evidence of gross irregularities began to show up. The most striking point was the discovery that two of the “voters” were registered not only with the election commission but also on their tombstones in a local cemetery.

Well, here’s a good one. This well to do Washington State locality has to borrow voting machines from Nevada for an election. That’s like an accountant borrowing a computer and some books to do your taxes. It’s just plain strange. Lehto’s great law suit about the county ceding control of the election to outsiders is mentioned.

County borrows voting machines

It will cost about $30,000 to ship the units here from Nevada for elections this spring.


http://heraldnet.com/stories/05/12/30/100loc_b1voting001.cfmBy Jeff Switzer
Herald Writer

<snip>

By switching to all-mail elections, the county avoids the cost of permanently upgrading the electronic machines with the required paper audit devices.

The county would have to spend about $860,000 to buy the machines. An additional $686,000 in storage and other costs is anticipated Those costs are avoided with an all-mail election system, election officials said.

Meanwhile, Snohomish County still faces a lawsuit filed in April by Everett attorney Paul Lehto and John Wells. The two claimed the county's contract with Sequoia improperly cedes control over elections.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15849244&BRD=2259&PAG=461&dept_id=455154&rfi=6

You would think that at least one of these counties would come up with a decent method of evaluating election systems and share it with everybody, but they all seem to do their own thing. Its like the Medicare drug supplement. By making the market so confusing, you allow the vendors to have their way.

County wrestles with new voting machine law

By Elizabeth Skrapits, Staff Writer 01/01/2006

Under federal law, Luzerne County has to buy electronic voting machines, but uncertainty about whether the machines should have voter-verified paper records is complicating the decision.

Problems in Florida during the 2000 election led to passage of the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. The law requires all states to switch to direct recording electronic voting machines. (The problems in Florida were the incorrect purging of tens of thousands of legitimate voters; the intervention of the US Supreme Court when the State Supreme Court was handling the recount; the congressional staffer/lobbyist “riot” that stopped the Miami recount; the tossing of tens of thousands of black votes through “spoilage” and other under handed methods. HAVA does not address any one of those problems. It’s a boon doggle for Republican leaning vendors and an elegant method of stealing votes when everybody is worried about deadlines, etc.

The county has a self-imposed target date of Jan. 15 to decide which model of machine to purchase. The only state-imposed requirement is that the voting system be in place by the May primary, Luzerne County Director of Elections Leonard Piazza said.

<snip>

Verified voting advocates say the paper trails will prevent fraud and restore voter confidence, eroded after the 2000 election in Florida and problems with electronic machines in Ohio and other states in 2004. In April, Pennsylvania officials barred Beaver, Mercer and Greene counties from using the UniLect Patriot touch-screen electronic voting machines after votes were cast but not counted on the systems during the November 2004 election.

http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting.htm

Last updated 4/4/05

Vote Fraud And Election Issues Book Map

Chapter 1 — Introduction To Voting Problems
Chapter 2 — Essays On Voting Problems
Chapter 3 — Direct Recording Electronic Voting
Chapter 4 —Trust Our Election Officials?
Chapter 5 — Lies, Damn Lies, And Mail In Elections
Chapter 6 — Pitfalls Of Statewide Voter Registration Databases
Chapter 7 — Building Better Ballot Boxes
Chapter 8 — Voting Problems In The 2002 Elections
Chapter 9 — Voting Problems In The 2003 Elections
Chapter 10 — Voting Problems In The 2004 Elections
Chapter 11 —Election Web Sites And Problems

I'm glad I'm on this team, because we're gonna see this done.


The Happiest and Newest of Years, to you autorank.



:toast:

Happy New Year to You:



:toast:


DU, The "A-Team" of Election Integrity (reference for the slightly older viewers;)

"Be someone, or be someone's fool."

This is another mind blower. It’s a must read read and must bookmark. In paragraph 2, they lay it out: “It is proposed that the concept of internal control, almost universally used to protect operations that produce priced goods or services, be adapted to vote-tallying, a non-priced service.” Internal controls—do we have that now. This has been an issue for 17 years, at least. No progress, no improvements, just easier elections to fix. Amaxing. Read this introduction then check out the TOC. It will blow your mind.

http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/specpubs/500-158.htm

NBS Special Publication 500-158
Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in
Computerized Vote-Tallying
(Note: public document, US Gov., no copyright restrictions apply)

Roy G. Saltman

Institute for Computer Sciences and Technology
National Bureau of Standards
Gaithersburg, MD 20899

Sponsored by:

John and Mary R. Markle Foundation
75 Rockefeller Plaza, Suite 1800
New York, NY 10019-6908
August 1988

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

C. William Verity, Secretary
National Bureau of Standards
Ernest Ambler, Director

ACCURACY, INTEGRITY, AND SECURITY
IN COMPUTERIZED VOTE-TALLYING
Roy G. Saltman

Recommendations are provided to promote accuracy, integrity, and security in computerized vote-tallying, and to improve confidence in the results produced. The recommendations respond to identified problems, and concern software, hardware, operational procedures, and institutional changes.

It is proposed that the concept of internal control, almost universally used to protect operations that produce priced goods or services, be adapted to vote-tallying, a non-priced service. For software, recommendations concern certification, assurance of logical correctness, and protection against contamination by hidden code. For hardware, recommendations concern accuracy of ballot reading, and design and certification of vote-tallying systems that do not use ballots. Improved pre-election testing and partial manual recounting of ballots are recommended operational procedures.

Some recent significant events concerning computerized vote-tallying are reported. These events include development of performance specifications, publication of a series of New York Times articles, and activities in Texas leading to passage of a revised statute on electronic voting systems. Relative vulnerabilities of different types of vote-tallying systems, i.e., punch card, mark-sense, and direct recording electronic, are discussed. Certain recent elections in which difficulties occurred are reviewed, and categories of failures are highlighted.

Key words: accuracy; computer; election; integrity; internal control; public administration; security; vote-tallying.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

1.1 Problems Of Computerized Vote-Tallying

1.2 Government Responsibilities

1.3 Implementation Of An Internal Control Function

1.4 FEC Clearinghouse Specifications

1.5 Revised Texas Statute On Electronic Voting Systems

1.6 Recommendations On Software

1.6.1 Certification

1.6.2 Integrity and Logical Correctness

1.6.3 Dedicated Software Use and Dedicated Operation

1.7 Recommendations On Hardware

1.7.1 Accuracy of Ballot Reading

1.7.2 Elimination of Pre-Scored Punch Card Ballots

1.7.3 Counting of Rejected Ballots

1.7.4 Required Research

1.7.5 Design of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Machines

1.7.6 Certification of DRE Data Entry Logic

1.8 Recommendations On Operational Procedures

1.8.1 Pre-Election Checkout

1.8.2 Audit Trails

1.8.3 Complete Data From Split Precincts

1.8.4 Access Controls

1.8.5 Application Internal Controls for Ballot-Tallying Systems

1.8.6 Application Internal Controls for DRE Systems

1.9 Relative Vulnerabilities Of Different System Types

1.10 Review Of Recent Difficulties In Computerized Vote-Tallying

1.11 Future Vote-Tallying Systems

2. BACKGROUND, AND RECENT SIGNIFICANT EVENTS

2.1 Accuracy, Integrity, And Security

2.2 ICST's 1974/1975 Project On Computerized Voting

2.3 Some Pertinent Technological Changes Since 1975

2.4 Development Of Standards For Voting Equipment

2.5 Establishment Of The Election Center

2.6 New York Times Articles On Computerized Voting

2.7 California Attorney General's Report

2.8 Texas Controversy, Hearings, And Legislation: 1986/1987

2.8.1 Controversy Over 1985 Dallas Mayoralty Contest

2.8.2 Texas Secretary of State's Directive

2.8.3 Legislative Hearings

2.8.4 Revised Texas Statute on Electronic Voting Systems

2.9 Current Problems Of Computerized Vote-Tallying

2.9.1 Difficulty in Verifying Results

2.9.2 Possibility of Undiscoverable Frauds

2.9.3 Election Administrators' Lack of Knowledge and Resources

3. TYPES OF VOTE-TALLYING SYSTEMS, THEIR VULNERABILITIES,

AND THEIR NATIONAL DISTRIBUTION

3.1 Vote-Tallying As Part Of Voting

3.2 Paper Ballots

3.2.1 Vulnerabilities of Paper Ballots

3.3 Lever Machines

3.3.1 Summarizing Lever Machine Results

3.3.2 Vulnerabilities of Lever Machines

3.4 Punch Card Voting

3.4.1 Vulnerabilities of Punch Card Use

3.4.2 Types of Punch Cards

3.4.3 Voting With the "Votomatic" Card

3.4.4 Vulnerabilities of the "Votomatic" System

3.4.5 Voting With the "Datavote" Card

3.4.6 Vulnerabilities of the "Datavote" System

3.5 Voting With A Mark-Sense Ballot

3.5.1 Vulnerabilities of Mark-Sense Ballot Systems

3.6 Precinct Versus Central Count For Machine-Readable Ballots

3.6.1 Vulnerabilities of Precinct Count and Central Count

3.7 Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Machines

3.7.1 Summarization of DRE Machine Results

3.7.2 Vulnerabilities of DRE Machines

3.8 Software For Computerized Vote-Tallying

3.8.1 Vulnerabilities of Software

3.8.2 Integration of Administrative Software

3.9 Local Conduct Of Elections And Distribution Of System Types

3.9.1 The Number of Major Election Jurisdictions

3.9.2 Distribution of System Types

3.10 Future Vote-Tallying Systems

3.10.1 Technological Possibilities

3.10.2 Political and Social Priorities

4. SOME RECENT DIFFICULTIES IN COMPUTERIZED VOTE-TALLYING

4.1 Carroll County, Maryland: November, 1984

4.2 Charleston, West Virginia: November, 1980

4.3 Dallas, Texas: April, 1985

4.4 Elkhart County, Indiana: November, 1982, And November, 1986

4.4.1 November, 1982 General Election

4.4.2 November, 1986 General Election

4.5 Gwinnett County, Georgia: November, 1986

4.6 Illinois - Statewide Testing Program

4.6.1 Programming and/or Program Initialization Errors

4.6.2 Hardware and Punch Card Difficulties

4.7 Maricopa County, Arizona: September, 1986

4.8 Moline, Illinois: 1985 Consolidated Municipal And Township Election

4.9 Oklahoma County, Oklahoma: November, 1986

4.10 Palm Beach County, Florida: November, 1984

4.11 Salt Lake County, Utah: November, 1980

4.12 Stark County, Ohio: May, 1986

4.13 Summary Of Problem Types

4.13.1 Insufficient Pre-election Testing

4.13.2 Failure to Implement an Adequate Audit Trail

4.13.3 Failure to Provide for a Partial Manual Recount

4.13.4 Inadequate Ballots or Ballot-Reader Operation

4.13.5 Inadequate Security and Management Control

4.13.6 Inadequate Contingency Planning

4.13.7 Inadequate System Acceptance Procedures

5. APPLYING INTERNAL CONTROL TO COMPUTERIZED ELECTIONS

5.1 Internal Control And Computer Security

5.2 Internal Control As Control Of Assets

5.3 Voting And Banking Operations: Accounting Similarities

5.4 The GAO Concept Of Internal Control

5.4.1 Purposes of Internal Control

5.4.2 GAO Definition of Internal Control

5.4.3 GAO General Standards

5.4.4 The Concept of a Non-Financial Transaction

5.4.5 GAO Specific Standards

5.5 A Classification Of Internal Controls

5.5.1 General Controls

5.5.2 Application Controls

5.6 The Discipline Of Internal Control

5.6.1 Link to a Professional Body of Knowledge

5.6.2 Job Functions for Internal Control

6. DETAILED CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

6.1 The Continuing Problem Of Confidence In Results

6.2 Responsibility And Requirements For The Effective Management Of Elections

6.2.1 Government Responsibility

6.2.2 Expertise and Effective Management

6.2.3 Requirements

6.2.4 FEC Clearinghouse Performance Specifications

6.3 Implementation Of An Internal Control Function

6.3.1 Outside Recommendations vs. In-house Expertise

6.3.2 Achievement of Management Goals

6.3.3 Analysis of Risks and Impact on Public Confidence

6.4 Review Of The Adequacy Of State Laws And Regulations

6.4.1 Revised Texas Statute on Electronic Voting Systems

6.4.2 Effective Use of Technical Terminology

6.5 Future Vote-Tallying Systems

6.6 Transfer Of Technical Knowledge To Election Officials

6.7 Adoption Of FEC Clearinghouse Concepts For Product Acceptance

6.8 Software Certification, Performance, And Integrity

6.8.1 Certification of Software

6.8.2 Requirements for Certification

6.8.3 Integrity of Software

6.8.4 Dedicated Operation and Use

6.8.5 Logical Correctness of Vote-Tallying Software

6.8.6 Design for Specialization and Prevention of Logic Changes

6.8.7 Deposit and Availability of Certified Software

6.9 Accuracy Of Ballot Reading

6.9.1 Accuracy Goal

6.9.2 Elimination of Pre-scored Punch Card Ballots

6.9.3 Treatment of Rejected Ballots

6.9.4 Required Research

6.10 Design of DRE Machines

6.10.1 Recording of Each Undervote

6.10.2 Retention of Voter-Choice Sets

6.10.3 Accuracy of DRE Machines

6.11 Certification Of DRE Hardware Logic

6.12 Selection Of A Vote-Tallying System

6.13 Pre-Election Checkout

6.14 Implementation Of Audit Trails

6.14.1 Full Ballots-Cast Data from Split Precincts

6.15 Access Controls

6.15.1 Site Controls

6.15.2 Equipment Access Controls

6.15.3 Transportation and Handling Controls

6.15.4 Voting Process Controls

6.15.5 Telecommunications Security Controls

6.16 Application Internal Controls For Ballot-Tallying Systems

6.16.1 Controls over Blank Ballots Printed and Distributed

6.16.2 Numbering of Ballot Stubs

6.16.3 Controls over Ballot Use

6.16.4 Control of Ballot Validity

6.16.5 Machine-readability of Ballot's Precinct Number

6.16.6 Accuracy of Telecommunication of Voting Data

6.16.7 Control for Vote Summarization

6.16.8 Vote Reconciliation by Contest

6.16.9 Recording of Undervotes and Overvotes

6.16.10 Recounting

6.17 Application Internal Controls For DRE Systems

6.17.1 Voter Count Match

6.17.2 Accuracy of Telecommunication of Voting Data

6.17.3 Vote Reconciliations

6.17.4 Recounting of Voter-Choice Sets

6.17.5 Post-Election Checkout

6.18 The Recommendations In Relation To The Identified Problems



REFERENCES

How They Could Steal the Election This Time

http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/dugger.shtml

by Ronnie Dugger

© 2004 The Nation
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.

July 29, 2004 — On November 2 millions of Americans will cast their votes for President in computerized voting systems that can be rigged by corporate or local-election insiders. Some 98 million citizens, five out of every six of the roughly 115 million who will go to the polls, will consign their votes into computers that unidentified computer programmers, working in the main for four private corporations and the officials of 10,500 election jurisdictions, could program to invisibly falsify the outcomes.

The result could be the failure of an American presidential election and its collapse into suspicions, accusations and a civic fury that will make Florida 2000 seem like a family spat in the kitchen. Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Labor Secretary, has written, "Automated voting machines will be easily rigged, with no paper trails to document abuses." Senator John Kerry told Florida Democrats last March, "I don't think we ought to have any vote cast in America that cannot be traced and properly recounted." Pointing out in a recent speech at the NAACP convention that "a million African-Americans were disenfranchised in the last election," Kerry says his campaign is readying 2,000 lawyers to "challenge any place in America where you cannot trace the vote and count the votes" .

The potential for fraud and error is daunting. About 61 million of the votes in November, more than half the total, will be counted in the computers of one company, the privately held Election Systems and Software (ES&S) of Omaha, Nebraska. Altogether, nearly 100 million votes will be counted in computers provided and programmed by ES&S and three other private corporations: British-owned Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, California, whose touch-screen voting equipment was rejected as insecure against fraud by New York City in the 1990s; the Republican-identified company Diebold Election Systems of McKinney, Texas, whose machines malfunctioned this year in a California election; and Hart InterCivic of Austin, one of whose principal investors is Tom Hicks, who helped make George W. Bush a millionaire.

About a third of the votes, 36 million, will be tabulated completely inside the new paperless, direct-recording-electronic (DRE) voting systems, on which you vote directly on a touch-screen. Unlike receipted transactions at the neighborhood ATM, however, you get no paper record of your vote. Since, as a government expert says, "the ballot is embedded in the voting equipment," there is no voter-marked paper ballot to be counted or recounted. Voting on the DRE, you never know, despite what the touch-screen says, whether the computer is counting your vote as you think you are casting it or, either by error or fraud, it is giving it to another candidate. No one can tell what a computer does inside itself by looking at it; an election official "can't watch the bits inside," says Dr. Peter Neumann, the principal scientist at the Computer Science Laboratory of SRI International and a world authority on computer-based risks.

BOOK COMMENTARY:

A Government Hijacked

Reviewed by William E. Betz

Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)

by Mark Crispin Miller

There is no joy in this book. It documents in excruciating detail overwhelming evidence of the broad-ranging election fraud that took place in the United States in connection with the 2004 national election. Unfortunately, the reaction of the typical naïve American to the fact that the election was stolen by the right-wing Republicans who are currently in power in this country has been an insistent disbelief. The indisputable facts have been either roundly disputed or assiduously ignored by the mainstream print and broadcast media, and the proponents of this ugliest of truths have been relegated to the status of tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists.

The subject of this book is self-marginalizing. It utterly destroys the reflexive "It can't happen here" response of those of us who refuse to believe that it HAS happened here. I say "those of us" because acknowledgement of the basic premise of the book is the most revolutionary of thoughts for anyone who has learned to believe in the sanctity of our electoral system, and the basic premise is extremely painful to admit in spite of the overwhelming proof: Our government has been hijacked by undemocratic forces that manipulated election results to reinstall the Bush administration, an illegitimate administration initially installed by a Supreme Court decision that invalidated the results of the 2000 election, an administration dedicated to world domination and the destruction of American democracy, the U.S. Constitution and the individual rights that made this country the envy of striving people throughout the world.

Why do we refuse to believe that it can happen here and, indeed, that it has happened here? The reason is that the inevitable conclusion that American democracy has been fatally compromised can lead to only one reaction: and that reaction is action. "And what if it's true?" people ask. "What can we do?" Indeed, what can we do? Can we go on as before? Certainly not. Can we ignore it? No. (Only the press can ignore it.) We as citizens have several options: vote the bastards out, have them removed by impeachment, or take up arms against them. Yet if elections, with the help of Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S and the other private machine proprietors and counters of votes, are permanently fixed, the first option is eliminated. In that case, we are truly doomed.

But, as Bush suggested in the days immediately following September 11, 2001, we have yet another option: we can go shopping. We can drink the Kool-Aid. Congress, by all indications, has opted for this most comfortable option. The author of this book thankfully has not.

snip

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2005/122105Betz.shtml


Editorials Discussion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x182451

:kick:

28 Dec 2005

ACCURATE announced advisory board

See our people page for the complete list and short biographies.

http://accurate-voting.org/people.html

Discussion
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x407302

December 31, 2005

All-mail voting may cut fraud

By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter

snip

Logan and Harris have disagreed often on election-security issues, but they agree on one thing: The county should acquire high-volume, digital-scan counting machines if it becomes the largest vote-by-mail county in the nation.

"There's no question that for a county the size of King County we would need a higher-speed tabulation system than we have now. She's right. That's the next iteration," Logan said.

Harris likes the new digital technology because the counting machines would record an electronic image of every ballot cast — images she said citizens could review to verify the vote counts reported by the county.

"This is the best example in voting of how you can actually use technology to make it more transparent and also, I think, make it more efficient. It's wonderful," Harris said.

snip

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002713287_voting31m.html


I gotta ask. What's so transparent about digitally recording a ballot??

Discussion
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x407354

Pennsylvania: Voters Announce 10-County Citizens' Coialition for a Voter Verified Paper Ballot

By VotePA

December 31, 2005

Voters from Westmoreland, Allegheny, Butler, Washington, Beaver, Mercer, and other Western Pennsylvania counties will announce the formation of 10-County Citizens’ Coalition For Voter Verified Paper Ballots at a press conference tomorrow, December 29, 2005 in the Westmoreland County Courthouse Square. The event is open to the public and will begin immediately after the Westmoreland County Commissioners meeting.

The press conference and formation of the group is in response to a reported “10-County Coalition” of Western Pennsylvania election directors and county officials formed to purchase electronic voting machines with money available under the Help America Vote Act. The citizens' group wants to be sure that the money is spent wisely, and that any voting system chosen in any county has the ability to produce a high-quality, human readable and recountable voter verified paper record or ballot.

“Voters and pollworkers, who will be most affected by the purchase of these systems, have been completely left out of the process in many of our counties,” says Marybeth Kuznik, Westmoreland County Inspector of Elections and Founder of the grassroots alliance VotePA. “For example, in my own county a decision has apparently been made with no public display of machines, no public hearing, and no opportunity for any input from the average voter. In the meantime, taxpayer dollars have been spent for many months on a high-priced private consultant from Virginia to advise our Election Director and County Commissioners as to what voting machine we should be using. Something is just not right with this picture.”

Kuznik, who served as one of the nine regional coordinators for the Green Party Recount of the 2004 presidential vote in Ohio, has been traveling all over the United States to speak about the need for voter verified paper ballots with audits of all elections, and how people can help the process as the new HAVA-compliant voting systems come into use by serving as pollworkers.

snip

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=658&Itemid=113

I have posted to the GuvWurld News Archive an .mp3 of my interview on KPFT. Mark Crispin Miller was on earlier in the hour. To hear the full program, download this.

Polling irregularities:
High-tech voting hasn't served California well

12/28/2005

Someone remind us again, what was so bad about punch-card voting?

Oh, yes, we vaguely remember grumbling after some election in 2000, something about hanging chads, Florida and the Supreme Court. But all that now seems like ancient history, whereas California's dismal experience with electronic voting machines is ongoing.

Following up on irregularities in the November special election, California's Secretary of State's Office has ordered one of the nation's largest manufacturers of voting machines - Election Systems and Software - to fix serious flaws in its systems.

And earlier last week, the secretary of state warned 17 counties about problems with certain Diebold Election Systems equipment. Both companies' machines may be deemed ineligible for use in next November's election.

It's a recurring story. In the spring of 2004, then-Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, citing the risk of breakdowns and tampering, briefly decertified the use of touch-screen voting equipment statewide. So far, the history of high-tech voting systems in California has been less than spectacular.

And that brings us back to punch-card voting.

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http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_3348344

Blazing A Freedom Path

Parallel Election in Travis County, Texas

by Vickie Karp, National Chair, Coalition for Visible Ballots

Originally Published - November 15th, 2005

Last Tuesday, November 8th, voters in the Austin area got to see “Democracy in Action” as 25 or so volunteers for VoteRescue, our local election rights group, held a “Citizens’ Parallel Election” with paper ballots, hand-counted. Our effort was funded primarily through Black Box Voting and was a joint effort, sponsored by BBV and blessed also by the Coalition for Visible Ballots. We covered twelve precincts in six polling places (each where two precincts were voting) and the experience was both exhausting and exhilarating! Our county uses the Hart InterCivic E-Slate machines, which provide no paper ballots, so we knew going in that even if we got great data, we couldn’t force a recount. We chose to move forward anyway as an exercise in democracy and to educate the public about the perils of e-voting.

Karen Renick, my co-producer of the event who formed VoteRescue this past summer, is a dedicated patriot whose number one passion is restoring voting rights to our citizenry: namely, through paper ballots, hand-counted in public view. We met in the summer of 2004 when she e-mailed the Coalition for Visible Ballots and her message was forwarded to me, as the National Chair of that organization. Realizing we were both in Austin, I invited her to a press conference we were about to hold at the Capitol while Bev was in town, demanding of our Secretary of State (at that time) paper “receipts” on our electronic voting machines. (BTW, this effort, which drew an overflow crowd and lots of press, was met with an instant rebuff by our S of S, who called us “special interest groups” who were discouraging voters from voting!)

Since that time Karen and I have kept in touch regularly and shared a hotel room in Nashville this past March during the first National Election Reform conference hosted by Bernie Ellis and his fine group. It was on the trip back that Karen and I first discussed the possibility of holding a parallel election with paper ballots, an idea first formulated by paper ballot advocate and journalist Lynn Landes and described on her website, www.ecotalk.com.

Our organizational efforts began in October and thanks to our local “Radio Free Austin” station, which got behind our effort totally, we had regular PSAs airing for weeks which were promoting our meetings. Richard Reeves taped the PSAs; Wes, the program director, played them every hour; Alex Jones and Jack Blood, who both have syndicated shows on this station, had interviewed me about our parallel election. This fantastic radio promotion became the main source of our volunteer election workers, who quickly formed a cooperative, high-spirited and dedicated commitment to our task-at-hand.

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_vickie_k_051230_blazing_a_freedom_pa.htm

Cast ballots . . . into the trash

By Tom Blackburn

Palm Beach Post Columnist

Monday, January 02, 2006

Here we go into another big election year. We will exercise our right to vote, and our political leaders will exercise their right to give a lick and a promise to counting our votes.

It will be six years since the flawed presidential election of 2000. The Republicans who control the state and nation have spent millions of dollars on election equipment since then. That didn't do much beyond enriching voting machine makers. In the process they smashed what was broken into smithereens.

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But undervoting remains a mystery. Sure enough, as soon as we got the touch screens in March 2002, 78 people took the trouble to go to the polls in Wellington in a runoff election with only two candidates and didn't record a vote. Why? We don't know. We could know if the equipment had a line on which the voter could say "None of the Above," or, if that sounded too negative, "I do not wish to vote in this race," or, in deference to younger voters, "Whatever." It could say almost anything, but there has to be some way for a voter to indicate he or she doesn't want to vote. Otherwise you have weird, unexplainable behavior to account for.

That is not rocket science. It's logic. It was one of the first suggestions the experts assembled by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech made when they looked at voting. It's only deference to politicians, who are afraid of being seen as if they lost an election to nobody, that keeps the ballots illogical.

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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2006/01/02/a10a_blackburncol_0102.html

Interpreted Code, Diebold, and California: a Primer

By Sherry Healy, California Election Protection Network

December 30, 2005

Interpreter Code = a translation program. There are Federal Election Commission ("FEC") standards set for the Independent Testing Authorities ("ITAs") dated 1990 and 2002. In 2002 the standards forbid "interpreter code" because it is not transparent--it's very difficult to see what is going on when you have two complex languages and something mediating the two. The other reason why it is forbidden is that it is easier to modify from the field. A memory card with malicious code can't perform its function without its partner--the interpreter code--lying in wait within the computers. All the CA Diebold equipment has interpreter code, including the precinct scanners--EXCEPT for the absentee ballot scanners.

Yes, Diebold is most certainly using interpreter code on their CA equipment (except the absentee voting scanners) . In fact Steve Freeman (our primary CA SoS sanctioned tech) even said so in November 2005. Scroll to end for his "Executive Summary."

What's Up In California with the Diebold equipment: Whether McPherson did it out of intelligence OR, more likely, it was just dumb luck--the fact that he sent the Diebold equipment back to the ITA's actually was, according to BBV, a stroke of genius. During the recent Voting Summit (that CEPN were persona non grata) all the experts more or less scape goated the ITAs for all the implications of negligence of due diligence (which is incorrect, because there's plenty of blame to go around). BUT we have long known that the ITAs are a "house of cards" that don't check for vulnerabilities brought to their attention by activists, which is a likely because they are partially funded by, and essentially work for, the e-vendors.

As a result the ITAs are being watched like never before and so now that McPherson has asked them to again review the Diebold equipment specifically with an eye for the possibility of interpreter code, then they will have a difficult time avoiding looking for it. If they claim it's not there, then they are liable. Alternatively, if they do reveal it is present, then Diebold will have to pull out of California, which would send shockwaves across the nation--at least 35 states would have to pull their Diebold certifications.

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http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=656&Itemid=113

Discussion
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