Key Documents

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38. Yale Study: What if one vote per computer is switched?
Small Vote Manipulations Can Swing Elections, considering the effects and implications of changing only a single vote per machine.
Communications of the ACM, October 2004, Vol. 47, No. 10.

37. Powell Memo for US Chamber of Commerce, 1971
Powell Memo, copy of original, readable if you print it and use a magnifying glass.
Powell Memo, more readable copy from Media Transparency
Gangs of America, Chapter 12, The Revolt of the Bosses, book by Ted Nace, chapter on implementation of the Powell memo

36. Works of Howard Stanislevic on Federal Standards
Are Standards Solving The Problems?
Certification: Who's Minding The Store?
Ciber Failures
DRE Reliability and MTBF
Gaping Hole in Standards
Olde Fashioned Loopholes

35. E-Voting Failures in the 2006 Mid-Term Elections,
January, 2007, by VotersUnite, VoterAction, VoteTrustUSA, and Pollworkers for Democracy.

34. Election Observation Handbook,
Fifth Edition, by OSCE, ODIHR (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights). OSCE includes Canada, the USA, and the broader European region including the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

33. Chuck Herrin explains why computers are the wrong technology for elections
"The Effect Of Computers on the Integrity of Vote Tabulation" Jan. 7, 2005.
Herrin's 78-page presentation is also available in PowerPoint.
Electronic Voting 101 for lawmakers and nontechnical persons by Dr. Justin Moore, December 4, 2004.

32. EDS Election Data Services, Voting systems in use, Feb. 6, 2006
69 million voters will use Optical Scan Ballots in 2006.
69 million will use Electronic Equipment.

31. FBI Computer Crime Survey, Press Release, Jan. 19, 2006.
Can your Board of Elections beat these odds?
87% of companies had security incidents.
64% lost money (shows severity of incident).
44% had intrusions by insiders.
2005 FBI Computer Crime Survey
FBI: Most Companies Get Hacked YahooNews, Jan. 20, 2006.

30. Testing Election Software Effectively
By John Washburn, VoteTrustUSA Voting Technology Task Force, Feb. 2, 2006.

29. GAO Report
Report from United States Government Accountability Office, September 2005, confirms security and usage problems with electronic voting systems.
Press Release from Davis, Waxman, Sensenbrenner, Conyers, Boehlert, and Gordon.
Press Release, pdf

28. Rosemarie Myerson: Cost Comparison of Florida Counties
Annual expenditures to run elections are 40% more for DRE counties than Paper Ballot-Optical Scan counties.
Cost of Evote Systems -- Expenditures for maintaining/operating DREs vs paper ballots-optical scanners.

27. DNC Report: Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio.
Report from the Voting Rights Institute of the Democratic Party, June 22, 2005.
Section XII, Recommendations for Future Action, page 3 paragraph 11:
"Jurisdictions should be encouraged to use precinct-tabulated optical scan systems with a computer assisted device at each precinct, in preference to touchscreen ("direct recording equipment" or "DRE") machines."
[WheresThePaper.org: That is recommendation 11. The computer assisted device would be the Vote-PAD, Automark, or other accessible ballot-marking device that enables voters with disabilities or minority languages to mark their paper ballot privately and independently.]

26. General Assembly of North Carolina, Legislative Fiscal Note
voting equipment cost comparison, two new felonies for vendors, source code examined by all political parties, bond for re-run of elections after machine failures.
Session Law 2005-323, Senate Bill 223 General Assembly of North Carolina, Session 2005.

25. Vote-PAD, Voting-on-Paper Assistive Device
This is an accessible ballot-marking device that is NOT computerized, a simple non-computerized device that enables voters with manual strength/dexterity disabilities to vote privately and independently using the same paper ballot marked by other voters with a pen or pencil.

24. Disenfranchisement of Minority Voters
New Mexico canvass data shows higher undervote rates in minority precincts where pushbutton DREs were used.
Paper ballots tabulated by optical scan systems had nearly identical presidential undervote rates for all ethnicities, but where the Danaher Shouptronic and Sequoia Advantage pushbutton paperless electronic voting machines were used:
-- Hispanic precincts averaged more than 3% higher presidential UV rates than Anglo precincts
-- Native American precincts averaged more than 5.5% higher presidential UV rates than Anglo precincts.
2004 and 2006 New Mexico Canvass Data Shows Undervote Rates Plummet in Minority Precincts When Paper Ballots are Used, Feb. 25, 2007.
Wrong Time for an E-Vote Glitch, Kim Zetter, Aug. 12, 2004 - DREs handled ballots cast in Spanish differently from those cast in English, showing the potential for ethnic profiling.

23. Automated Tests Can't Ensure that DREs Work

22. Accessible and Verifiable Voting Technology: A Feature Comparison
Verified Voting Foundation.

21. Frequently Asked Questions: Why Do Informed Citizens Oppose Electronic Voting?

20. Ban Communication Capability in Voting and Vote-tabulating Equipment!

19. Q&A against Evoting.

18. Documented Failures of Evote Systems
Recurring Themes -- the same failures and passive or corrupt responses by Boards of Elections.

17. VotersUnite, Election Problems, Nov. 2004.

16. Myth Breakers: Facts About Electronic Elections
70-page document, should be delivered to every elected and appointed official.

15. Electronic Voting -- Why It’s Bad For Democracy
14-page summary.

14. Yale Study: why evote machines must be 100% accurate
Apply the Yale Study to New York

13. New York Info

12. How to hand-count paper ballots.

11. Bev Harris: How to Hack Diebold's GEMS Central Tabulator, and How to Prevent Hacking

10. Chuck Herrin: How to Hack the Vote, with Pictures

9. Collected News, November-December, 2004

8. MicroVote Executives explain why certification fails,
Industry insiders speak.

7. 72% of computer software projects fail.
Why the Current Touch Screen Voting Fiasco Was Pretty Much Inevitable by Robert X. Cringely, December 4, 2003.

6. Sherole Eaton-Triad Affair, Privatization.
Elections professionals who are not computer savvy are easily conned. Ohio Recount Stirs Trouble by Kim Zetter, Wired News, Dec. 20, 2004.

5. a. Election Observers check list
b. CalVoter: 10 Security Steps
c. EFF: What to Look For

4. American Coup: Mid-Term Election Polls vs Actuals
by Alastair Thompson, November 12, 2002.
printable copy
Was the vote in some races in the U.S. midterm elections fixed by electronic voting machines supplied by republican affiliated companies? Scoop's analysis shows that - according to the polls - the Republican Party experienced a pronounced last minute swing in its favour of between 4 and 16 points. Remarkably this last minute swing appears to have been concentrated in its effects in critical Senate races (Georgia and Minnesota) where the Republican Party secured its complete control of Congress.

3. Diebold redefines undervotes so they don't have many
The common definition for "undervote" is a race for which no vote is cast. Diebold uses a different definition, so they can say their undervote rate is low and conceal their true undervote rate.
When Diebold counts undervotes, they only count races in which voters can select multiple candidates to fill multiple offices, and then only if the voter failed to select the maximum number of candidates allowed. Using this definition, a race for President would never have undervotes. Diebold refers to an unrecorded choice in such a race as a "blank vote" -- not an "undervote." So if someone claims that DREs have fewer "undervotes" than other systems, this may mean nothing. What should be asked is whether they mean "undervotes" or "blank votes", since the terminology may not be standard.
a. From GEMS User Guide Revision 3, Version 1.17.15; July 3, 2001, Glossary: "Undervoted Race: A race with less candidates selected than the number to vote for; cannot be a vote for 1 race."
b. Op cit. Pg. 2-61 in the AccuVote-OS (Op Scan) Options section: "Undervotes apply only to races with a number to vote for greater than 1 – an unvoted race with number to vote for 1 is considered blank voted."
c. From Diebold Election Systems Election Support Guide, Revision 1.0, Oct. 21, 2002: Section 5 "Election Day" [Applies to both OS and TS (Touch Screen/DRE)] "Remember that 'undervoting' in industry is generally considered to be no candidate selection or less candidates selected than the number to vote for, while we consider undervoting to be the latter only."

2. Polls are falsified, slanted, or modified after the fact
Can we discover election irregularities by comparing pre-election or exit polls to actual tallies, using numbers reported in the major media? Not if the major media misrepresents polling information.
2004 pre-election polls appeared slanted: Gallup defends results against MoveOn.org attack, USA TODAY, Sept. 29, 2004, page 6A, by Mark Memmott.
CNN exit poll data for Ohio appeared to change after 1 AM, November 3, 2004. http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/11/ana04025.html

1. Conyers Report
What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election, available for $8.76 from Amazon.com.