Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Wednesday 5/21/08

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Sarasota group battling state over accuracy of electronic voting.

Published 05.21.08
By Justin Richards

BY GARY FINEOUT
gfineout@MiamiHerald.com

Secretary of State Kurt Browning warned state election officials that the upcoming presidential election needed to go smoothly, as it ``will make or break Florida.''

Lynda Wellman STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 05/20/2008 10:45:40 AM EDT

By the Associated Press
Article Launched: 05/21/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

May 20, 2008 @ 11:59 PM
By CHRISTIAN ALEXANDERSEN

By Jessie Halladay • jhalladay@courier-journal.com • May 20, 2008

Few voting problems were reported in Louisville and across Kentucky.

By CHET BROKAW

CBS 42 Reporter: Bettie Cross
Last Update: 11:03 am

By GEOFF JOHNSON -DN Staff Writer

Good reasons to reject voter ID

Jay Paul Gumm

By solving a problem that does not exist, infringing on a right, we would have created many other problems.


By State Sen. Jay Paul Gumm

"Bumper sticker politics” is a means whereby extremely complex issues are made to fit on a bumper sticker. A measure defeated recently by the Oklahoma Senate is a perfect example of bumper sticker politics at its worst.

The issue was euphemistically called "voter ID.” The public perception of a "voter ID” bill is positive: "What could be wrong with simply requiring anyone to show identification before voting?” That sounds reasonable.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. The bill would have allowed a photocopy of a current utility bill to be used as valid voter identification. Rather than protecting from voter fraud, that provision opens the door for illegal votes to be cast as unchallengeable legal ballots.

My electric bill, like thousands of Oklahomans, arrives as a postcard. Say someone wanted to cast an illegal vote; such a person simply would have to get one of these electric bills long enough to make a photocopy of it. The postcard then could be returned to the mailbox from which it was taken. The homeowner would have no idea their bill was taken. With the photocopy of the stolen bill, the thief would be allowed to vote unchallenged and counted as a legal vote.

A second scenario is just as frightening. Say a senior citizen has never driven, has no driver's license and is driven by a grandchild to the polls. They have never been challenged on their identity. As is often the case in rural Oklahoma, the poll worker might even know the voter.

http://newsok.com/good-reasons-to-reject-voter-id/article/3246381/

May 21st, 2008

National Issues

Testimony of Jonah H Goldman Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary

By Jonah H Goldman, Director, National Campaign for Fair Elections, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights

May 20, 2008
The following testimony was presented to the US Senate Judiciary Committee on at a hearing on May 20, 2008.

This year, the Lawyers’ Committee will recruit, train and deploy over 10,000 legal volunteers to develop a nationwide comprehensive, year round program to work on all facets necessary to ensure the right to vote. We will support over 150 coalition partners, establish a productive dialogue with election officials, conduct strategic legal voter protection field programs and answer the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline. This hotline is the nation’s largest voter services hotline which, since its inception, has answered nearly 300,000 calls from voters across the country, including over 6,000 in this year’s primaries.

Mr. Chairman, the Congress has both a Constitutional and moral duty to protect the rights of all eligible Americans to cast a meaningful ballot. My fellow panelists, with whom I am proud to share this honor with, have laid out the historical and constitutional imperative to fiercely protect the right to vote. The 1st, 14th and 15th amendments give Congress the power to protect this fundamental right. Through the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act Congress has shown, with varying levels of success, a commitment to protect this right. In addition to the constitutional responsibility, there is another critical reason why this hearing – and hopefully subsequent remedial action – is so important. This country is the light of liberty and democracy. Our noble experiment in providing each citizen a voice in the destiny of her country – constantly evolving and made better through expanding the voices of those able to participate – is now the template for freedom around the world. The hope of our democratic institutions inspires nations to entrust power to the citizenry.

Of course, with this role comes great responsibility. We have a moral obligation to America’s voters to provide the most responsive infrastructure available. We have a duty to make our elections equally open to all eligible citizens, conduct them fairly, and transparent so all Americans have confidence in the process. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.

In this year’s primaries we have made strides towards honoring our democratic promise through historic voter turnout. This primary season, almost 50 million voters have already cast ballots. In Pennsylvania in 2004, fewer than 800,000 voters cast ballots in the presidential primary; this year over 3 million voters showed up to the polls. Georgia saw a 157% increase during that same time and Virginia added over 1 million voters to
its primary process this year as compared to the last presidential contest. Unfortunately, this civic exuberance has put tremendous weight on an already crumbling election infrastructure. This year Election Protection has recruited, trained and deployed nearly 2,000 legal volunteers and answered more than 6,000 calls to its hotline during programs on the season’s five largest primary days: February 5, February 12, March 4, April 22 and May 6. Attached to my testimony is a report the Lawyers’ Committee compiled highlighting the experience of voters across the country in those elections. This experience is consistent with what we have learned over the 7 years of this program and during the 45 years the Lawyers’ Committee has been working to secure voters’ rights.
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2866&Itemid=26

Thanks to AtLiberty for the post and the DU discussion here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x503053

Exclusive: Voting Machine Company Chief Lied to Chicago Officials About Ownership, Control of Company

Sequoia Voting Systems' CEO, Jack Blaine, Sends Deceptive Letter to Windy City Officials Following 'Evasive' and 'Troublesome' Testimony on his Company's Control by Smartmatic, a Chavez-tied E-Voting Firm

Documents Reveal Officials Sought to Ensure Venezuelan Company's Divestiture of Sequoia Was 'Not a Sham Transaction Designed to Fool Regulators'; Recent Reporting by The BRAD BLOG Reveals That it Was...

-- by Brad Friedman

The CEO and President of one of America's largest voting machine companies, Sequoia Voting Systems, gave both deceptive, and carefully selective answers in his reply to a letter sent earlier this year from two high-ranking officials in Chicago, according to documents recently obtained during an ongoing investigation by The BRAD BLOG.

Sequoia's chief executive, Jack Blaine, repeated knowingly false answers, at least three different times, in his January 18 response to Chicago Alderman Edward M. Burke and the Chair of Chicago's Board of Election Commissioners Langdon D. Neal. The pair had written to the company on January 11, expressing concerns about the truth behind Sequoia's claims that they had completely divested from their purportedly "former" parent company, Smartmatic, the Venezuelan-run firm with direct ties to Hugo Chavez and his government.

Last year, as media reports revealed the true extent of Smartmatic's shadowy foreign ownership --- and with it, the direct control of some 20% of U.S. elections --- the firm came under close scrutiny by federal investigators from Treasury Department, the FBI and the IRS. In November of last year, Sequoia announced that it had "completely" divested from Smartmatic in a management team-led buyout, thus ending an official review by Treasury's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

But in January, the officials from the Windy City --- where Sequoia holds one of the company's most lucrative contracts --- had continuing concerns about whether the sale was legitimate, or simply a dodge to avoid scrutiny by federal investigators. They were right to be concerned...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6005#more-6005

Thanks to Wilms for the post and the DU discussion here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x502828

Rebecca Mercuri: Voting Advocates Roundtable Discussion (EAC)

Written Testimony by Rebecca Mercuri
Representing: The BRAD BLOG
Voting Advocates Roundtable Discussion
EAC Offices, Washington, DC, April 24, 2008


The 2007 draft Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) represents a significant departure from earlier Federal voting system guidelines (2005 EAC, 2002 and 1990 FEC), while still retaining much of the certification framework that has been increasingly demonstrated to be problematic. Within the guise of certification, the past few years have seen billions of Federal and State tax dollars squandered on the purchase of voting systems that were subsequently revealed as inappropriate for use, and then discarded. We now know that the VVSG, and its ITA testing program, provide no assurance of process or equipment correctness, either to those who are making procurement decisions, or to the citizens who must entrust their votes to these systems. Tragically, the net result of this false validation has led to further erosion of voter confidence in elections.

This draft VVSG continues to perpetrate this scam. Among other changes, it recognizes earlier shortcomings of the certification process (especially in the areas of voter verification, transparency, audibility and security) by introducing an innovation class that allows for the submission of novel voting system paradigms for certification, and provides for the (somewhat related) adoption of a software independence requirement. Unfortunately, both of these concepts are oxymorons in the context of voting system specifications. Here’s why. If a construct is truly innovative, the existing guidelines will not be able to appropriately address it, hence the resulting certification may be flawed or the implementation of the new design may necessarily be impeded by a lack of understanding as to how to properly perform certification. A system that contains software can never be software independent, even within the TGDC/NIST’s constrained definition that ties undetected changes or errors in software to election outcomes. Any software in the system necessarily affects a whole host of voting attributes that can affect election results, irrespective of undetected changes or errors.

Furthermore, neither the innovation class nor the software independence requirement are satisfiable due to legacy constraints imposed by the certification process. This is, at least in part, because the 2007 draft VVSG (like its predecessors) masquerades as a functional standard, while actually continuing to be predisposed to existing designs. Even the TGDC’s description of the innovation class makes design assumptions, such as its limiting “expect most technologies in this class be based on multiple mutually auditing components.” But even as a design specification, the draft VVSG falls short of achieving its goals of specifying “how voting systems should perform or be used in certain types of elections and voting environments.” This is because the guidelines repeatedly make the erroneous assumption that insiders (i.e. vendors, repair personnel, election officials, etc.) are trusted agents in the highly partisan process of US elections. In reality, insiders have both motive and opportunity to make changes and cover up the fact that they have done so. Where errors have been blatantly obvious, vendors go to great lengths (including lawsuit threats) to prevent independent examinations of equipment architecture and computer code. Some election officials have improperly conducted audits in order to avoid revelation that problems have occurred “on their watch.” In sum, virtually all of the checks and balances that are specified by the VVSG fail to take insider attacks into sufficient consideration. Voters believe that elections are inherently corrupt, and the VVSG does nothing to allay these fears.

Nor are the VVSG’s specified controls transparent enough to allow verification by the voter that the election system they are using has been configured properly. Production of a voter-verified paper ballot is utterly moot if vote totals are generated electronically and never checked against the original paper. Recent literature has suggested random audits (or spot-checks), but since these percentages are based on the computer-generated results, they grossly underestimate the amount of independent tallies that must be performed to sufficiently validate the election. These checks are not prescriptive as to what to do when anomalies are revealed. Courts have been reluctant to dismiss election results, even in the extreme, such as when over 80% of the precinct ballot counts differ from the number of signatures in the polling books and the vendor has admitted to deploying an uncertified configuration of voting system components in violation of State requirements (ref. The 2006 Franklin County, Ohio recount case of Carole R. Squire vs. Christopher J. Geer).


http://www.eac.gov/News/docs/mercuritestimonyapr08/atta... (.pdf)

By Vicki Ekstrom, Special to Stateline.org

By Ryan Paul | Published: May 21, 2008 - 08:13AM CT

:yourock: Sure is Spiffy looking!:bounce:

:woohoo:

:hi: