Post, Kick and Recommend....

....your FAVORITE VoteTrustUSA articles here!

Four Simple Rules:

1. All nominations must be VTUSA original content or articles posted on VTUSA with the permission of the author.

2. Employees of Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia or Hart Intercivic and their families, are not allowed to participate. All others are welcome to contribute!

3. Authors may NOT post any of their own material.

4. Segments from Lou Dobbs CNN "Democracy at Risk" series are of course permitted.

So let's see what the "cut-outs" at VTUSA have been doing for the cause of Election Integrity for the last year.

I'll start with one picked almost at random from the huge assortment available on http://www.votetrustusa.org but it's a good one. It's by John Gideon, the retired federal employee and Navy veteran who has served his country for many years and is now totally dedicated to the cause of free and fair elections. John recently had his good name dragged through the mud as part of some witch hunt initiated by other activists -- not unlike that other Navy vet from the same era in which John served: 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidate John F. Kerry. Remember those "swiftboat" attacks? What was it Greg Palast said about Karl Rove's tactics again? Well, anyway, I disgress...

Here is a piece of "cut-out" John Gideon's work for VoteTrustUSA which I hope everyone will enjoy reading again, or maybe for the first time, after which I think we should all thank him for his service to our country, our government and our cause.

After that, I hope others will submit some of their favs from the VTUSA archives too! (Maybe there's something by Andy Stephenson in there?)






Yeah, John's a "cut-out" alright. BIG "cut-out!"

Post your favorites here, enter as often as you like, and if by chance you don't have anything good to say about VTUSA, please say it somewhere else. Lots of other threads for that.

Peace out.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1493&Itemid=26
CNN's Lou Dobbs Covers Voting System Testing And Certification
By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA
July 11, 2006
In his ongoing series "Democracy For Risk",, CNN's Lou Dobbs focused on the lax standards and inadequate testing of voting systems in the United States yesterday. His guests included VoteTrustUSA's John Washburn, along with Michael Widman of the Brennan Center and DeForest Soaries, former chairman of the Election Assistance Commission.

Click Here to view the video.

A transcript of yersterday's segment follows:

Tonight, the federal government is failing to protect our democracy from an imminent threat. Electronic voting machines are open to fraud and can be compromised by hackers. But the federal government cannot enforce security standards for electronic voting machines. It hasn't set specific standards yet. Kitty Pilgrim reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

From Black Box to Pandora's Box
By Joan Krawitz, VoteTrustUSA
August 08, 2005

This speech was delivered at the Voting Rights and Electoral Reform Strategy Session on August 8, 2005 in Atlanta, GA.

Damn fine stuff, IMHO.

what to cut out and keep.

He's awesome. http://vvlobbydays.blogspot.com I can't believe we still do not have verifiable elections as a MANDATE in this country. It is such a disgrace. So many horrors have befallen US and our world since the stolen election of 2000, and more since 2004. It has cost us dearly.
We are not living in a democracy IMHO, when we have leaders that are fighting to prevent fair elections.

Maryland activists have put up a vigorous fight, but the deck is stacked
against them.

Maryland: Lamone Finds A Firm That Will Approve Diebold Paperless Voting

By TrueVoteMD June 02, 2006

SBE Responds to Calls for Independent Testing of Diebold Machines
By Hiring a Diebold Apologist Rather then a Security Expert to Conduct Tests.
TrueVoteMD Calls Review a "Whitewash in the making"

Over the past five months, a Finnish security expert Hari Hursti
has tested Diebold voting systems used in many states.
He found serious security vulnerabilities both in the software,
PCMCIA cards that record votes and in the procedures surrounding
the voting machines. One of these vulnerabilities was detected by a
Maryland security assessment two years ago, but Diebold never fixed
the vulnerability. The newest attack is so serious that experts are
afraid to talk about its details publicly.

As these security vulnerabilities became known Governor Robert Ehrlich
expressed his view that he no longer trusted the machines. Candidates
and citizens called for independent testing of the machines and John Hopkins
Computer Expert Avi Rubin challenged the State Board of Elections to find
computer scientists who would verify that the system is secure....
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=55&Itemid=137

How Much Is American Democracy Worth?

By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA
July 23, 2006
Witnesses Reveal That While Touchscreens Are Expensive, Paper Ballots Are A Bargain

In his opening statement for the Joint Hearing of the Science and House Administration Committees last week, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) strongly endorsed the recommendations presented by Dr. David Wagner of the University of California Berkeley, for a voter verified paper record requirement and mandatory random manual audits. "I think all of us need to pay close attention to the testimony that will be offered today by Dr. Wagner and to his recommendations for making sure that electronic voting machines make voting more accurate and more secure, not the opposite." He specifically noted Dr. Wagner's recommendation that Congress require a voter verified paper record of every vote, stating "we also need to require paper trails … to ensure that election results can be checked."

But what about the cost? Rep. Boehlert was clear on that count.
"I don’t simply want to hear that the recommendations will be expensive.
How much is American democracy worth? As a nation, we ought to be as
willing to invest in election equipment as we are in campaign ads."
The statements and responses from the two state election officials
on the panel were revealing.

Those responses confirmed what numerous studies have shown:
the use of touchscreen voting systems is vastly more expensive
than paper ballot voting systems...

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1564&Itemid=26

I just can't beleive this BU**SH** is still going on. I saw that disgsuting NC senator on TV this AM, she makes me gag, as do her letters. I am frankly so very angry over this issue, and all the DEATHS that have actually resulted, and many more will follow, from the loss of our democracy.

Ohio: Choice Nuggets From The Cuyahoga County Election Report
New from States - Ohio

By Joseph Hall, University of California, Berkeley
July 22, 2006
This article was posted on Joseph Hall's Not Quite A Blog.
It is reposted here with permission of the author.

The three-member panel investigating the disasterous 2006 primary
in Cuyahoga County, OH have issued their report.
The report is amazingly detailed.
And it is really scary what a little bit of sunshine will expose
in a sufficiently complicated local election administration.

Here are choice nuggets I have come across

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apparently, the numerous places that vote data were stored on decreased the care in which data was handled:



Here, they wanted to record absentee votes on DREs, but the OH SoS office instructed them not to produce a paper trail (and to do this, they had to load the paper rolls backwards):



The CCBOE did not agree with the SOS's decision, which it had given orally, to have the DREs set up so they were unable to create a VVPAT.

Lost memory cards are dangerous. If someone did use a Hursti II-like hack to modify vote totals, disappearing a memory card would be a great way to hide the evidence.



http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1559&Itemid=113

*Note, thanks to the cut-out team at Vote Trust for getting Lou Dobbs
to cover this issue and to keep covering it. He's hooked now...

DOBBS: More evidence tonight that many of this nation's elected officials remain somewhat out of step or just completely in the dark as far as their constituents are concerned. At least half the states in this country are now requiring a paper trail for electronic voting machine ballots. But in Maryland, that kind of common sense and concern about our democracy has hit a roadblock. Kitty Pilgrim has the report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After 2002, Maryland switched to all electronic voting machines. But this year the governor became worried about voting security and decided the state needed to move to a voter verified paper system for the upcoming midterm election. The House voted to switch from the Diebold all electronic touch screen system to a system with a paper trail. The governor set aside $20 million to switch. But the measure was killed by the state Senate.

ANDREW HARRIS, MARYLAND STATE SENATE: The governor put money in the budget. Everything was lined up to go, and it just failed in the last few days of the session because I think the Senate leadership and the committee leadership didn't want it to pass.

PILGRIM: Many Maryland officials are outraged at Linda Lamone, the state administrator of elections. She gave a litany of excuses for not making the switch. Some voters would find it too difficult to use the paper ballots and using paper ballot technology would stop innovation on a new system in the future.

LINDA LAMONE, STATE ADMINISTRATOR OF ELECTIONS: It's going to stifle and it has already to some extent, the development of any other kind of independent verification technologies.

PILGRIM: The director of policy for the governor charges that Diebold had undue influence of election administrators.

JOSEPH GETTY, MD GOVERNOR'S DIRECTOR OF POLICY: There are two states that started very early with Diebold, Georgia and Maryland, and those are the marquee states for the Diebold system. Both election administrators, Linda Lamone in Maryland, have a national reputation based upon their quick advancement of e-voting in Maryland.

PILGRIM: He adds...

GETTY: ... In Maryland politics, strange thing happen all the time. Obviously, the vendor had lobbyists working the issue.

PILGRIM: So Diebold's electronic voting machines will be used for all 24 voting districts in Maryland in November.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PILGRIM: Now, Maryland election officials defend their decision. They say we take machines from Diebold, we run additional tests and as a result we have a high level of confidence in the system. But the rest of the country is more concerned. And 27 states around the country have introduced legislation to require a voter-verified paper trail because of security concerns, Lou.

DOBBS: The House wants it, the governor wants it, the Senate leadership and the committee leadership along with the Lamone, who apparently is very enthusiastic about Diebold voting machines, fighting it. Is this a Republican/Democrat issue?

PILGRIM: They say that politics are involved, but they say really it's more that they're very beholden to the system that's in place.

DOBBS: Is the Senate Democrat or Republican?

PILGRIM: Democrat.

DOBBS: Democrat. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Kitty Pilgrim. This is incredible, this story on e-voting machines and the impact around this country.

Still ahead here, more of your thoughts, in particular on the Middle East conflict and outsourcing, plus the results of tonight's poll. Please stay with us.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0607/26/ldt.01.html

<http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1475&Itemid=51>

DRE Reliability: Failure by Design?

By Howard Stanislevic, Research Consultant, VoteTrustUSA E-Voter Education Project

March 16, 2006

Abstract – The Election Assistance Commission’s Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) are developed by a Technical Guidelines Development Committee1 that includes participation by the International Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) – a 375,000-member non-profit professional organization whose code of ethics states that its members shall “accept responsibility in making engineering decisions consistent with the safety, health and welfare of the public.” We show herein that the VVSG Reliability standard for e-voting systems, expressed as a Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of only 163 hours, is woefully inadequate, resulting in voting systems of lower reliability than mechanical lever voting machines in use for over 40 years. This standard allows 9.2% of all e-voting systems to fail in any 15-hour Election Day, and a much higher failure rate during the extended “Early Voting” periods now being implemented in many states.

At a Voting Systems Testing Summit held by California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson last November in Sacramento, Carnegie Mellon University computer expert Michael Shamos, a voting-systems certification official for the state of Pennsylvania, is reported to have asked publicly, "Why are we not in an uproar about the failure of (touch-screen voting) systems?…I have good reason to believe that 10 percent of systems are failing on Election Day. That's an unbelievable number."2

An examination of the Reliability standard approved by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) shows that this spec is highly consistent with the 10% failure rate Dr. Shamos finds so outrageous. As to why there is no uproar, we can only assume it’s because the American electorate has not been properly informed concerning this issue – until now.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1057&Itemid=26

Never mind fraud - the things don't even work.

above less important threads.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x443332

Key Component of Voting System Undergoes No Review

I post this in Honor of Bill Bored since this is his favorite topic! BDF's BDF's BDF's!!!


Thanks to John Gideon for this post He and VOTER'S UNITE Rock!!!!!!

Key Component of Voting System Undergoes No Review
By VotersUnite.org
July 25, 2006
Every voting system includes a key component, called the ballot definition file (BDF), that is never subjected to an outside review. Given that BDFs determine the way votes are recorded and counted, the lack of independent oversight of these files is a major security vulnerability. If BDFs are incorrectly prepared, the wrong candidate could be elected. Furthermore, while BDFs may be primarily data, they also include logic and perhaps even other software that could change the outcome of an election.


BDFs are unique for each election and define all the races and candidates for each precinct. BDFs tell the voting machine software how to interpret a voter's touches on a screen or marks on an optical scan ballot (including absentee ballots), how to record those selections as votes, and how to combine them into the final tally.

Programming election data is a very complex process, especially in counties with hundreds of different ballot styles, and a single error can jeopardize the outcome of an election. Some election districts lack the technical expertise to prepare BDFs, and instead depend on the vendor or outside programmers for the preparation. Others prepare the BDFs themselves. In both cases, however, BDFs undergo very little testing and no independent audit before being used to determine the results of an election. Little wonder that many serious election disruptions have been caused by ballot definition errors. Other BDF errors have probably gone unnoticed, and some may have affected election outcomes.



Virtually all of the proven ballot definition errors occurred on optical scan equipment and were caught by a manual recount of the ballots.

A few examples:
• 67,000 absentee and early-voting ballots were counted incorrectly. (New Mexico, Nov. 2000)
• A difference in ballot data on different machines resulted in miscounts in 18 races. (Texas, April 2002)

• 2,642 Democratic and Republican votes were counted as Republican. (Florida, Sept. 2002)

• Victories for two commissioners were initially given to the wrong candidates. (Texas, Nov. 2002)

• 5,500 party-line votes, both Republican and Democrat, were uncounted. (North Carolina, Nov. 2002)

• Loss reported for a candidate for County Board of Supervisors was really a win. (Iowa, June 2006.)

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1573&Itemid=26

Hey, the Ambien hasn't kicked in yet and I missed the qualifying rules.

And to say that browsing that website brings joy to my heart.

Where's Greg Palast's boogyman? What was his description of the ChoicePoint/VTUSA relationship again?

**Much thanks to Vote Trust for getting Dobbs to cover the e-voting story**

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DOBBS: In our series of reports here we call "Democracy at Risk," we've chronicled the threat to the integrity of our electoral system posed by e-voting. More than half of all voters in this country are expected to cast their ballots on electronic voting machines this November. As we've documented here, electronic voting machines are not only vulnerable to severe malfunction, but to fraud.

In a special election in this past May, one county in Ohio demonstrated just about all that can go wrong in an election with e- voting and just how much of a threat e-voting is to this country.

Kitty Pilgrim reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Cuyahoga County, Ohio, was all geared up to use electronic voting machines for the first time, but the election held on May 2nd turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. Many of Cuyahoga County's e-voting machines just didn't work.

The Diebold voter registration system dropped or displaced several hundred registered voters. Some Diebold touch-screen machines froze up, others crashed. On others, the paper record jammed up.

Cuyahoga County also used optical scanners. The thick black lines on some of the ballots interfered with the system reading them, and even when the machines worked many of the poll workers weren't sufficiently trained to instruct voters or answer questions.

REP. STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES (D), OHIO: At the end of the day, poll workers were supposed to take a card out of the machine, put in it a bag and send to it the board of elections. Well, some of the workers closed down the machine, left the card in the machine. At the end of the day, there were cards that were still in machines and not being counted.

PILGRIM: The so-called ease of electronic voting turned into a nightmare and embarrassment because Ohio accepted $100 million in federal money to buy the machines.

JUDGE RONALD ADRINE, CUYAHOGA SELECT REVIEW PANEL: Absentee ballots could not be scanned by the machines that were designed for that purpose. And so as a result, ended up doing a hand count on those ballots, some 17,000 of them, that took about six days following the election to complete.

PILGRIM: Afterward, a panel grilled election officials. A 400- page damage report identified dozens more problems.

The paper rolls were loaded backwards so they did not print election results. Election results were recorded on so many formats, memory cards, a central computer, internal memory of the machines, and paper rolls, nobody could figure out the tally. Memory cards were lost on Election Day and were never found again.

Security was lax. Sixty people took machines home with them for the weekend before Election Day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PILGRIM: Now, the board of elections refused our interview request. The county won't have to wait until November for another e- voting test. The special election in August has everyone holding their breath. And for November, the county's trying to get as many people as possible to vote absentee ballot to cut down on confusion at the polls.

And yes, Lou, they are sticking with those e-voting machines that the state took $100 million to install.

DOBBS: I mean, that's breathtaking in terms of a failure of the electoral process. I can't imagine why the board of elections in Cuyahoga County didn't want to talk with you. That's just amazing.

PILGRIM: Yes, it's astonishing.

DOBBS: Where is Diebold in this? What does it say about what is happening?

PILGRIM: Yes, we spoke to them and they sent us a statement. They're basically in denial about this.

They said only one county in Ohio had problems with their machines. And the exit polls said that people -- 95 percent of people said that the machines were easy to use. This does not address the problem they had in trying to tally the vote.

DOBBS: A minor, minor consideration when one is holding an election is to be able to count the vote.

Thank you very much.

Kitty Pilgrim.

That brings us to the subject of our poll tonight. Are you considering an absentee ballot to avoid problems with e-voting machines in your state come election time? Yes or no?

Cast your vote at LouDobbs.com. We'll have the results here later in the broadcast.


http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0607/27/ldt.01.html

by Warren Stewart

April 01, 2006
Among their many activities, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) chairs the Election Assistance Commission's Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC). The TGDC is responsible for the development of the nation's Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG), which although optional for the states, are pretty much mandatory for e-voting vendors who are expected to build to these standards. This is one reason why Diebold's use of interpreted code which is in violation of these standards, has come under so much scrutiny.

As previously reported one aspect of the VVSG itself that is severely deficient is its Hardware Reliability spec that allows almost 10% of e-voting systems to fail in any 15-hour Election Day. Such failures, especially of touch screen machines, have resulted in voter disenfranchisement, possibly even affecting the outcome of elections.

Suggestions for improving this standard (which dates back to 1990) made by experts such as Dr. Stanley A. Klein, Dr. Rebecca Mercuri and Alfred DuPlessis (a bona fide Reliability Engineer) as early as 2002, appear to have fallen on deaf ears in both the IEEE Voting Systems Standards Committee as well as the EAC itself as recently as last year when this issue was raised in public comments on the 2005 VVSG.


http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1151&Itemid=26

by John Gideon
Executive Director http://www.votersunite.org
Information Manager http://www.votetrustusa.org

June 26, 2006

There is, for good reason, much concern and a lack of confidence in the process for federal qualification/certification of voting systems. Independent Test Authorities (ITA), who test the systems against federal standards, are not really 'independent' because they are paid to do testing by the vendors who also provide the test parameters. They look where they are told to look and go no further than that.

 

The next step in the process is review of the ITA test and the voting system by a panel of 'experts' called the Voting Systems Board Technical Committee. This committee is under the auspices of the National Association of State Elections Directors. One might think that this part of the process would be free-and-clear of any reason for concern. One would be wrong.

http://www.gaforverifiedvoting.org/docs/certified_by_unqualified.htm

Diebold's Deliberate Security Vulnerability
Contributed by John Gideon, VoteTrustUSA and VotersUnite.org   
May 12, 2006
Experts Agree: 'It's the Most Serious Security Breach Ever Discovered in a Voting System"Three States Issue Mitigation Plans, Georgia Ignores The 'Black Hole'

As was expected the corporate media picked-up the latest in Diebold's sordid story -- which we reported first here last Friday -- with articles by Ian Hoffman yesterday and today and even the Associated Press stepped in as well.
Unfortunately the headline of Hoffman's article yesterday characterized the security hole as being a 'glitch'; which this certainly is not. It is also not a 'flaw' as it was characterized by today's Hoffman and AP articles. (Ed note: Hoffman has been very good at reporting on all of these related stories, so we don't wish to be overly critical of him, but rather point out the inaccurate characterization.)

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1281&Itemid=51

Georgia Election Integrity Groups Call For Decertification Of Diebold Voting Systems
By Donna Price, Georgians for Verified Voting, and John Fortuin, Defenders of Democracy   
July 12, 2006
Georgians for Verified Voting and Defenders of Democracy are calling on the Georgia State Election Board and the Office of the Secretary of State to:

1) Immediately decertify the state’s Diebold Election System (DES).  
2) Begin immediate preparations for the deployment of an alternative means of voting in time for the 2006 General Election;
3) To contract with an outside, independent source for parallel testing to be conducted randomly in precincts in 3 counties in Georgia -- Cobb, DeKalb, and Fulton –- for the primary on July 18, 2006, as recommended by the Brennan Report, "The Machinery of Democracy:  Protecting elections in an Electronic World".

A security vulnerability recently exposed in the architecture of the DES is being called a "major national security risk" by computer science and security experts. The effect of this vulnerability is that voting systems could be infected throughout an entire state, enabling one attacker to alter election results statewide.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1497&Itemid=113

<http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1591&Itemid=113>



Gee even the MSM is catching on! What a country!
Thank you VoteTrustUSA!

(Except the June 15th one. If anyone has a copy, please PM me.)




<http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1403&Itemid=1108>

:kick: