The Ballot Ballet: The Usability of Accessible Voting Machines
by Darren Burton and Mark Uslan. They found difficulties
with all systems tested.
Accessible and Verifiable Voting Technology: A Feature Comparison
Verified Voting Foundation, June 21st, 2005.
VotersUnite.org info on voters with disabilities.
Voting Experience in November 2004 Election
In Santa Clara County California - Using Sequoia Voting Machines,
by Noel Runyan.
With his degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
Noel Runyan has been working in human-factors engineering
for over 35 years, primarily developing access technologies
for helping persons with visual impairments use computers
and other electronic devices. During the 5 years he worked
for IBM, he was involved in the design and testing of the security systems
for both BART ticket machines and ATM credit card systems.
VoteTrustUSA on voters with disabilities
Electionline on 'Hybrid' voting machines is an example of
pseudo neutral reporting.
National Federation of the Blind tests the AutoMARK
Dec. 1, 2004.
Inspire accessible voting system for voters with visual,
language, or cognitive impairments.
New York behind on voting machines, Common Cause says
By Rebecca Baker Erwin, The Journal News
October 25, 2004.
Diebold and the Disabled,
By Kim Zetter, Wired News, Oct. 12, 2004.
Financial connections and a partnership between one disability group
and the parent company of Diebold Election Systems
raise questions about motives and conflicts of interest.
Diebold and NFB
Blind group withdrawing voting machine lawsuit
By Devin Shultz, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette June 15, 2004.
A Verifiable, Accessible Vote,
June 14, 2004.
In a letter to the editor, Lighthouse International,
New York City's oldest and largest vision rehabilitation agency
serving people of all ages who are blind and partially sighted,
says they see no contradiction between accessible
voting and verifiable voting for all Americans.
The Disability Lobby and Voting
The New York Times, June 11, 2004.
Disability-rights groups have been clouding the voting machine debate by suggesting
that the nation must choose between accessible voting and verifiable voting.
Was money an incentive for some?
Don't trade flawed Diebold system for disabled access
Natalie Wormeli, Esq.,
Testimony before the California State
Senate Elections and Reapportionment Committee,
May 5, 2004, in support of SB 1723.
Weblog of Shawn Casey O'Brien,
political activist and author, co-host, co-producer of Access Unlimited
the disability awareness show heard every Tuesday at 3pm
on Los Angeles radio station KPFK, 90.7 fm.
AAPD - A Costly Lack Of Leadership
by Shawn Casey O'Brien, Truth to Power!, July 15, 2004.
Accessibility and Auditability in Electronic Voting ,
Electronic Frontier Foundation White Paper, May 17, 2004.
Blind voters rip e-machines
By Elise Ackerman, San Jose Mercury News, May 15, 2004.
The Americans with Disabilities Act: Does it Secure the Fundamental Right to Vote?
provides an overview of the substantial barriers to voting
that are faced by the disabled.
Lynn Landes' report
on the NIST Symposium
hints at the current politics surrounding accessible voting for the blind.
Blind voters get secret ballot ,
BBC News, March 22, 2001.
On October 10, 2003, the US
Department of Justice issued a
Memorandum Opinion
saying that DRE voting systems that produce a voter-verifiable paper audit
trail would comply with HAVA and the Americans with Disabilities Act so long as
they provide a similar opportunity for sight-impaired voters
to verify their ballots.
Voting Technology for People with Disabilities ,
a report published in March, 2003,
by Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and
The Center for Independence of the Disabled in New York, Inc.,
makes clear the types of accessibility features needed.
Follow the Money.
Doug Jones (see above, 2. Computer Scientists) reports:
. Almost immediately after the Hopkins
report came out, groups of handicapped rights activists began loudly defending
Diebold. Writers campaigning on behalf of disability rights almost immediately
began to characterize opponents of excessive reliance on computers as "a rising
chorus of geeks." There has even been well managed disruption of a
professional meeting by handicapped rights activists, at the USACM Workshop on
Voter-Verifiable Election Systems, where demonstrators (including Jim Dickson
of the AAPD Disability Vote Project) stormed the meeting and took over the
microphone to deliver their message supporting direct recording electronic
voting machines and opposing all forms of voter-verified audit trails as being
inherently inaccessible to the handicapped.
. This strident opposition to voter verifiability has baffled those who want
voter verifiability, since supporters of verifiability certainly do not oppose
the rights of handicapped voters. There is a strong possibility, however, that
this strident support for direct recording electronic technology is not the
result of dispassionate analysis, but the result of a partnership. On November
1, 2000, Diebold and the National Federation of the Blind settled a
lawsuit with Diebold centering on issues of accessibility of automated
teller machines. This settlement involved Diebold, the NFB and the Disability
Rights Council of Greater Washington, and while the focus was on ATMs, there
was also a five-year
$1,000,000 grant from Diebold to the NFB Research and Training Institute for the
Blind.
. This, of course, does not imply that handicapped activists are acting as
conscious agents of Diebold, but rather, that working in partnership with the
company, many handicapped activists may have developed a loyalty that colors
their perception of Diebold and of all stories that touch on the partnership
that they have developed.
12. Presidential Candidates on Verifiable Elections
Kerry promises vigilance at polls
By Brian E. Crowley, Palm Beach Post Political Editor, March
9, 2004.
Wesley Clark
Dennis Kucinich
13. Endorsers of Verifiable Elections
Essay opinion by Darryl R. Wold,
July 23, 2003.
The HAVA Requirement for a Voter Verified Paper Record.
Mr. Wold served as chairman of the Federal Election Commission during 2000,
and as a Commissioner from 1998 to 2002.
Many organizations
nationwide.
American Conservative Union Foundation
Unitarian Universalist Association.
UUA Resources
The Computer Ate My Vote
campaign by True Majority.
Common Cause
People for the American Way
endorses verified voting as a solution to security concerns,
and hopes for the development of systems that are fully accessible to disabled
voters as well as voters with limited English proficiency.
The
Democratic National Committee
's Resolution for a Voter-Verified Paper Trail
passed unanimously on Oct. 4, 2003.
Green Party of the United States,
May 21, 2004.
Many states have local organizations working for verifiable elections.
One example is the NY State Citizens' Coalition on HAVA Implementation,
which published a Statement of Principles on
New Voting Machines For NY State.
The statement calls for new voting machines to provide a
"voter-verifiable paper audit trail"
and incorporate "data-to-voice" technology
to ensure full access by all. 40 organizations have endorsed it.
Local governments are moving to endorse verifiable elections.
One example is the
Schuyler County (New York)
Resolution for a Voter-Verified Paper Trail.
On Tuesday, October 14th, 2003,
the Schuyler County Legislature passed this resolution
favoring voter-verified paper trail and urging New York State
to include that in its HAVA implementation plan.
14. News -- November-December, 2004
Click here.
15. Newspapers
Censored!, bu Camille T. Taiara, Sept. 7-13,
2005, San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Click
here.
16. Internet Resources
Center for American Progress ,
February 18, 2004.
Newsfeed
from VerifiedVoting.org.
Investigative articles and breaking news
on voting security and democracy issues by Lynn Landes at EcoTalk.org.
Find out who actually owns the companies who make, certify, report on,
and lobby for the use of electronic voting machines.
Her 11-page list of electronic voting machine
failures
is one answer to the suggestion that we should "trust" the computer.
Black Box Voting.org
is the web site of Bev Harris, author of
Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century.
The nonprofit nonpartisan Black Box Voting
organization focuses on investigation and citizen audits of elections, and acts
as a consumer watchdog group for voting. Their investigations played a major
role in bringing this movement into being. Here is her list of electronic
voting machine
failures.
article about Bev Harris
from the Seattle Weekly, March 10, 2004.
Activist: E-voting to be a 'train wreck'
By Rachel Konrad, Associated Press Writer,
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 3, 2004.
Videos Online as of July 5, 2005 includes the famous
garbage raid at the Volusia County warehouse, where BBV found
poll tapes and ballots in the trash, Broward County citizens standing up:
"What will it take for you to recognize that there’s a problem here?" and
Citizens standing up in a California hearing.
Excellent continuing coverage of voting machine news and politics from
Wired.
The Commonweal Institute has a useful
list of links
to many articles in the print and electronic media,
as well as other
information about electronic voting.
Pollwatch.org
is an organization dedicated to citizen exit pollers and has a good links page.
Scoop has a
list of links
to articles in the print and electronic media.
Maryland activists for
voter-verifiable paper audit trails have produced a great
flash movie .
To stay informed generally, there are many
alternative news sources
on the internet.
17. Internet Articles
(Partial listing Only! Your most important resource is the
newsfeed.)
Call to Action on Electronic Voting
By Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate, June 24, 2004. ...
If you don't think there are just as many bright,
14-year-old hackers who would rig a vote in favor of Democrats
as there are who would rig it for Republicans,
you've been neglecting the 14-year-old hacker set. ...
But I'm sure there are enough Republican conspiracy theorists
to contemplate the happy proposition that, while chairmen and CEOs
[of voting machine companies] may lean Republican,
there are any number of partisan Democrats lurking
in engineering departments and liberal moles in
software-writing offices. ...
72% of computer software projects are complete
or partial failures -- which means that the system doesn't work!
Computerized voting machines are no exception.
Why the Current Touch Screen Voting Fiasco Was
Pretty Much Inevitable
by Robert X. Cringely, December 4, 2003.
Georgia's "Faith-Based" Electronic Voting System:
Something's Rotten in the State
by Heather Gray. Published on February 12, 2004 by CommonDreams.org.
Read the University of Georgia voter satisfaction
survey
referenced in the article.
A Deafening Silence
by Brian D. Barry, March 4, 2004, CommonDreams.org.
I've always wondered what sound Democracy would make if it died.
Last night, I found out in Santa Clara, California.
The sound it makes is a deafening silence.
The evidence against electronic voting is so great,
why is are we still considering it?
Check out this group of new articles.
A Very American Coup
Ohio's sweeping review of electronic voting machines
turned up so many potential security flaws in the systems
that the state's top elections official has called off deploying them
in March.
Statewide electronic voting delayed
By Julie Carr Smyth. December 3, 2003,
Cleveland.com, The Plain Dealer.
The reports are available -- click "Statewide Voting Systems"
at
www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/hava/index.html
Electronic Rigging?
by Kim Alexander, President and founder of the
California Voter Foundation.
All the President's votes?
from the Independent.co.uk.
A quiet revolution is taking place in US politics.
By the time it's over, the integrity of elections will be in the unchallenged,
unscrutinised control of a few large - and pro-Republican - corporations.
Andrew Gumbel wonders if democracy in America can survive.
October 14, 2003.
The Theft of Your Vote Is Just a Chip Away
by Thom Hartmann. AlterNet, July 23, 2003.
A reviw of elections where electronic voting machines
appear to have altered the results.
Voting Machines Gone Wild!
by Mark Lewellen-Biddle, published in In These Times, Dec. 11, 2003.
"The backers of [HAVA] and the manufacturers of e-voting machines
are a rat's nest of conflicts that includes Northrop-Grumman,
Lockheed-Martin, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Accenture.
Why are major defense contractors like Northrop-Grumman and
Lockheed-Martin mucking about in the American electoral system?"
SAIC Connected To E-Voting Whitewash,
Sludge Report #156, August 23, 2003
How to Rig an American Election
Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines
Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
by
Bob Fitrakis, February 25, 2004,
in the Free Press, Columbus Ohio.
Former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell writes that one of the
favorite tactics of the CIA during the Reagan-Bush administration
in the 1980s was to control countries by manipulating the election
process. "CIA apologists leap up and say, ‘Well, most of these
things are not so bloody.’ And that’s true. You’re giving politicians
some money so he’ll throw his party in this direction or that one,
or make false speeches on your behalf, or something like that.
It may be non-violent, but it’s still illegal intervention in
other country’s affairs, raising the question of whether or not
we’re going to have a world in which laws, rules of behavior
are respected," Stockwell wrote. Documents illustrate that the
Reagan and Bush administration supported computer manipulation
in both Noriega’s rise to power in Panama and in Marcos’ attempt
to retain power in the Philippines. Many of the Reagan administration’s
staunchest supporters were members of the Council on National Policy.
Gentle readers, please do a web search on "ES&S Venezuela CIA 2000"
and variations of these words, and note the strategic
significance of Venezuela in the global oil business.
A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America
by Victoria Collier, October
25, 2003.
Voting into the void
by Farhad Manjoo of Salon.com, November 5, 2002.
18. Election and Government Information
EPIC's Public Information Requests on DRE Voting Technology,
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Example of EPIC's Info: No-Bid Contracts Go to Vendors with Close Ties to Election Advisory Group.
Foundation Center, non-profit guidelines and how-to's
Election Data Services
The Election Center
The Election Center is a private organization with public powers.
Collected info at North Carolina Voter
David Jefferson's Response to The Election Center's document,
"DREs and the Election Process," July 31, 2005.
National Task Force Report on Election Reform, June, 2005
Report without graphics (much smaller download).
New Report on Election Reform Dead on Arrival,
'Election Center' Becomes Latest Election Reform Group
to Have Sold Their Souls to Diebold, Credibility Matters.
Blogged by Brad on 6/7/2005.
Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election
June 2001 Report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Greg Palast article, summary of Florida's 2000 "felons purge list".
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that the purge list,
which contains 57,700 names, had 8,000 (14%) falsely purged individuals
(as the Palast article notes, nearly 15 times George Bush's 537-vote win).
Article with a copy of a page from the list with the names of 4
falsely purged individuals.
Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio,
Report from the Voting Rights Institute of the Democratic Party.
June 22, 2005.
The report recommends the use of
precinct-based optical scan systems which are the most
"accurate" voting systems available today,
reasonably priced, and which satisfy HAVA requirements
in a cost-effective manner with devices such as the ES&S AutoMark.
Section VII is on "Electronic Voting: Accuracy, Accessibility, and Fraud"
The BradBlog comments on it.
Election Agency Proposes Secret Voting Standards, June 14, 2005.
Documents obtained by EPIC under the Freedom of Information Act
reveal the complete draft standards for voting technology. The
standards, which were developed by the Election Assistance Commission,
could determine how votes will be tabulated in future elections. Other
documents obtained by EPIC reveal
vendor attempts to influence the development of the standards.
THE ISSUE
By January 1, 2006, states are required to meet the voting standards
developed by the Election Assistance Commission to receive federal
funding. Most states have already applied for or received a portion of
$3 billion in federal grants to purchase new voting technology.
THE BACKGROUND
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found that current
voting technology standards do not ensure accurate election results.
The Election Assistance Commission is responsible for developing
standards that will establish trust and confidence in the
nation's election system.
THE SIGNIFICANCE
Secret voting standards undermine trust in the nation's election
system. The public has a right to review the proposed standards and
to know if those proposed by the Election Assistance Commission differ
from the standards recommended by independent technical experts.
Voluntary Voting System Guidelines Version I,
Initial Report,
May 9, 2005.
Elections: Electronic Voting Offers Opportunities and Presents Challenges,
by Randolph C. Hite, director, information technology,
before the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy,
Intergovernmental Relations, and the Census, House Committee
on Government Reform. GAO-04-975T, July 20, 2004.
From the conclusion: "The problems that some
jurisdictions have experienced and the serious concerns being surfaced by
security experts and others highlight the potential for difficulties in the
upcoming 2004 national elections if the challenges that we cited in 2001 and
reiterate in this testimony are not effectively addressed."
The International IDEA Handbook of Electoral System Design
is available in English, Spanish, French and Arabic.
All editions are available for download.
Hard copy editions are also available in English.
The Center for Voting and Democracy
is dedicated to fair elections where all voters have an opportunity to be
represented. This web site has discussions of many democracy topics, such as
Full Representation, Instant Runoff Voting, Redistricting, Voting Rights,
Cumulative Voting, Student Elections, Plurality Elections, Voter Turnout, etc.
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,
Is America Ready to Vote?
Election Readiness Briefing Paper, April, 2004.
ElectionLine.org
What's Changed, What Hasn't and Why: Election Reform 2004,
issued January 22, 2004, by electionline.org,
the nation's leading nonpartisan and non-advocacy
source for election reform analysis and information,
provides an overview of the scope and progress of changes
to elections in each of the 50 states.
The booklet discusses election reform rules that were adopted by every
state and territory as a result of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.
It finds that the states' efforts to fix election problems are hindered by lack of
funding, guidance, and confidence in machines.
PRIMARY EDUCATION
, a report issued January 9, 2004,
by electionline.org and The Century Foundation, examines both national and
state-specific election reform issues that could have an impact on the 2004
primary election season. To request hard copies of these reports, email
publications@electionline.org.
Federal Election Commission
Election Assistance Commission: Duties and Responsibilities
National Association Of State Election
Directors
with a list of
certified equipment.
Their
certification process.
Certification is now handled through the EAC.
List as of 9/2/05
ITA Approved Systems 1-03 to 11-03
Updated List of ITA Approved Systems from 12-03 to 7-05.
Note that on this list (which is not up-to-date at this time),
it shows voting systems. According to the ITA Secretariat,
Brian Hancock, and a note at the bottom of the first of the links
(above) the ITAs only certify systems and not parts of systems.
The National Association of County Recorders,
Election Officials and Clerks
National Conference of State Legislatures
National Association of Secretaries of State
Boards of Election by State
(Updated 12/23/2002).
U.S. Department of Justice
US Dept. of Justice Threatens To Sue New York State over HAVA non-compliance,
NY Times, Jan. 12, 2006.
US Dept. of Justice letter of Jan. 10, 2006
Bo Lipari of New Yorkers for Verified Voting responds, Jan. 12, 2006.
U.S. Dept. of Justice, Civil RIghts Division, Voting Section Home Page
#727: 12-31-03 JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Outlines Strategy For Effective Enforcement Of Election Reform Law For 2004
March 17, 2003, Letter sent to all 50 states and the territories
On March 17, 2003, the Department of Justice wrote a letter
to Alabama Secretary of State Nancy Worley stating:
"The Election Assistance Commission ("EAC") set up under HAVA will
eventually issue voluntary voting guidelines and guidance as to
what constitutes an accessible voting system.
Until that guidance is adopted, the voluntary guidance of the
Federal Election Commission on Voting System Standards can be
used to determine the accessibility of voting machines.
(These can be found at www.fec.gov/pages/vss/vss.html
at section 2.2.7 of the Voluntary System Standards)."
Section 2.2.7 is now at
http://www.eac.gov/election_resources/v1/v1s2.doc see page 2-12.
Section 2.2.7.2 states:
DRE voting systems shall provide, as part of their configuration,
the capability to provide access to voters with a broad range
of disabilities. This capability shall:
e. For electronic image displays, permit the voter to:
1) Adjust the contrast settings;
2) Adjust color settings, when color is used; and
3) Adjust the size of the text so that the height of capital letters varies over a range of 3 to 6.3 millimeters;
March 4, 2005 letter
"The Department has previously expressed its view on the meaning of Section 301(a)(3) at numerous conferences of state and local election officials around the country. Section 301(a)(3) means what it says - all polling places in the United States which are used for elections for federal office must have at least one voting system which is accessible to persons with disabilities for use in elections for federal office on and after January 1, 2006."
HAVA exempted the EAC from government contracting requirements,
so the EAC need not submit anything for bid.
This was because some desired the EAC to be able to start working
as quickly as possible. Sec. 205(e) (42 USC 15325) of HAVA provided that:
"(e) Contracts.--The Commission may contract with and compensate persons
and Federal agencies for supplies and services without regard to
section 3709 of the Revised Statutes of the United States (41 U.S.C. 5)."
(HR 550 requires the EAC to conduct a certain percentage of audits
of the voter verified paper records in every State in every County.
Because the EAC would have to contract with outside companies
to conduct the audits, HR550 deleted the EAC's exemption, and requires
the EAC to go through rigorous government contracting procedures
to contract with outside auditors to conduct the audits.
19. Equipment Currently in Use
Photos of components of various evote systems by CountedAsCast
Characteristics of Contemporary Voting Machines, October 2003
V-Box ballot box from Vogue Election Systems, space minimizer ballot box.
privacy booth, aka voting booth
Voting systems in use in Virginia
VerifiedVoting.org's Verifier Database.
Click on a state, then a county.
You can download the entire database for the USA and import it into a spreadsheet by
clicking their link "Download Map Data," or click
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/getMapData.php?topic_string=5std
here
.
Electronic Voting Machine Locations
Electronic Voting Machine Quick Reference Guides
from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Diebold in use, BlackBoxVoting.org's list as of July, 2005.
Report: More e-voting systems to be used this fall
by Hope Yen, Associated Press, in USA Today, February 12, 2004.
Election Data Services
has published a new
report
on what equipment will be used in the November, 2004, election.
Election Data Services'
list as of November, 2002
showed that 16.33 percent of counties were using electronic voting equipment.
Optical Scan equipment accounted for 43 percent, paper ballots for 10.5 percent.
IFES
(International Foundation for Election Systems)
performed an election technology survey between November 2002 to May 2003.
One of their findings is:
. "Direct Recording Electronic (DRE),
generally push-button or touch screen voting machines,
are reported to be used by 16.1% of the election authorities;
and another 21.3% report plans to convert to DRE.
This means that just over 37% of the jurisdictions reporting
are now using or will be using DRE equipment.
Optically scanned ballots at the polling stations are used by 33.9%
of the election authorities with another 8.7% planning to use
this polling station count option.
Another 26.3% of the election authorities indicated that
they use optical scanned ballots that are tabulated at a central location.
Only 4.5% of the election authorities indicate that they plan a conversion toward
optical scanning using a central count."
California Counties, and equipment used in the
March 2, 2004 Primary Election .
California Counties Chart
Iowa
, as of 1/27/03.
New Hampshire
California
will use three different
types of voting systems in March: 32 counties,
comprising 53 percent of California's
registered voters, will use paper-based, optical scan voting systems;
14 counties, comprising 6 percent of the state's voters,
will use the paper-based "Datavote" system;
12 counties, comprising 41 percent of the state's
voters, will use electronic balloting systems.
20. Security Studies
Security Studies on Diebold
Undervote Rates in North Carolina, comparing DREs,
Levers, OpScan, Paper, Punch Card, and Other voting technologies.
Optical scan machines had the most consistent and lowest
undervote rates of these technologies used in Nov. 2004.
Insecurity studies, photographs of unsecured evoting systems.
The famous
Johns Hopkins
report on Diebold's insecure software, from
Johns Hopkins University's Information Security Institute, published July 23,
2003 (see the report's page 22 for the very understandable conclusions).
Prepared for Maryland's Department of Budget and Management
by SAIC (Science Applications International Corp),
Risk Assessment Report, Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting System and Processes
of September 2, 2003.
This is a greatly redacted final version.
Because the criticism of their system was replaced by blank pages,
Diebold was able to publish a
press release claiming that the study yielded positive results.
Unredacted sections
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
The Ohio Secretary of State's
DRE Security Assessment, Volume 1 of November 21, 2003,
is a 46-page Summary of Findings and Recommendations produced by
InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. The
full report
is 280 pages. (1.6 MB)
Press release: the Ohio SoS intended to hire SAIC
instead of CompuWare but SAIC had purchased a large holding of
stock in Hart Intercivic.
The Report of the
Fairfax County Republican Committee
, January, 2004,
calls on the Virginia
legislature to pass a law requiring disclosed source code,
a voter-verifiable paper trail,
and surprise recounts in 0.5% of all precincts.
The Washington Post reported
GOP Says County Was Unprepared, Urges State Control
by David Cho, January 10, 2004.
The Department of Legislative Services,
Maryland General Assembly, commissioned a
Trusted Agent Report
by RABA Technologies, LLC, published on January 20, 2004.
The New York Times discussed its findings:
Security Poor in Electronic Voting Machines, Study Warns
,
By John Schwartz, January 29, 2004. The Baltimore Sun reported
Md. computer testers cast a vote: Election boxes easy to mess with
by Stephanie Desmon, January 30, 2004.
Are these the same machines? YES!
Was this company hired to whitewash the DREs? YES!
Report from a Review of the Voting System in The State of Maryland
Oct. 12, 2006, by Freeman, Craft, McGregor Group.
Hand-counted paper ballots
were found to be the best and most accurate way of voting, according to the
Voting Technology Project conducted by political scientists at Caltech and
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Voting Technology Project
compared the reliability of voting systems used nationwide from 1988 to 2000 and
came to a remarkable conclusion: "The most stunning thing in our work was
that hand-counted paper ballots were better than anything else," project
director Stephen Ansolabehere said.
The Study
.
21. Failures of Computers -- Are they Trustworthy? What Could Go Wrong?
EIRS, Election Incidents Reports for 2004, 2005
Palm Beach, Florida had the most in the country in 2004.
Included: over 70,000 voter activator card stuck errors,
(cards were not able to be inserted all the way in),
cards that are correctly inserted but the screen says "Invalid Card
Error". www.blackboxvoting.org has the report of the Palm Beach County audit.
FBI: Most Companies Get Hacked
YahooNews, Jan. 20, 2006. Are Boards of Elections Immune?
Microsoft Releases Windows Meta File Patch Early
Wall Street Journal, Jan. 5, 2006.
For all the good it does, technology often fails us in big ways
Posted by David Berlind,
December 6, 2005.
Honestly, it's hard to know whether to put this under the heading of
Conspiracy, Stupidity, or Incompetence. However you interpret it,
why would any Board of Elections use equipment so prone to irregularities?
Laziness? Irresponsibilty? Contempt for voters, elections, and democracy?
Smoking Gun!
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.
Citizen group suggest new state motto:
"There are always glitches", a quote from their Deputy Director for
Administration of the North Carolina
Board Of Elections Johnnie McLean, November 4, 2004.
Hart InterCivic Optical-Scan Has Weak Spot,
By John Gideon, Information Manager for www.votersunite.org and www.votetrustusa.org, July 5, 2005. Yakima County, Washington had a vote count Anomaly.
Is this funny? Not really, it is another demonstration
of how electronic election fraud can be accomplished.
Don't like what you see?
Votes not cast for the right candidate?
No problem, just log on, then "White Out the Vote"
with this handy dandy Online Digital Ballot editor -
works well with any sort of digital ballot image.
This gadget will be the wave of the future.
Think of the possibilities when used in conjunction with votes
recorded by "alternative vote verification systems".
After theft of information from 40 million MasterCard accounts,
you really have to wonder about the people behind the computer.
Here's an accident about to happen:
CREDIT FREEZE.., Washington Monthly, Political Animal,
by Kevin Drum, June 20, 2005.
5 New Consumer Reports from Black Box Voting:
who owns voting machine companies; who is paying whom;
more on powerline communications and voting systems.
As you read the reports below,
remember that most malfunctions are internal within the computer,
and undetectable without an independent audit.
All transaction-processing systems in
business, industry, and government are audited continuously
to ensure accurate results.
That's why our banks send us statements, and our bills are itemized.
"In my work with computers for more than 30 years,
for dozens of Fortune 500 companies, government bodies, and other clients,
I've seen systems produce errors and need fixes after years of daily use."
-- Teresa Hommel, creator of www.wheresthepaper.org
and The Fraudulent Voting Machine.
Electronic voting systems designed without VVPAT
have been designed not only to prevent recounts,
but to prevent the normal auditing that is standard practice
in the computer industry.
This means that fraud, hacking, and innocent errors are all undetectable.
When people who control our elections assert that they "trust"
computers that can't be audited,
something political is going on.
Outside the "business" of elections,
we do not trust transaction-processing computers,
we audit them and we trust the audit.
The latest list of electronic voting system
failures
from VotersUnite.org.
Failures by vendor
.
List of failures from VerifiedVoting.org
Any computer system can be corrupted by the
people who have access to it.
In this story, an employee of the software certification agency
rigged video gambling software as he was checking it out.
American Casino Guide
,
Press Release
Wrong Time for an E-Vote Glitch
,
by Kim Zetter, Aug. 12, 2004.
Wired.com. When Sequoia Voting Systems demonstrated its new paper-trail
electronic voting system for state Senate staffers in California
last week, the company representative got a surprise when the paper trail
failed to record votes that testers cast in Spanish on the machine.
Count Crisis
by Matthew Haggman, Miami Daily Business Review, May 13, 2004.
A scathing internal review of the iVotronic touch-screen voting machines used
in Miami-Dade and Broward, Fla. counties,
written by a Miami-Dade County elections official,
revealed that the tabulation of results may be flawed.
The review, contained in a June 6, 2003,
memo revealed that the vote images and audit log
created by these voting systems omitted some machines and ballots,
but reported other machines that were not actually used,
as well as "phantom" ballots.
In response to the problem,
Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood attempted to reassure voters
by telling them that
touchscreen voting machines are not computers!
(Miami Herald, May 28, 2004, "Secretary of state
tries to calm voters" by Lesley Clark.)
72% of computer software projects are complete
or partial failures -- which means that the system doesn't work! Computerized
voting machines are no exception.
Why the Current Touch Screen Voting Fiasco Was
Pretty Much Inevitable
by Robert X. Cringely, December 4, 2003.
40 pages of documentation,
Electronic Vote Miscounts and Malfunctions In Recent Elections
from VerifiedVoting.org.
Lynn Landes of EcoTalk.org compiled an 11-page
list of electronic voting machine
failures.
Chapter 2,
Can We Trust These Machines?
in Bev Harris' new book, Black Box Voting,
has an extensive list.
Appendix A: Compendium of problems has more.
Diebold knew of legal risks .
By Ian Hoffman, Staff Writer. Oakland Tribune, April 20, 2004.
Attorneys for Diebold Election Systems Inc.
warned in late November that its use of uncertified
vote-counting software in Alameda County violated
California election law and
broke its $12.7 million contract with Alameda County.
Soon after, a review of internal legal memos
obtained by the Oakland Tribune shows Diebold's attorneys
at the Los Angeles office of Jones Day
realized the McKinney, Texas-based firm
also faced a threat of criminal charges and exile from California elections.
Yet despite warnings from the state's chief elections officer,
Diebold continued fielding poorly tested, faulty software and hardware in at
least two of California's largest urban counties during the Super Tuesday
primary, when e-voting temporarily broke down and voters were turned away at
the polls. Other documentation obtained by the Tribune shows that the latest
approved versions of Diebold's vote-counting software in this state cast doubt
on the firm's claims elsewhere that it has fixed multiple security
vulnerabilities unearthed in the last year.
See the internal documents
7,000 Orange County Voters Were Given Bad
Ballots
By Ray F. Herndon and Stuart Pfeifer, Los Angeles Times, Mar 9, 2004.
Check out these numbers-- twice as many ballots as
registered voters, etc.
When will people say "enough!" to electronic voting machines?
Computers are only instruments of people, and
cannot protect us against the willingness of people to falsify records.
Altering of Worker Time Cards Spurs Growing Number of Suits
by Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, April 4, 2004.
Schools' hi-tech blitz on the fritz
by Joe Williams, Daily News Staff Writer, April 3, 2004.
"The computers were not plugged in, so we didn't check them."
That was the Department of Education, not the Board of Elections. Whew!
How E-Voting Threatens Democracy
by Kim Zetter, Wired News, March 29, 2004.
If you can get the ballots and counts during the election, you can deploy your
resources to pull voters where you need them to affect the outcome.
And other problems.
Bev Harris: Inside Sequoia's Vote Counting Program
, by Bev Harris, Friday, April 2, 2004.
Money, Access, and Stunning Security Flaws —
A Poor Recipe for Fair Elections.
Sequoia Vote Counting Code Released
explains why the software has been released
"into the wild" to the internet.
County calls out Diebold execs
Registrar warns Texas company
that it failed to perform under its contract for voting equipment.
The Oakland Tribune, March 24, 2004.
Initial Report From San Diego County
on their March 2, 2004 Primary Election.
This report makes clear the enormous amount of diligent
planning, preparation and followup that goes into running an election.
Yet, with the new electronic equipment,
the central part of the election effort--ballot recording
and ballot counting--is no longer in public hands.
Only the vendor knows what the machines are doing.
The county is completely dependent on vendor technicians.
No one can oversee the counting process because it is inside a computer.
The Report states that trouble
with touch screens and the workers operating them
led to late openings in 40% of their polling places on March 2.
Voters and poll workers say
the problems ran much deeper than the machines,
and included poor training, over-extended resources
and worries over whether the electronic ballots were counted.
One has to ask, if so much costly effort is expended to use these machines,
would the same amount of effort produce a better election
if people did the work, and machines specifically made for the disabled
were used by disabled voters to mark
and verify their ballots privately and indpendently.
Machine skipped one election contest
.
Washington Post, Letter to the Editor, March 7, 2004.
Diebold
Story Aired
, UK Prime Time, Channel 4 News, February 23, 2004.
The Potential for Voting Machine Fraud
Electronic Democracy or Disaster?
By Charles R. Smith, NewsMax.com, February 6, 2004.
There is an old proverb in data processing: To err is human.
To really mess things up you need a computer.
Note from WheresThePaper.org: The author does not mention
that Jeffrey Dean, whom Diebold claims left the company in 2002,
left as an employee but apparently was retained in the job as a contractor.
Judiciary
GOP Supports Probe
by Helen Dewar, Washington Post Staff Writer,
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A05.
E-Vote Machines Drop More Ballots
by Kim Zetter, published by Wired.com, Feb. 09, 2004.
Six iVotronic touch-screen voting machines made by ES&S
that were used in two North Carolina counties lost
436 absentee ballot votes in the 2002 general election
because of a software problem.
The same ES&S iVotronic machines were implicated in the
loss of 134 ballots in Broward County, Florida,
in the January 6, 2004,
election in which the winning candidate had a margin of only 12 votes.
What could go wrong
?
Many things, as well as a double standard that says we want computers for their
accuracy--which we expect at the grocery story or bank--but when computers are
used in elections we shouldn't expect accuracy. An I-Team 8 Investigation, Part
Two: Will Your Vote Count? By Rick Dawson and Loni Smith McKown, I-Team 8.
A poll worker tells what happened on election day.
Uncle Diebold's Clubhouse
.
Report dated March 16, 2004.
22. Privatization of Elections
Although HAVA did not explicitly require privatization
of election administration, privatization is occurring in practice--because
boards of election do not have the inhouse expertise to deal with computers. In
practice, they end up delegating all responsibility to the companies that sell
and provide the equipment, and later manage it under service contracts that the
boards of election do not have the personnel or expertise to oversee.
The Triad Affair, Ohio, 2004
Technical personnel can barely manage secure computer systems.
Non-technical personnel are sitting ducks.
Ohio Recount Stirs Trouble
by Kim Zetter, Wired News, Dec. 20, 2004.
Proof of Ohio Election Fraud Exposed
By William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Report,
Wednesday 15 December 2004.
Conyers Demands Investigation of Triad - Is Rapp tied to the GOP?
December 15, 2004.
Media Coverage Lawmaker Seeks Inquiry Into Ohio Vote,
New York Times.
Other
County calls out Diebold execs
Registrar warns Texas company that it failed to perform
under its contract for voting equipment.
The Oakland Tribune, March 24, 2004.
Conflicts of interest, improper access to
machines during ballot counting
. Put Registrar on Paid Leave, County Urged.
By Seema Mehta, Times Staff Writer
A vendor says that the states
"just don't have the technical
expertise"
to evaluate certification tests.
Operation Ballot Integrity, Fairfield, VA,
County Republican Committee
,
. p. 20: In an October 12, 2003 Washington Post article, reporter David Cho
reported that an anonymous Fairfax County technology manager acknowledged that
the County did not have the expertise to test the electronic equipment, and
that "You would definitely need to hire a high tech company" to test
the machines. Cho further reported that the expert hired by Virginia
to test the WINvote machines "did not study their vulnerability to
hackers, nor was he required to do so."
. p. 8: The Audit log (internal auditing system) files did not show a complete
history of the system activity on Election Day.
. p. 9: The time of day on each machine was off by up to 2.25 hours; therefore
the time on the election official logs and the machines logs do not match.
. p. 25: Election Day testing on one machine, confirmed by the Electoral Board,
revealed that one vote for every 100 votes cast for incumbent school-board
candidate Rita Thompson was subtracted for a 2% reduction in her vote. Ms.
Thompson lost by 1,600 votes county wide out of over 77,000 votes cast for her.
Two percent of Ms. Thompson's vote total is 1,540.
. p. 23: even in the face of the failure of the new voting machines, and lack
of procedures to deal with those failures, the Fairfax County Electoral Board
refuses to admit the breadth and depth of the voting machine problem.
. p. 24: The WINvote machines failed. The software failed (machines crashed
throughout, voters reported difficulty in getting their choices to record), the
hardware failed (some machines required new batteries, some needed to be
"jiggled" back into operation, modems failed to transmit data) and
the procedures for handling Election Day problems were non-existent (machines
were removed by non-Electoral Board employees, and they were taken from the
plain view of the election officers).
. The WINvote memory chip and the hard drive are easily accessed and easily
replaced in minutes, and were not sealed against such changes even when they
were delivered to the polls for use on Election Day.
23. Certification of Voting Machines, Problems with
To determine if a system is federally certified, compare the list of system components provided by the state (components should be listed on any state certification or approval certificate) with the list of components on the NASED website www.nased.org under the Certification link.
Before a system can be NASED qualified ("federally certified" is the commonly-used wrong term), every component of the system has to be identical to the components listed on the NASED website. If even one component is different, the system is not NASED qualified.
If a system does not show up on the NASED website, it's either not NASED qualified or it may have passed all ITA testing but has not yet been given "official" approval. Approval is simple and consists of the NASED committee reviewing the ITA tests and assigning a NASED qualification number.
Brian Hancock at the EAC can provide information as to whether or not a system has passed all testing. However, as of the beginning of September, 2005, neither NASED nor the EAC was willing provide a simple answer to the question "is a particular system NASED qualified?" The reason given for this there is now a transition of responsibilities between NASED and the EAC.
EAC Voting System Certification & Laboratory Accreditation Programs
Adopted August 23, 2005.
NASED ITA Qualification Testing, by SysTest Labs LLC,
Testimony before US House of Representatives Committee on Science hearing,
May 24, 2004, on "Testing and Certification for Voting Equipment: How Can
the Process be Improved?"
Testimony to the EAC on Wireless Capabilities, July 28, 2005, by
H. Stephen Berger.
Is the Federal Process for Qualifying Voting Systems Broken?,
by John Gideon, Information Manager, www.VotersUnite.Org and
www.VoteTrustUSA.Org, August 17, 2005.
Current list of certified systems from NASED.
NIST to begin accrediting labs for voting system evaluations
Government Computer News, 06/17/05.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has begun an
accreditation program for laboratories that want to evaluate voting systems
under the Help America Vote Act.
Requirements and forms are available by calling (301) 975-4016; by writing
to Voting System Testing Program Manager, NIST/NVLAP, 100 Bureau Dr., mail
stop 2140, Gaithersburg, MD, 20899-2140; or by e-mailing nvlap@nist.gov.
For more information contact Jeffrey Horlick of NVLAP at
jeffrey.horlick@nist.gov.
The word is that Wyle and SysTest are applying under the new program.
Ciber has not applied yet.
Who handles the administrative function
of voting system certification? It used to be the Election Center,
and now it will be the EAC.
(NASED qualifies ITAs do the testing.)
NASED list of qualified systems.
See also the notes at the end of the document.
Unilect decertification in Pennsylvania,
source documents that are revealing about the certification process.
FEC 1990 Voting Systems Standards
FEC 2002 Voting Systems Standards, Volume 1 - Section 3, Hardware Standards.
Accuracy standards are Section 3.2.1.
The federal government does not oversee
certification testing of election equipment.
Certification is a privatized process
that is paid for by voting system vendors.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has guidelines
for voting system certification,
but these guidelines are are not "federal standards"
because they are not required by federal law
and have not been mandated by all the states.
Opponents of voter-verified paper ballots claim that
ballot printers cannot be implemented
because there are no "federal standards" --
yet there is nothing in the FEC guidelines
that prevents a state or vendor
from adding security features
such as the capability of printing voter-verified paper ballots.
The FEC declined to require independent auditability
in their 2002 Voting System Standards guidelines,
despite warnings they received from many computer scientists
that independent auditability of electronic voting systems was needed
(for example,
Comment from
Dr. Rebecca Mercuri
).
Vendors and some election officials claim
that voting systems are trustworthy
because they have been federally certified.
But federal certification does not mean that a voting system works:
-- hundreds of failures of certified systems,
-- every study says the systems are insecure and easily hacked,
-- public demonstrations of how to falsify the vote tallies
by Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org,
-- impossibility of controlling what software is in the systems during an election (
Indiana,
California,
Georgia ),
-- blatent violations of state election laws that are never enforced.
Diebold violation of state law excused as "sloppiness"
What does certification consist of?
Few people know, because the process is not open to public scrutiny.
In this
I-Team interview
an insider tells us about certification:
"Absolutely nothing will you see in the FEC requirements that this
(puts hand on DRE voting machine) has to work.
It has to have these functions. But it doesn't have to work."
He tells us that electronic voting requires a "leap of faith."
SysTest Labs Becomes The Only Full Independent Test Authority
(ITA) For U.S. Election Systems
Press Release, June 14, 2004.
SysTest Labs, a Full Service Software Test Firm, Partners
with Full Service Hardware Testing Firm, Percept Technology Labs, To Earn
Accreditation to Test Complete Voting Systems.
Who Tests Voting Machines?
New York Times Opinion, May 30, 2004.
"[T]here is, to begin with, a stunning lack of transparency surrounding
this process. Voters have a right to know how voting machine testing is
done."
Lax controls over e-voting testing labs
,
Election Officials Rely on Private Firms,
by Elise Ackerman, Mercury News, May 30, 2004.
California certified systems
Texas Safe Voting
videotape of the January 2004 closed meeting for voting systems certification
(videos acquired by open records requests). The Diebold representatives gave a
demo. The examiners found out that using Diebold’s provisional voting system,
it was possible for two voters to vote using the same ID number, or for one
voter to vote multiple times. The examiners realized that there would be no way
to tell good votes from fraudulent ones. Yet this system had already been
certified in the state of Texas,
and was used in the last election in El Paso.
24. Costs
General Assembly of North Carolina, Legislative Fiscal Note,
voting equipment replacement, cost comparison of optical scan,
DRE, and mixed optical scan and DRE. July 28, 2005.
North Carolina Voter's Documentation,
Voter Verified Paper Ballots are Cost-Effective.
How to Count Thousands of Paper Ballots by Hand
by John Washburn.
Putting a Price on Elections Proves Elusive
By Cara Campbell, electionline Weekly - July 14, 2005.
"Elections have rigid schedules, registration rosters, machines
and polling places. But price tags? Not really."
WheresThePaper.org's position is that if you can't determine the cost
of running elections, you need to hire some bookkeepers, accountants,
and auditors ASAP. This sounds like another ENRON con job in
the making. First tell people that it is very hard to determine
the cost of something. Then tell them it's not worth figuring out anyway.
Then just collect their tax money and do whatever you want with it.
Read this:
"Even as states spend millions in federal funding as part of the
Help America Vote Act to make mandated improvements or purchases,
attempts to gather comparative data about what it actually costs
to hold elections have been only marginally successful.
(electionline.org, along with other national groups, has been trying
to collect such data since early 2005.)
"With a host of different agencies involved in running elections
from the local to the federal level, everyone agrees it is a
tough task to obtain solid election spending figures. There is
disagreement, however, on whether it is worth doing considering
the complexities of compiling any such data."
Electronic voting systems have high continuing costs.
To use computers securely and successfully,
Boards of Elections will have to develop an infrastructure
of procedures, support, and security
(similar to any company that uses computers and has
an Information Technology department large enough
to keep things working correctly):
1. Climate-controlled storage for the computers.
Paper ballots must also be stored, but paper does not require
a climate-controlled warehouse like DREs need (except in very humid
climates, paper ballots may need to be boxed or have humidity controlled).
Also, voted paper ballots need to be stored for a limited
time, so the space would be released and then reused by ballots from a
more recent election. Unvoted ballots would be purchased and printed only
a few weeks prior to an election once the candidates were designated and
the ballot designed. Evote storage is needed
year around, except for the day of the election.
2. Transportation of evote equipment to and from poll sites
is more expensive because delicate handling is required.
In California, evote machines were stored in pollworkers'
homes just prior to election day -- a breach of security --
so that they could bring the machines themselves to the
polling place to set up. In Louisiana, some machines were
not delivered on a recent election day.
3. Security. Complicated and probably expensive
security monitoring of the storage facilities
4. Electricity. Connection to an electrical source while stored
5. Batteries
,
which in some systems are expensive
6. Perpetual vendor contracts and dependence on vendors
for service, maintenance, and training to manage the systems.
Some counties may need to create maintenance centers
because the work load is so high. Even if vendors do the work,
Boards of Elections will still require staff time and expertise
to oversee and keep records to track
the movement and maintenance of equipment.
7. Replacement of systems (for example,
Montgomery County, Maryland
had a 7% failure rate (machines that needed
to be replaced in each election cycle). See p. 11 of the county report.
Computer equipment also becomes outdated, and commercial
off-the-shelf components may need to be replaced when they
are no longer supported.
8. Legal costs, for contract negotiations for upgrades, system changes, training,
resolution of problems with vendors, copyright matters, tracking software upgrades,
dealing with and monitoring escrow agencies, and the inevitable candidate and
citizen lawsuits due to election irregularities.
9. Paperwork required to keep track of software versions.
10. Additional staff at state agencies, both management and technical,
for state testing and certification, liaison with ITAs if federal certification
is required, setting up and conducting public testing,
11. More expensive technical staff to set up for elections,
including roving technicians to travel to poll sites on election
day to repair and replace equipment that fails.
12. More expensive training for officials, staff,
and poll workers.
Voting Technology Costs and Considerations from
VerifiedVoting.org.
Options for Replacing Connecticut's Voting Machines:
A Cost Analysis by Michael J. Fischer, TrueVoteCT,
March 12, 2005.
DRE Voting Machines Costly to Use
by Rosemarie F. Myerson and Charles Edwards
April 4, 2005.
Also at VotersUnite.org.
Comparison of Operating Costs:
Punch Card and Electronic Voting Machines in Sarasota County,
Florida and Optical Scanners in Manatee County, Florida
by Rosemarie Myerson,
February 8, 2005.
This study was recently conducted in Florida, comparing the voting
systems operating costs for two counties over the last 3 years,
using published numbers from those counties budgets.
One of the counties used a precinct count optical scan scan system
while the other used a paperless evoting system.
Even without the added costs of that would be associated with a
requirement for a voter-verified paper audit trail,
the actual operating costs for the county with the paperless evoting system
were significantly higher than those for the county
using a precinct-count optical scan system.
Miami-Dade Elections: Paperless Voting Costs Soar
by Tere Figueras Negrete,
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/11739198.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp ,
The Miami Herald, May 26, 2005.
From James Hogue of Vermonters for Voting
Integrity, April 3, 2004.
Other cost include
delays,
lawsuits,
re-doing elections,
recounts,
poor voter turn-out due to frustration,
fraud,
suspicion about voting officials' integrity and the integrity of the process,
applying software and hardware fixes and upgrades,
training of elections personnel
auditing of everything from purchase decisions to software control procedures
to elections management processes.
25. International
Africa.
Japan
To subscribe to the e-voting list from Europe, go to
http://quizzebox.quintessenz.at/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/edri-voting
UK - Government U-turn on internet & text voting. They cancelled all e-voting pilots for next May.
Ireland - E50m was spent on an electronic voting system for Ireland and the initiative is now costing hundreds of thousands of euros every year for storage.
"The e-voting machines have never been used after an independent commission raised questions concerning the security and accuracy of the voting system."
Malaysia,Time To Discuss Using e-Voting In National Polls,
6th September 2005.
UK.gov ditches 'Big Brother'-style e-voting, 6th September 2005.
Electronic voting in the Netherlands.
Labour activists had 'vote-rigging factory' to hijack postal votes.
Beneath the veneer of an apparently democratic local election campaign,
the battle to control areas of Birmingham involved allegations of
death threats, intimidation and bribery. News Telegraph,
May 4, 2005.
Australian Electronic Democracy Subcommittee
recommends use of open source code for electronic voting kiosks, May 6, 2005.
New plans to combat voting fraud
in England, regarding postal voting, May 13, 2005.
Canada -
International Voters Coalition.
Hostile mood at town hall,
Thunder Bay's struggle against evoting, May 5, 2005.
Cases stated for manual vote count. Thunder Bay.
Irish Citizens for Trustworthy Evoting
.
The Irish government had proposed using a Powervote/Nedap electronic voting
solution for the nationwide local-elections on June 11th this year. Following
the publication of the report below (the commission involved in the report
creation was formed by the government) the plans have been scrapped. General
conclusions tend to support an open-source solution.
Issue considered included:
. the need for a voter verified paper audit trail, to ensure that the accuracy
of the results can be checked independently of the new system itself;
. the need to preserve the right to secrecy of a voter casting a blank ballot;
. the need to ensure that the final versions of the hardware and software used
in the election are the precise versions that have been tested, approved and
certified;
. the need for all software to be open source, to allow the wider community to
check that it can generate accurate results; and
. the need for parallel running of the new system with the old paper one, once
more to ensure the new system is generating accurate results.
Irish e-voting system gets canned
Concerned technologists in Italy,
Electronic
Vote and Democracy .
UK Electoral Commission Report
26. Flyers, Materials
An informational brochure
by Dr. Rebecca Mercuri,
Facts About Voter Verified Paper Ballots
,
was prepared in response to the myths and misinformation that are currently
being circulated by those who are opposed to independent election auditing.
It can be downloaded, printed on double-sided paper,
and freely distributed (if in its entirety and unedited).
VerifiedVoting.org's Flyer,
2-page Introduction, 5-page Introduction,
Poll Watcher Guide, Car Window Poster, and more.
Click
here .
Flyer and materials from
True Majority
DRE Voting Systems as currently sold are a
Danger to Democracy.
Voter-Verified Paper Ballots are not enough to
fix DRE Problems.
Support S1980, oppose Senator Clinton's RECORD
Act
Flyer from WheresThePaper.org for
Downstate NY
,
Upstate NY
,
and
national.
27. Paper Ballots, Counting, Paper quality, Etc.
North Carolina info on printing ballots, type of paper, etc.
Wake County was paying 15 cents a ballot; ES&S will charge 35 cents.
Purchasing ballot paper stock from ES&S should not be required.
Counting Mark-Sense Ballots,
Relating Technology, the Law and Common Sense
Part of the Voting and Elections web pages
by Douglas W. Jones,
The University of Iowa Department of Computer Science.
Anthony Stevens, Assistant Secretary of State of New Hampshire reported:
"With full costing, recount costs came to about $0.25 per ballot for a
two-person race for one seat in the 2004 presidential race, for which we
recounted 11 jurisdictions. That assumes trained persons with sound and
uniform criteria for determining what constitutes a vote."
--November, 2005. Unverified, unknown source, please call him for details.
10,289 ballots, 1 race, 12 officials, 3.5 hours to hand-count
--Arthur Keller, Sept. 29, 2005.
Counting Scales. To count the votes in a specifice race,
first separate the paper ballots into separate piles per
candidate, then weigh each pile on a counting scale.
Vermont uses paper ballots and counts them by hand.
Their
Election Law
is very detailed and one gets a clear picture of the procedure,
which is similar to Canadian methods.
The part on counting votes is in
CHAPTER 51. CONDUCT OF ELECTIONS
.
How to Hand-count Votes Marked on Paper
Ballots
, Report on methods used in Canada and New York City,
by Teresa Hommel. April 9, 2004.
A 70-year old election worker estimated
that it would take 2.5 hours to count the
votes on 300 ballots with 10 races and 5 candidates per race.
When asked how they handled discrepancies in ballot control,
she said it had never happened,
in her 30-year experience.
Canada shows U.S. how to count
,
by David Crary -- The Associated Press, November 28, 2000.
OTTAWA (AP) -- Within four hours after the last polls closed
in Canada's parliamentary election,
officials at 50,000 polling stations had hand-counted
virtually every one of nearly 13 million paper ballots.
Election Act of Ontario
.
Elections Canada
,
an independent body set up by Parliament.
The Canadian system, in place for a century,
uses traditional paper ballots, to be marked with an "X" beside the
name of the preferred parliamentary candidate.
In Canada's year 2000 election:
21,243,473 - registered voters
60,728 - number of polling stations
350 - average of registered voters per station (minimum of 250 per precinct)
12,997,185 - total ballots cast
214 - average ballots cast per polling station
139,412 or 1.1% - ballots rejected
61.2% - voter turn-out
Hand-counted paper ballots
were found to be the best and most accurate way of voting, according to the
Voting Technology Project conducted by political scientists at Caltech and
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Voting Technology Project
compared the reliability of voting systems used nationwide from 1988 to 2000
and came to a remarkable conclusion: "The most stunning thing in our work
was that hand-counted paper ballots were better than anything else,"
project director Stephen Ansolabehere said.
The Study
.
http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~voting/CalTech_MIT_Report_Version2.pdf
28. Vendors, Vendor Problems
Election Technology Council.
The Election Technology Council (ETC) consists of companies which
offer voting system technology hardware products, software and
services to support the electoral process. These companies have
organized as an association to work together to address common
issues facing our industry. Current members of the ETC are: Advanced
Voting Solutions, Danaher Guardian Voting Systems, Diebold Election
Systems, Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic, Perfect
Voting System, Sequoia Voting Systems, and UniLect Corporation.
Membership in the ETC is open to any company in the election systems
marketplace.
VoteTrustUSA.org's Vendor Info page.
Swiss Voting System.
Press Release
'Perfect Voting System' Makes Sure Every Vote Counts.
Hart InterCivic Optical-Scan Has Weak Spot,
By John Gideon, Information Manager for www.votersunite.org and www.votetrustusa.org, July 5, 2005. Yakima County, Washington had a vote count Anomaly.
Questions you can ask of vendors, by Avi Rubin.
Vendors with
Certified Voter-Verified Voting Systems
Automark
has completed federal certification testing:
Press Release, June 23, 2005.
Actually, the AutoMARK is "2002 qualified"
(NASED and the ITAs qualify; the states certify).
Qualification is for a complete system, and the AutoMARK was qualified
with an optical-scan in order to be a complete system.
ES&S has no optical-scans that are 2002 qualified;
they used the M-100 and M-650 for the AutoMARK testing
and that makes the complete system only 1990 qualified.
Does ES&S Really Want To Sell Automark Machines?, May 25, 2005.
The AutoMark Voter Assist Terminal provides voters with disabilities
the ability to mark an optical scan paper ballot.
This gives election jurisdictions HAVA compliance
which protects their legacy optical scan systems
and maintains a paper audit trail.
Populex, certified on Dec. 16, 2004.
Accupoll
's voting DRE provides a voter verified paper
ballot and was federally certified as of March, 2004.
AccuPoll Qualifies Under More Stringent 2002 Federal Voting System Standards.
Accupoll is the first VVPAT voting system to complete testing to 2002 standards.
April 07, 2005.
AccuPoll Receives Certification for Electronic Voting System in Louisiana
AccuPoll Announces "SureCountTM",
The Next Generation of Direct Recording Electronic Voting.
New DRE Features Offer Cost Effective Enhancements to Voter Confidence and Privacy.
Avante's VOTE-TRAKKER
is a
certified
voting system that provides a voter verified paper ballot.
Major Vendors: Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia, VoteHere, Unilect
Unilect decertification in Pennsylvania,
source documents that are revealing about the certification process.
VoteHere changes their name to Dategrity
Also reported in the
Seattle Times.
Failures of electronic voting systems organized
by vendor.
Must Read! Investigative reporter
Lynn Landes
of www.ecotalk.org provides info on voting system companies.
How E-Voting Threatens Democracy
by Kim Zetter, Wired News, March 29, 2004.
Big problems with the big vendors: Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia.
Vendor list
maintained by www.VerifiedVoting.org.
Many Boards of Election do not have the
in-house expertise or resources to examine electronic voting systems delivered
by vendors. As a result, they are dependent on vendors. They "trust"
vendors to deliver certified, working systems-- and don't find out until during
or after elections that the systems may be neither certified nor working.
Diebold
Documents surface in NC with Deibold and Gaston County,
10/3/05.
Source: PR Week (sub. req'd.), August 25, 2005
"Diebold Election Systems (DES) has hired Ogilvy PR
to burnish the company's image and the benefits of electronic voting
in California," reports PR Week. The state decertified one of DES'
e-voting machines last year, and now the company wants to ensure
that their "story is told" and that voters "understand the technology,"
said Ogilvy's Michael Law, who heads DES' California work.
Ogilvy is researching public perceptions of DES and developing
messages "about the ease of electronic voting, particularly for
voters who do not speak English, as well as for handicapped voters."
O'Dwyer's reports that DES' California PR is part of a national
campaign headed by former Democratic National Committee chair
Joe Andrew. Andrew has been praised for his "grassroots organizing"
and "golden rolodex" of CEOs and labor leaders. Other PR firms DES
has employed include Public Strategies and Compliance Research Group."
Commentary: How Many Diebolds to Screw Up an Election?
Suzan Mazur: Diebold And The Mormon Mason Handshake
Scoop, July 15, 2005. Opinion: Suzan Mazur.
Diebold dumpster dive yields financial documents,
Black Box Voting, July 20, 2005.
Vendor's donation questioned, Diebold rep gave $10,000 to county GOP,
The Columbus Dispatch, July 16, 2005.
Florida Fair Elections Coalition Report against Diebold.
The Case Against Diebold and Florida's Division of Elections
A Report by Florida Fair Elections Coalition
(In Support of Volusia County Council's Decision to
Reject the Diebold "Blended" Voting System)
July 9, 2005.
How Can We Ensure the Accuracy of Vote Counts?,
a working paper by Kathy Dopp of UScountsvotes.net,
July 4, 2005.
Security Alert: July 4, 2005
Critical Security Issues with Diebold Optical Scan Design,
from BlackBoxVoting.org.
Diebold Accounting Mistake reported in SEC earnings restatement.
Rep. McKinney (D-GA) Discusses Hack as Diebold Attacks Elections Official,
By Matthew Cardinale, Published: Jun 27, 2005, YubaNet.com.
Diebold Misled State Voting Officials
Injunction Motion Filed in U.S. District Court-Northern District of California Seeking to End Diebold Anti-Competitive Business Practices in the U.S. ATM Service Market.
Diebold
percent of US
vote count, ownership, history, etc.
Diebold already has purchased Data Information Management Systems,
one of two firms that have a dominant role in managing voter-registration lists
in California and other states.
"The long-term goal here is to introduce a seamless voting solution, all
the way from voter registration to (vote) tabulation," said Tom Swidarski,
Diebold senior vice president for strategic development.
Diebold knew of legal risks .
By Ian Hoffman, Staff Writer. Oakland Tribune, April 20, 2004.
Attorneys for Diebold Election Systems Inc. warned in late November that its
use of uncertified vote-counting software in Alameda
County violated California
election law and broke its $12.7 million contract with Alameda
County. Soon after ... Diebold's
attorneys at the Los Angeles office
of Jones Day realized [Diebold] also faced a threat of criminal charges and
exile from California elections.
Yet despite warnings from the state's chief elections officer, Diebold
continued fielding poorly tested, faulty software and hardware in at least two
of California's largest urban counties during the Super Tuesday primary, when
e-voting temporarily broke down and voters were turned away at the polls. Other
documentation obtained by the Tribune shows that the latest approved versions
of Diebold's vote-counting software in this state cast doubt on the firm's
claims elsewhere that it has fixed multiple security vulnerabilities unearthed
in the last year.
The Internal Documents:
Desi's New California Issues
,
Re: Alameda County Agreement
,
Issues Re: California Secretary of State Investigation
,
Memorandum Analyzing the Alameda County Agreement
.
E-voting probe finds no reason for glitches
by Ian Hoffman, Oakland Tribune. April 13, 2004.
Electronic devices that held the key to digital voting in
Alameda County's Super Tuesday primary failed in at least a half-dozen ways,
hobbling the $12.7 million voting system at a quarter of polling places. ...
Also, after the Oct. 7, 2003
recall election, when Diebold's vote-tabulating software wrongly awarded 9,000
Democratic absentee votes to a Southern California Socialist, Diebold decided
its computer was overwhelmed and replaced it. In the March primary, Alameda
County workers eased the load on
Diebold's computer by scanning absentee ballots one party at a time. But San
Diego County fed its
absentee ballots in as a mix, and Diebold's software misreported almost 3,000
votes. In the worst case, it switched 2,747 Democratic presidential primary
votes for U.S. Sen. John Kerry to U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, who had dropped out
of the race. Diebold's latest explanation says its vote-tabulation software
apparently could not handle results from multiple optical-scanning machines,
processing ballots with large numbers of candidates and precincts. That
vote-tabulating software, technically known as GEMS version 1.18.18, is used by
18 California counties.
County calls out Diebold execs
Registrar warns Texas
company that it failed to perform under its contract for voting equipment.
The Oakland Tribune, March 24, 2004.
Diebold Story Aired
, UK
Prime Time, Channel 4 News, February 23, 2004.
The Potential for Voting Machine Fraud
Electronic Democracy or Disaster?
By Charles R. Smith, NewsMax.com, February 6, 2004.
There is an old proverb in data processing: To err is human.
To really mess things up you need a computer.
Note from WheresThePaper.org: The author does
not mention that Jeffrey Dean, whom Diebold claims left the company in 2002,
left as an employee but apparently was retained in the job as a contractor.
The Diebold voting systems in
California
did not have legally certified software.
Did E-Vote Firm Patch Election?
by Kim Zetter, Wired.com, Oct. 13, 2003.
A former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse
says the company installed patches on its machines
before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election
that were never certified by independent testing authorities or
cleared with Georgia election officials.
If the charges are true, Diebold could be in violation of federal
and state election-certification rules.
The charges also raise questions about the integrity
of the Georgia election results
and any other election that uses patched Diebold systems
that have not been re-certified.
Problems in San Diego
ES&S
The iVotronic Voting machine in Miami Dade and Broward (Florida)
uses an Intel 386 EX processor, technology that is more than a decade old.
Miami Dade Inspector General Report of 2003, Contract 326 see pages 32-33.
ES&S
percent of US vote count, ownership, history, etc.
Count Crisis
by Matthew Haggman, Miami Daily Business Review, May 13, 2004.
A scathing internal review of the iVotronic touch-screen voting machines made
by ES&S and used in Miami-Dade and Broward,
Fla. counties, written by a Miami-Dade
County elections official, revealed
that the tabulation of results may be flawed. The review, contained in a June
6, 2003, memo revealed that the vote images and audit log created by these
voting systems omitted some machines and ballots, but reported other machines that
were not actually used, as well as "phantom" ballots. In response to
the problem, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood attempted to reassure
voters by telling them that
touchscreen voting machines are not computers!
(Miami Herald, May 28, 2004, "Secretary of state
tries to calm voters" by Lesley Clark.)
Johnson County Demands Answers from ES&S
by Eric Halvorson and Loni Smith McKown, WishTV.
March 15, 2004.
ES&S had installed illegal software in touch-screen
voting machines used by three Indiana counties last November.
Johnson County: Election Worker Fired
.
By Rick Dawson, I-Team 8. March 4, 2004.
In Indiana, respected election
worker Doug Orange had his contract with Election Systems and Software
terminated last week. He says the company claimed insubordination, but he says
he was just doing the right thing. "I was asked by Wil Wesley, as my
immediate supervisor, to implement a procedure in Johnson County that I
personally felt was attacking the integrity of the future election and the
security of the future elections in Johnson County. Not to mention that I felt
those procedures were illegal," said Orange.
Chuck Hagel Now Admits Ownership in Voting
Machine Company, Senate Ethics Committee Director Resigns
by Bev Harris Friday, 31 January 2003.
Sequoia
Campaign Finance:
YES on Prop. 41, Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment and Voting Technology Developers
Contributions to a committee formed to support Proposition 41,
the Voting Modernization Bond Act of 2002.
Kevin Shelley was the lead proponent of the ballot measure.
Sequoia's name is part of the committee name due to
a California Elections Code requirement that
the name of a committee's "sponsor" to be included in the committee's name.
Sources say that Prop. 41 was pushed by both Kevin Shelley
(at the time a state assemblyman) and Bill Jones
(at the time secretary of state). Bill Jones later
received at least 40K in consulting fees from Sequoia.
California Secy of State reports:
the Edge is supposed to have separate VVPAT and results/zero report printers
but they couldn't get them both to work.
The system that CA certified used the same printer for both purposes.
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/sequoia_staff_report.pdf
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/sequoia_consultant_report.pdf
July 9, 2004 questions from Riverside County residents re Sequoia.
Inside Sequoia's Vote Counting Program, Bev Harris, March 31 2004.
Sequoia Voting Systems Should Not Be Certified by the Illinois
State Board of Elections,
October 16, 2005.
The Sequoia Advantage has the ability to receive and upload of results from Sequoia's op scan system into the Advantage. The supposed advantage is to "relieve election workers of the need to input data twice" but the control of ballot data is lost, since the scanner and DRE ballot numbers are then merged.
Sequoia was sold in March 2005 for $16M by DeLaRue,
a British company, to Smartmatic, a US-registered Venezuelan-owned company.
Hearsay is that Sequoia may not have enough funds to hire
technical support for all of the contracts they have now and
hope to add this year. $16M for a company that has
a $9M plus contract with Nevada alone?
There is a problem here somewhere, and DeLaRue knew it.
Venezuela’s Electoral Authority Offers OAS to Audit Voting Machine Software
July 16, 2005, By Gregory Wilpert, Venezuelanalysis.com.
European Union to Monitor December Parliamentary Elections in Venezuela
July 19, 2005, Venezuelanalysis.com.
Election Company has Long Criminal History
Nov. 24, 2004, Venice, FL., Mad Cow Morning News,
by Daniel Hopsicker.
Wrong Time for an E-Vote Glitch
,
by Kim Zetter, Aug. 12, 2004.
Wired.com. When Sequoia Voting Systems demonstrated its new paper-trail
electronic voting system for state Senate staffers in California
last week, the company representative got a surprise when the paper trail
failed to record votes that testers cast in Spanish on the machine.
Sequoia
ownership, history, etc.
Bev Harris: Inside Sequoia's Vote Counting Program
, by Bev Harris,
Friday, April 2, 2004.
Money, Access, and Stunning Security Flaws - A Poor Recipe for Fair Elections.
Sequoia Vote Counting Code Released
explains why the software has been released
"into the wild" to the internet.
Group that called electronic vote secure got makers' aid
By Linda K. Harris, Philadelphia Inquirer.
March 25, 2004. The
Election Center
,
which trains election workers and advises Congress and
government agencies on election process issues,
has taken donations from manufacturers of electronic voting machines
even as it has issued strong statements supporting the security
of the machines. The Houston-based nonprofit organization bills
itself as a nonpartisan group representing election officials
from throughout the country.
Doug Lewis is Executive Director of the Election Center.
He may have had a role in founding NASED and setting up
the voting system test process. He ran the voting system
testing group there. As of October 2003, testing is
supposed to be overseen by the EAC.
Cozy Relationship with the customer
.
29. State and Local Organizations
Roll Call For Democracy
Listing of local groups from VoteTrustUSA.org
Listing of local groups from votersunite.org
Solar Bus
Election System Problems in Arizona
Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections,
AUDIT-Arizona.
California Voter Foundation
.
The
California Election Protection Network
Coloradoans for Voting Integrity
, a non-partisan group of citizens concerned
with verifiable voting.
Boulder County Election Plan Fundamentally Flawed
Sept. 7, 2005
Colorado Security plan deemed worthless
Sept. 22, 2005
CAMBER, Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results,
located in Colorado and very active there.
TrueVoteCT.org
Florida Election Activists, send email to
FloridaElectionActivist@groups.msn.com.
The Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition
Florida Fair Elections Coalition Report against Diebold.
Georgia Voter Choice Coalition
,
building a democracy that works for all of Georgia's diverse voters.
CountTheVote.org
http://www.gaforverifiedvoting.org/docs/election_center.html
Georgians for Verified Voting, a nonpartisan citizen's organization
dedicated to bringing transparent, secure and auditable
elections to Georgia.
www.SafeVoteHawaii.com
Illinois, www.ballot-integrity.org
Iowa Voters for Open and Transparent Elections
Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland
.
Minnesota, Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota
Missouri
New Jersey
New Hampshire
United Voters of New Mexico
Los Alamos Civil Liberties Study Group in New Mexico.
Verified Voting New Mexico
New Yorkers for Verified Voting
We Are New Yorkers for Verified Voting
North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting.
.
Send email to Joyce McCloy at ncverifiablevoting@yahoogroups.com or
ncverifiablevoting@yahoo.com
Ohio
Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections
J30 Coalition in Ohio
Vote Pennsylvania and
Bucks County PA Coalition for Voting Integrity
Activists greet Tennessee election officials and
begin a dialog.
Texas Safe Voting
,
include video clips of closed meetings used to review voting systems for
certification.
Utah: Count Votes!
Vermonters for Voting Integrity .
Virginians for Verified Voting,
VAVV.org,
info@vavv.org
Washington State Citizens for Voting Integrity
Wisconsin
Florida, and
Bushflash
,
How Florida dropped eligible voters from their
statewide voter registration list in 2000.
National Groups
Election Assessment Hearing
Wednesday, June 29 2005,
The Garden Center at Hermann Park,
Houston, Texas 77004
US Counts Votes' National Election Data Archive Project.
brochure
Summary of USCV's exit poll analysis.
Why should state election officials release the detailed election data
needed for analysis? What can be found out? What will they gain?
Sample Freedom of Information Act request for data for your state,
and how you composed it, did it work, etc?
Letter for state and county election offices regarding what
election data is needed in order to monitor elections for accuracy and why.
National Election Data Archive Project
Common Cause Summary of 12/7/04 Conference.
Common Cause Report to Nation.
Electronic Privacy Information Center
30. Athan Gibbs
Remembering Mr. Athan Gibbs
,
Innovator and Committed Advocate of Democracy, on the Occasion of his Death,
Remarks by Hon. Jim Cooper of Tennessee
in the House of Representatives, Tuesday,
March 23, 2004.
He wanted every vote to matter; Athan Gibbs,
Sr. dies in crash
By Holly Edwards, Staff Writer,
Tennessean.com. March 14, 2004.
Death of a Patriot: No More 'Blind Faith Voting'
by
Bob Fitrakis. The Free Press, Columbus, Ohio.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004.
31. Conspiracy
Honestly, it's hard to know whether to put this under the heading of
Conspiracy, Stupidity, or Incompetence. However you interpret it,
why would any Board of Elections use equipment so prone to irregularities?
Smoking Gun!
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.
Suzan Mazur: Diebold And The Mormon Mason Handshake
Scoop, July 15, 2005. Opinion: Suzan Mazur.
America Votes and Nathan Sproul, and voter registration fraud.
Former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell writes
that one of the favorite tactics of the CIA during the Reagan-Bush
administration in the 1980s was to control countries by manipulating
the election process. “CIA apologists leap up and say, ‘Well, most
of these things are not so bloody.’ And that’s true. You’re giving
politicians some money so he’ll throw his party in this direction
or that one, or make false speeches on your behalf, or something
like that. It may be non-violent, but it’s still illegal intervention
in other country’s affairs, raising the question of whether or not
we’re going to have a world in which laws, rules of behavior are
respected,” Stockwell wrote. Documents illustrate that the Reagan
and Bush administration supported computer manipulation in both
Noriega’s rise to power in Panama and in Marcos’ attempt to retain
power in the Philippines. Many of the Reagan administration’s
staunchest supporters were members of the Council on National Policy.
Venezuela:
CIA had advance knoweldge of coup plans against Hugo Chavez.
Carter Center Issues Referendum Report Summary
*The Crusaders*
Christian evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image,
Texas Freedom Network, Religious Right Watch,
By BOB MOSER, Rolling Stone,
April 7, 2005.
Election Incident Reporting System. To see incidents
reported to 1-866-OUR-VOTE in November, 2004, select "research/maps."
Georgia voters are Diebold guinea pigs
By RoxanneJ, Posted on July 21, 2005.
CIA-DOD Contractor Justifies MD. E-Voting System
Friday, 26 September 2003.
Did Stevenson Die because of medical care delays caused by rabid right wing hate?
July 15, 2005. The Stalking of Andy Stephenson.
My Right-Wing Degree,
by Jeff Horwitz, Salon, May 24, 2005.
The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen
Here"
by Thom Hartmann, July
19, 2004, CommonDreams.org. Vice President Henry A. Wallace's
article on fascism in The New York Times, April
9, 1944, bluntly laid out his concern about fascism in America:
"The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United
States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany
in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His
method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the
problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to
use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more
money or more power."
For an example of how the media lies to favor Republicans, see
Media Matters
for the week of July 30, 2004.
14 Characteristics of Fascism
.
The characteristics of Fascism are relevant to electronic voting systems for
several reasons. First, after extensive efforts by technologists to inform and
warn the public, the media still presents the issue as if no one knows whether
or not there is a problem. Second, corporations will take control of our
elections through the use of this equipment since only they know how the
equipment works and their software is secret. Third, there are close and overlapping
relationships between corporations that sell and service the equipment, Boards
of Election at all levels, elected officials who appoint the Boards of
Election, and the so-called Independent Testing Authorities that
"certify" the equipment. Fourth, since electronic voting equipment
cannot be independently audited, fraud in elections can never be proved.
Voting Official Seeks Terrorism Guidelines
. AP, June 25, 2004.
www.bigbrother.gov
by George Howland Jr. Seattle Weekly, May 19-25, 2004.
The feds want to know who’s been visiting the Web site
of voting watchdog Bev Harris, and they’re likely to get what they want.
Is it just by chance
that there are so many problems with the
major manufacturers of unverifiable electronic voting systems?
Crypto-Gram Newsletter, April 15, 2004,
by Bruce Schneier, Founder and CTO, Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.
A free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses,
insights, and commentaries on security: computer and otherwise.
The essay written with Paul Kocher on risks to electronic voting machine software
concludes that the risks are even greater than it first appeared.
Group that called electronic vote secure got makers' aid
By Linda K. Harris, Philadelphia Inquirer. March 25, 2004. The
Election Center
,
which trains election workers and advises Congress and
government agencies on election process issues,
has taken donations from manufacturers of electronic voting machines
even as it has issued strong statements supporting the security
of the machines. The Houston-based nonprofit organization bills
itself as a nonpartisan group representing election officials
from throughout the country.
Doug Lewis is Executive Director of the Election Center.
He may have had a role in founding NASED and setting up
the voting system test process. He ran the voting system
testing group there. As of October 2003, testing is
supposed to be overseen by the EAC.
The Real Deal: 9-11 Profiteering
,
A Framework for Building the "Cui Bono?"
UnAnswered Questions, by Catherine Austin Fitts. March 22, 2004.
Diebold, electronic voting and the vast right-wing conspiracy
by Bob Fitrakis. The Free Press, February 24, 2004.
All the President's Votes?
by Andrew Gumbel, Published on Monday, October 13, 2003
by the lndependent/UK.
A Quiet Revolution is Taking Place in US Politics.
By the Time It's Over, the Integrity of Elections
Will be in the Unchallenged, Unscrutinized Control of a Few Large
- and Pro-Republican - Corporations.
Andrew Gumbel wonders if democracy in America can survive.
If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines
by Thom Hartmann, Published on Friday, January 31, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
American Coup: Mid-Term Election Polls vs Actuals
by Alastair Thompson, November 12, 2002.
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.
A Very American Coup
, Scoop's list of links to articles in the
print and electronic media.
The origins of some voting machine companies
involve funding from the Ahmanson family, which also helps finance The
Chalcedon Institute which promotes
Christian Reconstructionism .
32. Optical Scanner Info
Counting Mark-Sense Ballots: Relating Technology, the Law and Common Sense,
Part of the Voting and Elections web pages
by Douglas W. Jones,
University of Iowa Department of Computer Science.
Included info on read heads, firmware, etc.
August, 2005: San Diego County has over 1.4 million registered voters,
1611 voting precincts,
and is the nation's 7th largest city. They used
precinct-based optical scan in November, 2004, and
in a recent mayoral election also.
The current registrar of voters, Mikel Haas,
was pleased with the no-glitch opscan elections.
San Diego still has its 10,200 Diebold TSx machines,
which cost over $30 million, stored in a warehouse,
with the hope that they will be certified
and usable at some point in the future.
Hart InterCivic Optical-Scan Has Weak Spot,
By John Gideon, Information Manager for www.votersunite.org and www.votetrustusa.org, July 5, 2005. Yakima County, Washington had a vote count Anomaly.
Is Your Vote Your Vote?
A perspective on optical scan voting machines,
By BRUCE SIMS, Voice of San Diego Guest Columnist, July 22, 2005
Miami-Dade's elections chief wants to boot touch-screen system.
6/6/05. Sorry, links are broken.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2005/06/06/m1a_voting_0606.html
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/11825519.htm
"Sola also noted that touch-screen voters are more likely than those using optical-scan systems to cast blank ballots. In last year's presidential election, 0.42 percent of touch-screen voters in Florida skipped the presidential race, whether deliberately or by accident, compared with 0.29 percent of voters who used optical-scan ballots at polling places."
Bev Harris's BlackBoxVoting Finds Voting Scan Machines Hackable,
6/5/05.
5-27-05: Optical scan system hacked, BlackBoxVoting.
A Proposal for a
Precinct-count Optical Scan System for New York.
Lost E-Votes Could Flip Napa Race
by Kim Zetter, Wired News, March 15, 2004.
Florida county orders recount in primary
,
CNN.com, March 10, 2004.
33. Monitor Elections -- You Can Do It
Group Questions Accurate Election Results
.
Many states do not have enough information quickly enough after elections for
citizens to confirm that elections are fair, transparent and accurate,
according to a post-election analysis
report
by
Votewatch
,
a national nonpartisan, nonprofit election monitoring group that analyzed election results
in nine primary states on Super Tuesday, March 2.
Read their other
2004 Analysis and Reports .
The Ballot Integrity Project
Proposal for the Creation of a National Ballot Integrity Project Task Force.
Statement of Concern and Endorsement
of The Ballot Integrity Project.
34. History
History of American Election Administration
Election Administration in the United States,
1934, by Joseph P. Harris, Ph.D.
The Battle of Athens, Tennessee, 1946.
Returning GIs shoot it out with the sheriff
who was counting ballots in secret in the county jail--and win.
Election debacle highlights debate on new voting systems
By Earl Lane, Washington Bureau, Newsday, 12/14/2000.
Early mention of the need for $billions for new voting systems.
Updating Voting Machines Could Take Nation a Decade,
NewsMax.com Wires, Feb. 14, 2001
Kickbacks mentioned at the bottom of this article in 2001
show an industry in the making.
Behind the Freedom Curtain (1957),
Sales film for lever voting machines, promoting them as
engines of governmental efficiency and practical democracy.
Free download. Produced by AVM in 1957, it uses
arguments against "old fashioned" paper ballots
and in favor of "modern, high tech" voting machines.
Steal This Vote:
Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America (Paperback)
by Andrew Gumbel.
In a riveting and frightening account, Gumbel, U.S. correspondent for
Britain's Independent, traces election fraud in America from the
18th century to the present, spotlighting the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876,
vote buying in the Gilded Age and the history of black disenfranchisement
in the post-Reconstruction South.
The last 100 pages are devoted to the elections of 2000 and 2004.
Gumbel rehearses the Florida mess and argues that those who care
about voting rights should be terrified by Justice Scalia's argument
in Bush v. Gore that the Constitution doesn't per se guarantee
a right of suffrage. Gumbel shows that the confusion (at best) and
cheating (at worst) that went on in Florida are not unusual,
describing numerous county and state elections plagued with problems:
registered voters purged from the rolls; queues at polling places
so long that would-be voters gave up; and confusing ballots.
The term "grandfathering" had its origins in voting
and the Jim Crow laws enacted after the Civil War.
Southern states had high poll taxes and bogus "literacy" tests
that were designed to keep African American people from voting.
To help poor and illiterate whites get to vote while keeping the blacks out,
the laws in seven of these states exempted those persons who were
eligible to vote on January 1, 1867 -- AND THEIR DESCENDANTS -- from
these onerous requirements. Specifically, if your ancestor (i.e.
grandfather) was eligible to vote on 1/1/1867, then YOU were
"grandfathered" in to YOUR right to vote with exemption from the poll
tax, etc. The date January 1, 1867 was before African American people
were granted the right to vote. Because Blacks had no ancestor eligible
to vote as of that day, the law said that they had to pay the poll
taxes and take the tests (which in most cases were impossible to pass)
in order to vote. Thus, this "grandfather clause" effectively limited
voting to whites only. --from Marybeth Kuznik
History of Vermont Voting Systems
Boss Tweed, edited transcript of a talk
by Kenneth Ackerman, author of the book
"Boss Tweed: The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol
Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York.
What is a Luddite?
Computer technologists who warn against the use of unverifiable electronic
voting systems have been called Luddites, meaning people who are against new
technology. Was the "Luddite" argument used against the engineers who
tried to prevent the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster by raising the alarm
that the O-rings were not safe? Were those engineers against new technology, or
were they professionals anchored in real-world realities who knew the limits of
the technology they worked with? History suggests the Luddites were fighting
economic oppression, not technology.
Federal Election Official Blasts Voting Over
Internet
, Associated Press, June
7, 2000. ROCKY GAP, Md.
-- A federal election official is calling Internet voting "a breeding
ground for fraud" and a business-driven threat to democracy.
Recovered History: U.S. Election Fraud Circa
2000
. Vote Fraud: Will YOUR Vote Be Stolen This
November? by C.M. Ross, Catholic Family News, October 2000.
Computerized Systems for Voting Seen as
Vulnerable to Tampering
, By David Burnham, New York Times, July
29, 1985.
Tomorrow: Voting by Radio?
,
By T. R. Kennedy Jr., New York Times, October 29, 1944.
Popular Science, 1920
In the age of ballot-box stuffing, the mechanical voting machine promised indisputably accurate election tallies.
35. Certified Voter-Verified Systems
Accessible and Verifiable Voting Technology: A Feature Comparison).
Current list of certified systems from NASED.
Automark
has completed federal certification testing:
Press Release, June 23, 2005.
Actually, the AutoMARK is "2002 qualified"
(NASED and the ITAs qualify; the states certify).
Qualification is for a complete system, and the AutoMARK was qualified
with an optical-scan in order to be a complete system.
ES&S has no optical-scans that are 2002 qualified;
they used the M-100 and M-650 for the AutoMARK testing
and that makes the complete system only 1990 qualified.
Populex, certified on Dec. 16, 2004.
Avante VOTE Trakker EVC308, Avante VoteTrakker 4.4.3
TUSTIN, CA -- March 26, 2004--
AccuPoll
, a developer of Direct Recording Electronic
(DRE) voting systems, today announced the federal qualification of its voting
system by the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED),
the organization that oversees standards established by the Federal Election
Commission (FEC).
. As a result of federal qualification, AccuPoll can now deliver its intuitive
touch screen-based electronic voting system to counties across the Unites
States for use in this year's and subsequent elections. Additionally, AccuPoll
becomes the first company to offer a federally-qualified electronic voting system
featuring a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) capable of being both
optically scanned and easily read by voters.
. Each voting station features Braille keypads, audible response, modifiable
screen view and multiple language support. An intuitive touch screen user
interface guides each voter through the voting process. Voters can confirm
their selections both onscreen and via the printed paper Proof of Vote.
The National Federation of Republican Women
(NFRW),
one of the largest and most influential women's political organizations in the
United States, announced on Sept 16, 2003, that it would use AccuPoll's voting
technology for the election of its officers This is the second consecutive
election that the NFRW has selected AccuPoll to conduct its elections.
36. Fraud, Dirty Tricks, Politics, Lies
Honestly, it's hard to know whether to put this under the heading of
Conspiracy, Stupidity, or Incompetence. However you interpret it,
why would any Board of Elections use equipment so prone to irregularities?
Smoking Gun!
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.
All I Did Was Say They Can't Run a Fair Election
by Andrew Gumbel, August 30, 2005, The Independent (UK):
'He caters to a British sensibility that sees us as an errant
colony run by a gang of thugs'
Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election
June 2001 Report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Greg Palast article, summary of Florida's 2000 "felons purge list".
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that the purge list,
which contains 57,700 names, had 8,000 (14%) falsely purged individuals
(as the Palast article notes, nearly 15 times George Bush's 537-vote win).
Article with a copy of a page from the list with the names of 4
falsely purged individuals.
Team Bush paid MILLIONS to Nathan Sproul--and tried to hide it!
by Mark Crispin Miller and Jared Irmas, June 30, 2005.
Silenced And Sidelined, Again
Nell Greenberg and Chris Michael,
June 30, 2005.
My Right-Wing Degree,
by Jeff Horwitz, Salon, May 24, 2005.
Click here
37. Internet Voting -- More Insecure than DREs
Continuous coverage of internet voting
from VerifiedVoting.org.
Online Voting Canceled for Americans Overseas
By John Schwartz. The New York Times, February 6, 2004.
Although the Department of Defense decided
not to use online voting in November, 2004,
the project to develop online voting will continue.
A
report
details the problems with internet voting.
There is no solution for them at this time -- they
can't be solved by a voter-verifiable paper audit trail.
The Perils of Online Voting.
Editorial. The New York Times, January 23, 2004.
Report Says Internet Voting System Is Too
Insecure to Use
By John Schwartz. The New York Times, January 21, 2004.
38. Requests for Bids
San Francisco CA
NASS, National Assn of Secretaries of State web page
with links to Voting Equipment RFPs Issued to Date.
Maryland,
2001 RFB (Request for Bids)
Wisconsin
Bid Announcement for Statewide Voter Registration System
39. Humor!
Dutch humor on voting machines.
Coin with electronic voting machine on one side....
Political Humor.
Security Problem Excuse Bingo
Letter to Pres. Bush re biblical matters.
Fleabold Voting Machines.
E-voting Machine Screen.
Stephen Colbert's Remarks to President Bush, posted May 3, 2006.
Book
Major Technological Breakthrough:
BIO-Optic Organized Knowledge Device (BOOK) with photo of use.
Song, They Lost My Vote
Gary and Ellen Bukstel sing.
The Daily Show reports on E-voting.
My President is an Alien.
The L.E.A.D. Ballot Marking Device, Light, Economical And Dependable.
Is this funny? Not really, it is another demonstration
of how electronic election fraud can be accomplished.
Declaration of Revocation
by John Cleese.
Diebold, Choicepoint Partner to Offer Innovative Voting Technology.
Alpharetta, GA - Diebold Election Systems and Choicepoint, Inc., today announced a joint venture that could revolutionize the voting market. The concept is simple: combine Diebold's demonstrated expertise in voting systems with Choicepoint's superior data-mining techniques to produce PredictaVote(TM) - the first 100 percent voter-free, predictive voting system.
Ukranian Election Observers in the USA
by Jackson Thoreau, The Moderate Independent, Nov. 16, 2004.
http://www.wearabledissent.com/101/floridavote.html
Diebold Variations
Toles cartoon.
Electronic Election 2004
,
Animation with Sound by Mark Fiore
Electronic Voting Machines
from The Onion.
The Votemobile
by Ray Lesser, published in Funny Times, November, 2003.
40. Law and Lawsuits
Louisiana Commissioner Of Elections Convicted Of Accepting Kickbacks From E-Vote Vendors, Equal Justice Foundation.
Sandusky County (Ohio) v. Kenneth Blackwell, DOJ Amicus Brief
Arizona Lawsuit from
VoterAction.org.
New Mexico Complaint from
VoterAction.org.
Model legislation VerifiedVoting.org drafted
links and language from states with audit provisions.
Tennessee lawsuit information.
This information joins the Paul Lehto lawsuit information.
Please use this information as a basis for any lawsuits
you may want to file in your states.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is appealing Shays vs. FEC.
The appeal is in reaction to a three-judge panel decision
from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on July 15, 2005.
This decision invalidated many FEC rules implementing the
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). The FEC has petitioned
the Court for a rehearing in front of the entire panel of judges
so that the full Court may reconsider the July 15 decision.
In the interim, the FEC continues with its rulemaking process
reconsidering the rules that the three-judge panel found objectionable.
Two of these rules are available for public comment:
the first is on the definition of "federal election activity"
(comments are due by 9/29) and the second is on the definition
of "electioneering communications" (comments are due by 9/30)
The FEC accepted comments and held a public hearing on a rulemaking
for internet communications earlier this year. To date, there is
no indication of when we can expect a final ruling on this matter.
Alliance for Justice submitted comments asking to protect internet
communications.
Alliance for Justice will submit comments on the electioneering
communications rulemaking and continues to monitor the progress
of the other BCRA regulations and the Shays appeal.
To view the rulemakings go to http://www.fec.gov/law/law_rulemakings.shtml
To view materials related to Shays v. FEC go to:
http://www.fec.gov/law/litigation_CCA_S.shtml#shays_02
Lawsuit in Tennsessee claims that paperless ballots violate the Tennessee Constitution. August, 2005.
Election Board Drops Suit
8/18/05, Ohio and ES&S.
Lawsuits related to Lynn Landes.
"One of the fundamentals of voting with legitimacy is transparency,
which is not possible as long as people vote using machines,
absentee ballots, or early voting.
Poll watchers must have something to watch.
Federal observers must have something to observe.
To compromise on the principal of oversight through transparency
is to open the door to vote fraud and system failure
with little opportunity for detection." 7/7/05.
Snomish County Lawsuit.
Verified Voting litigation page
Not Your Father's Justice Department, Election Law @ Moritz,
on what ID is required to cast a ballot.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005.
Bush Seeks Limit to Suits Over Voting Rights
,
The Los Angeles Times, By David G. Savage and Richard B. Schmitt. October 29, 2004.
Administration lawyers argue that only the Justice Department,
not the voters, may sue to enforce provisions in the Help America Vote Act.
US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that
Ohio voters who use provisional ballots
must cast those ballots in their own precincts,
overruling a contrary lower-court decision that would have counted them
so long as they were cast in the correct county,
and upholding a policy originally announced by
Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican.
Federal Judge Tosses Wexler's E-vote Paper Trail Suit
Washington Post, Oct 25, 2004.
October 23, 2004. The US Supreme Court has
rejected a bid by independent presidential candidate
Ralph Nader
to reverse a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision
that prevented him from being placed on the state's election ballot.
Federal court rules
Florida need not count provisional ballots
if they were cast in the wrong precinct. October 22, 2004.
List of lawsuits
on e-voting from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
List of lawsuits
on e-voting from VerifiedVoting.org.
Federal Court Rules in Favor of Paper Trail Reform in E-Voting
.
July 6, 2004.
Los Angeles - A federal judge today ruled that California
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's requirements
to ensure the security of electronic voting machines
do not violate federal or state law.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, California Voter Foundation,
VerifiedVoting.org, and Voters Unite!
submitted a friend-of-the-court brief and a surreply
in support of Secretary Shelley.
The case is Benavidez v. Shelley. Here is the
temporary order
denying plaintiffs AAPD and Peter Benavidez, et al.,
a TRO (temporary restraining order) or PI (preliminary injunction).
41. LCCR-Brennan Center Recommendations
Press Release with links
to the recommendations and a sample RFP. June 29, 2004. To increase security
and improve public confidence in the voting process, the Leadership Conference
on Civil Rights (LCCR) and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
(BC) today released a new report providing specific recommendations for
elections officials planning to use electronic voting machines in the 2004
elections.
WheresThePaper.org regrets that even if these
recommendations were followed, they create neither security nor transparency
appropriate for election integrity and voter confidence in a democracy. Many
technologists endorsed or approved of the suggestions, but only as a first
step. As Aviel D. Rubin, a computer security expert at Johns Hopkins University,
said... "If your child was going to drink and drive no matter what you
did," ... carrying out the recommendations of the report "would be
like convincing them to wear a seatbelt."
It is time for every American who loves democracy
to stand up and say that computers
are an inappropriate technology for use in elections
because they prevent the kind of human oversight
and public participation that election integrity requires.
Computerized devices may be used to assist voters with disabilities
to mark a paper ballot without direct assistance from other people,
but the paper ballot needs to be primary.
Computers are inappropriate for recording and counting ballots.
The package of materials produced by LCCR and
the Brennan Center include an estimate of the cost
of implementing their recommendations.
For a fraction of the same money,
bonded competent accountants or other auditing professionals
could count the votes on paper ballots before an audience of spectators,
and eliminate the controversy caused by the use of computerized voting systems.
It is interesting to compare the LCCR-BC
recommendations to those provided by
Dr. Douglas Jones
to Miami-Dade, June 7, 2004, which look at
the the use of DREs in a specific real-world election context.
42. Other Web Sites
VotersUnite
Lynn Landes Investigates Voting Security
VoteTrustUSA
BlackBoxVoting.org
Electoral Vote Predictor 2004
VerifiedVoting.org has new material posted.
Voting Technology Costs and Considerations,
on the relative costs of various voting systems.
Voting Accessibility Resources: Improving Voting Systems for Disabled People
research on the accessibility features of voting technology,
opinions from disabled organizations and individuals.
Advantages of Ballot Marking Devices
on the new technology called ballot marking devices
which gives disabled voters access to paper ballots.
EIRS Outcomes, an ongoing survey of studies based on
election problem reports in the Election Incident Reporting System.
Public Confidence in Elections,
the latest reports.
Center for American Politics and Citizenship,
University of Maryland
Promise and Performance of E Voting Systems Workshop, April 23, 2007
Voter Accuracy: Voter Abilities to Cast their Votes as Intended
The voter-marked optical scan ballot had an error rate probably
because the write-in option required voters to both fill in the write-in bubble,
AND write the name of the candidate.
Nevertheless, the voter-marked optical scan ballot had the lowest undervote
rate of any voting system used in the 2004 Presidential election:
CalTech Voter Residual Vote Rates
The Bush Record:
Actions, Consequences and Failure in 2000-2004,
An informative resource on the issues.
Voting Machines:
Did Your Vote Count?
We Cannot Know What The Voting Machines Did! by
Thomas D. Schneider, Ph. D.
43. Yale Study, Small Vote Manipulations Can Change Election Outcomes
Four Yale students show that altering only a single vote per machine
would have changed the electoral college outcome of the 2000 election.
Changing only two votes/machine would have flipped
the results for four states.
This is why, if computers are used in elections, we must
require 100% accurate recounts of each computer.
Otherwise, an insider or technician can control the outcome
by switching a few votes per machine.
Elections in the USA are not expected to be 100% "perfect"
and few people would be suspicious if a "surprise random recount"
shows that the computers were wrong by a few votes.
What are the implications for state such as
New York?
DiFranco et al, "
Small Vote Manipulations Can Swing Elections," Communications of
the ACM, Vol. 47, Issue 10, October 2004, pages 43-45.
Copyright ACM, posted by permission.
ACM Portal to the article
Abstract of the article.
44. Standards: Accounting, Software
Configuration Management and Voting Systems,
By John Washburn, VoteTrustUSA Voting Technology Task Force,
April 14, 2006
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles,
Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board.
White Paper on Security Standards for Information Technology,
TNC Engineering.
45. Baker-Carter Commission
WheresThePaper.org's opionion:
Voter ID appears to be Baker's main issue, and VVPAT is Carter's.
The Commission's recommendations will probably include both
(a kind of "trade-off").
Keep in mind that VVPAT without a mandate to count the votes
on the VVPAT won't ensure election integrity, and if we are
going to count all the votes on VVPAT, why not just vote directly
on paper, and relieve everyone of these computers?
Testimony, Panel 3, Voting Technology and Election Administration
April 18, 2005.
Vote Fraud WhitehouseWash; The Half-Baked Baker Carter Commission
By David Swanson, OpEdNews.com, April 19, 2005.
Fox reports.
Partisans Discuss 'Reform'
Questions surface regarding legitimacy of Baker-Carter
election reform commission, By Larisa Alexandrovna, RAW STORY,
April 14, 2005.
46. Communications Capability in Voting Systems
Ban Communication Capability in Voting and Vote-tabulating Equipment!
Why no Internet Connection by John Washburn.
5 New Consumer Reports from Black Box Voting:
who owns voting machine companies; who is paying whom;
more on powerline communications and voting systems.
47. Voter Registration Databases
California, 2006
Debra Bowen Press Release, 3/30/06,
Bowen notes irony as Secretary of State declares April
"California Voter Education & Participation Month" at the same
time he's preventing eligible Californians from registering to vote
Debra Bowen Press Release, 4/6/06,
Bowen fights Secretary of State who Announces It's In The "Best Interests
of Voters" To Readopt His Regulations That Have Prevented Tens of
Thousands of People From Registering To Vote
Debra Bowen Press Release, 4/19/06,
Legal opinion concludes the roadblock is the Secretary of State
Debra Bowen Press Release, 4/19/06,
After three weeks, the Secretary of State responds to
Bowen's call to fix the regulations that have prevented
thousands of eligible Californians from registering to vote
Mailroom glitch sends voters' registration cards to wrong people in Broward,
By Scott Wyman, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, May 26, 2006.
Brennan Center litigation
Washington Association of Churches et. al. v. Reed
seeks to block implementation of state law that bars citizens from
voting unless the Secretary of State first succeeds in matching their names, driver’s license or Social Security numbers, and birth dates from their voter registration forms with records kept in other government databases.
Colorado scraps computer voter registration
The Sacramento Bee,
By STEVEN K. PAULSON, Associated Press Writer
December 1, 2005.
Computerized statewide voter registration databases raise many questions:
1. How will these be implemented, populated, validated?
2. Private consulting companies will create and possibly maintain these
databases for many states.
The same company that makes the voting machines also offer complete
election packages -- design the software for the voter database,
sell and then maintain and run the voting machines,
tally the votes. Sequoia and ES&S do it.
Accenture is maintaining the list in Florida.
Covansys is doing it in New Jersey.
SAIC handled Michigan's voter database.
This is the military-industrial complex taking over our voting systems.
But is privatization of voter rolls in the public interest?
3. As Florida 2000 showed, these computerized databases be used to purge
legitimate voters from the rolls. What can be done to prevent it?
EAC Voluntary Guidance on Implementation
of Statewide Voter Registration Lists
Steve Carbo of Demos says that
"well-designed computerized, statewide voter registries
are our best hope for accurate voter rolls that will allow
eligible voters to cast a ballot that will be counted."
Carbo's heart is in the right place, but he suffers from that "Startrek"
fantasy about computers. When he calls for
"strong safeguards" and "tough security measures"
you can almost see Captain Piccard commanding,
"implement strong safeguards and tough security!"
and Data replying, "both shields are up, Captain!"
Considering that even our Department of Defense's
computers have been broken into, it is a fantasy comparable to Startrek that
any computer system will provide as much accuracy and privacy
of voter's information as buff-card files in a local Board of Elections office.
The
California Election Protection Network
takes foresees potential trouble:
"the government has no authority to contract with
any Private entity to control data that could impact
the public's right to a free and fair election" or
"to permit the ... consolidation of personal data
in the hands of one private entity, especially ChoicePoint."
Privacy of Statewide Voter Registration Databases? From
www.progressreport.org, 6/21/2005:
"A federal agency collected extensive personal information about
airline passengers although Congress told it not to and
it said it wouldn't
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/20/AR2005062000799.html) ,
according to documents obtained Monday," the Associated Press reports.
Apparently, the Transportation Security Administration hired a contractor
who "used three data brokers to collect detailed information about
U.S. citizens who flew on commercial airlines in June 2004
in order to test a terrorist screening program called Secure Flight."
The program has been criticized for "secretly obtaining personal
information about airline passengers, not doing enough to protect it
and then misleading the public about its role in acquiring the data."
48. Media Silence
Something Rotten in Ohio
By Gore Vidal, The Nation. Posted June 14, 2005.
Gallup: Public Confidence in Newspapers, TV News Falls to All-Time Low
By E&P Staff, June 10, 2005.
The media is ignoring or poorly covering many topics (it's not just election
problems!), such as the
cause for the war in Iraq.
AP dropped the ball on the Downing memo, By Eric Boehlert, June 14, 2005,
Salon.com.
Is the American national government still working? June 16, 2005.
Should we trust our government?
49. Fascism
In the American Bunker
by David Michael Green,
June 14, 2005, CommonDreams.org
Living Under Fascism, a sermon by Davidson Loehr
First UU Church of Austin, Nov. 7, 2004.
Fascism Anyone? by Laurence W. Britt,
Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2, Spring 2003.
Benito Mussolini: What is Fascism, 1932 from the
Modern History Sourcebook.
50. Legislation
Legislation at verifiedvoting.org.
51. DNC Report, 6/22/05
Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio,
Report from the Voting Rights Institute of the Democratic Party.
June 22, 2005.
The BradBlog comments on it.
Bradblog on ACVR's comment on DNC report.
What the DNC Ohio Election Report failed to address.
With a limp election theft report, Dems prove why they're unworthy
Election Science Institute
finds the DNC "Democracy at Risk" Report "thorough, careful and objective."
Bungling the Vote by Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com, June 23, 2005.
Democrats Say 2004 Election System Failed in Ohio,
By Dan Balz, Washington Post, June 23, 2005.
Donna Brazile, Chair of the DNC Voting Rights Institute,
on Lessons from Ohio 2004.
52. Secret Ballot Compromised
Secret ballot compromised in Georgia!,
June 24, 2005.
Still more evidence of monkey business in the 2004 election.
from Roxanne Jekot and Emily Dische-Becker.
One big questions is, do all Diebold DREs use a 'numbered identification' on
each voter's ballot? Are they used on
the vvpat ballots on the new Diebold AccuView printers
that have a bar code but no ITA qualified bar-code reader?
Another big question is, do all
early voting systems compromise the voter's identity? Of course
they do, they have to connect to the voter registration database
in order to verify the voter's registration and determine what ballot
to display (what local races). The voter's identity may be permanently
associated with their voted ballot in the computer. The public won't
know for sure until a big scandal erupts, like the airline data that
ended up in the hand of the government, etc.
The key to making this possible is the centralized voter registration
database to connect the registration ID to the vote.
Early voting on the iVotronic also compromises the voter's identity.
That is why Cherie Poucher, director of the
Wake County, North Carolina,
Board of Elections was able to contact the 436
voters whose votes were lost in 2002, so they could vote again
after their ballots were lost by the ES&S evote machine.
53. Voting System Standards
1990 Voting System Standards
Page 141, Section E-5 of the 1990 FEC Voting System Standard,
regarding DRE's:Mbr>
"Voter confirmation does not, however, guarantee that the voter
choices are correctly recorded and updated in memory registers.
Instead, DRE system accuracy and integrity is best safeguarded
by adequately testing the implementation of the requirements
for multiple memories and a separate processing path for
retention of ballot images."
E-Vote Guidelines Need Work by Kim Zetter, July 7, 2005.
Voting Machine Accuracy vs Verifiability
Voting System Standards, 2004
The current 90 day "comment" period
(beginning June 24, 2005)
is actually supposed to be for "internal" review
according to HAVA, 42 USC 15362(d)(2).
The EAC is supposed to give the full Standards Board
and Advisory Board a minimum of 90 days to review the TGDC draft,
after which the EAC can vote to "adopt" the draft.
After the EAC has finished its internal review
and voted to "adopt" the TGDC draft,
the draft is to be published in the Federal Register, 42 USC 15361(f).
The process of Federal Register publication then follows,
and that process is supposed to involve all of the following, 42 USC 15362(a),
"(1) publication of notice of the proposed guidelines
in the Federal Register; (2) an opportunity for public comment on
the proposed guidelines; (3) an opportunity for a public hearing on the
record; and (4) publication of the final guidelines in the Federal
Register."
According to the EAC's
press release, the EAC expects to "adopt" the
draft guidelines in October 2005, but expects the draft guidelines
not to become effective until 24 months later
(which recognizes a substantial comment
and review process after the October 2005 "adoption").
Thus it appears that there are two ways and times when
people can comment on the proposed standards,
either to the EAC now, or through the Federal Register process, or both.
Voting System Standards, 1990
download the VSS
FAQ about voting system standards
In the 1990 FEC Voting System Standards, in Appendix E on Page 141, Paragraph E-5 towards end of document:
The first sentence points out that the VVPAT may not match the electronic ballot, and the second sentence has been proven untrue by the many failures documented by VotersUnite.org and others.
"Voter confirmation does not, however, guarantee that the voter choices are correctly recorded and updated in memory registers. Instead, DRE system accuracy and integrity is best safeguarded by adequately testing the implementation of the requirements for multiple memories and a separate processing path for retention of ballot images."
54. Test Yourself!
Can you find all the half-truths, non-responsive arguments,
and lies in these documents?
To help you get started, here's one that's already done!
LWVUS statement and response
by Dr. Barbara Simons.
Now it's your turn:
DOES EVERY VOTE COUNT? IT DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU LIVE, SAYS PROFESSOR
, Old Dominion University News,
April 6, 2001
Voters Will See Changes By 2006
The Sentinel, Pa., Sept. 4, 2005.
E-voting receipts may be useless
California secretary of state says paper-trail recounts problematic,
Inside Bay Area, August 17, 2005.
Bad guys web site.
Upgrading America's Ballot Box: The Rise of E-voting,
from the Pacific Research Institute, June 2005, by
Sonia Arrison and Vince Vasquez.
Arrison gets around -- here's her
article in TechNews World where she uses the
"don't look, don't find" argument:
"no one has found any evidence of the machines
being used for fraudulent purposes."
Electionline is supposed to be neutral.
Are they?
James Baker's famous quote:
"Machines are neither Republicans nor Democrats and
therefore can never be consciously or even unconsciously biased."
The former Secretary of State is now head of the Baker-Carter Commission.
US e-voting proponents say no to paper trails
June 22, 2005, NewScientist.com news service, by Celeste Biever.
Argument against VVPAT: It will take too long for voters to vote, so
we will need more DREs which will cost too much.
55. HAVA, Help America Vote Act
HAVA.
U.S. Dept. of Justice, Voting Section Home Page
HAVA authorized the expenditure of federal money to encourage states
to buy untested, untried technology with arbitrary short deadlines,
forcing the states to meet unattainable goals.
Many of local boards of elections did their best
to abide by the law yet it was always evident that they
were being asked to work with badly-written and often malicious
software and flawed machines.
Those who drafted and approved the HAVA without consulting the
technologists who opposed it are responsible for the mess HAVA caused.
56. Early Results Known
If absentee ballots may be tabulated in a period starting before election day,
who would have access to the early election results? Do county procedures or
state law prevent the early results from being known by interested parties?
Even ballot counts per precinct is useful information.
57. Miscellaneous
Vote By Mail Project.
Early Voting.
Voter Contact Services (VCS),
one of our nation’s most reliable sources
for voter lists and information, and the Voter Emailing Company
have partnered to add email addresses to the national voter file.
The Voter Emailing Company Lists:
Over 15 million voter email addresses
Matched to Voter Contact Services (VCS) national voter file
A wealth of voter information -- party registration, voter history, zip code, county, district, age, gender and income and other information are included on many of the voter records
Targeted voter emails for a fraction of the cost of direct mail
NIST software reference library
"Every voting software vendor should submit their certified software
to the National Software Reference Library (NSRL) at the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
This will facilitate the tracking of software version usage.
NSRL is designed to collect software from various sources and
incorporate file profiles computed from this software into a
Reference Data Set (RDS) of information. The RDS can be used
by law enforcement, government, and industry organizations to
review files on a computer by matching file profiles in the RDS.
The NSRL was built to meet the needs of the law enforcement
community for rigorously verified data that can meet the exacting
requirement of the criminal justice system."
Error rates
The certification standard for maximum errors
is 1 mistake in 500,000 votes.
That's votes, not ballots.
No voting machine is going to have 500,000 votes on it, ever.
This means that even one error in any election should,
by law, disqualify that voting machine and all like it.
It means that no DRE presently in use has ever met those standards.
Having an error rate standard says that it's OK to lose a
certain percentage of votes. Is it OK? WheresThePaper recommends
comparing computer use in elections to computer use in financial
institutions. For example, the Federal Reserve system processes
13 billion checks every 24 hours. Is it OK for them to lose 2 checks
per million? Our goal should be to ensure that every vote is cast
and counted accurately. However, the struggle here is to even
determine whether or not any vote has been cast and counted accurately.
With paper ballots and hand counts, all you need is a lot of observers.
With computers, you can't determine this without an audit,
which brings us back to the fact that political forces are
spending millions of dollars to resist even the possibility
of audits of electronic equipment used in elections.
Paper ballots printed on reel-to-reel thermal paper, problems:
1. Size of print is small, and even when the paper slides under a cheap
magnifying plastic panel, will still be hard to read, and will slow down
voting. A manual count would also have to use magnification and be slower
than otherwise necessary, thus raising the expense for the county or the
candidate who has to pay for the count.
2. Ballots on thermal paper are easily erased by heat (hot storage room, left
in a car in the sun all day).
3. The reel-to-reel format makes it difficult to give different teams of
hand-counters a portion of the votes to count.
4. Sequential order of the ballots could be combined with knowledge of the
sequence of voters (obtained by polling site observers or from the sign-in
books) to determine what voter voted each ballot. Many vendors now are selling
"end-to-end" computerized products that provide voter-registration lists and
electronic sign-in books for use at the polls. When one vendors handles the
entire election process, one can assume that the identity of the voter of
each ballot may be known by insiders.
58. Mail-in Voting
Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Elections Results.
59. Audit facts
Auditing Elections, Dr. Doug Jones
Auditing Elections Worksheet
Manual Audit Requirements Introduction, Aug. 20, 2005.
Manual Audit Requirements in various state laws where voter-verified
paper records are used.
Sample VVPB and Audit Legislation.
Cost Estimate for Hand Counting 2% of the Precincts in the U.S.
by Ellen Theisen of VotersUnite.org,
States that did random audits in 2004 were CA and NV.
NV was much less of an audit (see link below).
CA has been doing 1% audits of some sort for over 20 years.
Beginning in 2006 ten states will have mandatory audits:
CT (2 machines per township which comes out to ca. 10%)
HI 10%
MN 10%
WV 5%
IL 5% (only DREs)
WA 4%
NY 3%
NV 3%
NM 2%
CA 2%
The audit of voter-verified records in Nevada, 2004.
Random recounts are actually spot-checks, and many people
do not believe that they will detect tampering.
Instead, the losing candidates should pick the precincts
to be spot-checked, and random selection of precincts
should be used only when the losing candidates have no
suspicions of tampering.
60. Undervotes, Phantom votes, etc
Smoking Gun!
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.
Florida study shows that DREs had 8 times
as many undervotes as optical scanners. July 2004.
Undervote Rates in North Carolina
DREs had a higher undervote rate than optical scanners, and
optical scanners had the most consistent and lowest undervote rates
of the various technologies used in November, 2004.
"Phantom Votes Are Not Possible"
says New Mexico's Secretary of State,
yet there are 2,087 phantom votes in her certified canvass report.
How Effective is an Occasionally-Used Paper Ballot?
Justin Moore, Duke University Department of Computer Science.
61. Test the Machines Pre-election
What to observe in pre-election testing
Testing Voting Systems
Also, find out about communications capability including wireless connectivity.
A test script that runs electronically will be set up in advance to work
correctly, so have actual persons cast actual ballots and test
each possible ballot position and combination.
62. Democracy Issues
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
-- Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian archbishop.
"In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because
I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Jew." Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me -- and
by that time no one was left to speak up."
--Pastor Martin Niemoller.
Feds Shrugged As Subprime Crisis Spread, New York Times, 12/18/08.
Calvin and Hobbes explain the need for subsidies for business
Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption, New York Review of Books, Jan. 15, 2009.
Under Bush, OSHA Mired in Inaction, Washington Post, Dec. 29, 2008.
Creeping Fascism: History's Lessons,
By Ray McGovern, Dec. 27, 2007.
"There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater. ... Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later...."
The End of America? Naomi Wolf Thinks It Could Happen,
Don Hazen, Alternet, Nov. 21, 2007
Hey, Young Americans, Here's a Text for You,
Naomi Wolf, Washington Post, Nov. 25, 2007
The permanent Republican majority: Daughter of jailed governor sees White House hand in her father's fall,
Larisa Alexandrovna, RawStory, Nov. 27, 2007
Even a Remote Chance?,
Pokey Anderson, July 2006, on remote communications in voting systems.
Granny D: "Love is the only truth that can save us from lies and from anger and sad living",
Wartburg speech, as delivered in Iowa - Doris "Granny D" Haddock, Nov. 2007
Debate moderators overlook key questions,
MediaMatters.org, Nov. 17, 2007
Fired Attorneys Build Case Against Gonzales,
By Jason Leopold,
truthout Report, Nov. 16, 2007
Election Center: The Fox Guarding the Henhouse Updated
The Election Center Wants To "Improve" Democracy - And The Profit
Margins Of Their Corporate Sponsors.
By Joyce McCloy, NC Coalition for Verified Voting, Jan. 15, 2006
Giuliani on YouTube
GovTrack.us, info on the 110th Congress
The Truth Behind "Lions for Lambs",
Lisa Pease, Nov. 9, 2007
I'll have the Bilderberger, well done!,
Jerry Mazza, Online Jouranl Associate Editor, Nov. 9, 2007
A "Paper Coup," and Blackwater Eyes Midtown Manhattan,
Naomi Wolf, Huffington Post, Nov. 4, 2007
TSA Gets Earful on Air Security Proposal
Travel Management, Oct. 11, 2007
Biographical info on Saddam Hussein
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed Lamb contesting the vote!"
--Ben Franklin
Report: Thousands Wrongly on Terror List
AP, Oct. 6, 2006.
Capitalism That Works For All
Frances Moore Lapp, AlterNet. Posted June 23, 2006.
In a region of northern Italy, the author of 'Diet For a
Small Planet' discovered a cooperative approach to living
that actually enhances human dignity.
Reform the System or Lose the Democracy
by Molly Ivins, May 30, 2006
Standards for Secure, Transparent, Impartial, and Independently Audited Elections
Voters in many states have no way of knowing if the reported election
outcome is legitimate. How does Oregon's election system measure up?
The Slow Death of Newspapers
For some reason, publishers assume people will want to buy more
newspapers if they have less news in them and are less useful to people.
By Molly Ivins, AlterNet, March 23, 2006.
Government Secrecy
OpenTheGovernment.org
Hey, Democrats, the Truth Matters!,
By Robert Parry, Consortium News, May 11, 2006
How to Keep Democrats From Blowing the November Election,
By Bernard Weiner, Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers, May 9, 2006
Poll: 2004 Election Was Stolen; according to viewers of all news networks except Fox News,
by Rob Kall, OpEdNews, May 11, 2006
NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls,
5/11/2006, By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY
Former Top Judge Says US risks Edging Near Dictatorship,
about retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Guardian, March 13, 2006
Genetically Modified: New study shows unborn babies could be harmed,
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, The Independent, Online Edition,
January 8, 2006.
Mortality rate for new-born rats six times higher when mother was fed
on a diet of modified soya.
The World Trade Organization is expected in February to support a bid
by the Bush administration to force European countries to accept GM foods.
Mike McCurry & the Hostile Takeover of the Democratic Party,
by David Sirota, CommonDreams.org,
April 25, 2006,
Capitalism Under Fire
International Herald Tribune, March 30, 2006.
'Iraq was awash in cash. We played football with bricks of $100 bills'
Guardian, March 29, 2006.
Bush Challenges Hundreds Of Laws
Boston.com, Boston Globe, April 30, 2006.
Bush Interprets Law Any Way He Wants
Boston.com, Boston Globe, March 24, 2006.
Group Sues To Block Budget Law That Never Passed House
Mercury News, March 22, 2006.
Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'
By Nat Parry, Consortium News. Posted February 23, 2006.
Is the Pentagon building U.S.-based prison camps for
Muslim immigrants? Evidence points to the possibility.
Hotel U.S.A. By Joseph Richey, AlterNet.
Posted on March 14, 2006.
Part two of a two-part series on new immigration and detention centers
in the US.
South Dakota Indian Tribe Will Open Abortion Business if Ban Becomes Law
LifeNews, March 23, 2006.
Spies, Lies and Wiretaps
New York Times, Jan. 29, 2006.
Restoring the Right to Vote for Felons
New York Times, Jan. 10, 2006.
Justice Deputy Resisted Parts Of Spy Program
New York Times, Jan. 1, 2006.
The Mugging of the American Dream
By Bill Moyers, AlterNet
June 6, 2005.
Selling Washington By Elizabeth Drew, June 23, 2005,
The New York Review of Books.
A synopsis of the depth of the political problem we face today.
Disasters waiting to happen -- bridges and levees
Sept. 11, 2005
Revisiting the Biggest Story of Our Lives
Jim Lampley, May 25, 2005,
"More than two weeks have passed since I first
established here that a mountain of evidence suggests the 2004
Presidential election was decisively tampered with and general media
are doing nothing about it. Needless to say, the response,
pro and con, was overwhelming."
FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals
, by Miriam Raftery, RawStory, September 13, 2005.
63. Voter Confidence
Poll of technologists: 95% oppose paperless electronic voting.
"...the Association for Computing Machinery, the largest professional
organization of computer technologists, adopted a position against
paperless electronic voting after an internal poll showed that
95 percent of their membership agreed with the position."
US Public Opinion toward Voting Technologies,
Study by InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. published on
March 1, 2004. 68% of Americans have high or moderate confidence
in touchscreens, 32% don't trust them.
Problems with this kind of approach -- most Americans are ignorant
about computer technology. The fact that they trust touchscreens
doesn't make touchscreens trustworthy.
This study is used by AAPD
to prove that touchscreens are trustworthy. If one-third of voters
don't trust a particular voting technology, that technology should
not be used because it will suppress the vote.
Findlaw study: in September, 2004,
42% of Americans distrusted electronic voting.
64. Contact Info
phone numbers for LOCAL OFFICES of US Senators.
65. Films
Man of the Year.
What would happen if one of the nation’s funniest men became president
via an accident? Acerbic performer Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams) has made his career out of skewering politicians and speaking the mind of the exasperated nation on his talk show. He cracks scathing jokes at a fractured system night after night…until he came up with a really funny idea: why not run for president himself? After a flip comment, Dobbs ignites a grassroots movement that puts him on the ballot. Hot on the campaign trail, he debates elected drones and says exactly what frustrated voters have often thought. Nov. 2nd later, the muckraker wins—only to learn that a computer voting error gave him the victory. With time ticking on the inaugural clock, Dobbs has a big decision to make: should he go back behind the mike or stay in the Oval Office?
Invisible Ballots.
VoterGate.
66. Who's Who
Paul Craft
ZoomInfo.com.
Brit Williams
ZoomInfo.com.
"We do not pretend that the security features described above make the
State's voting system completely safe from attack. We do believe,
however, that these features reduce the chance of a successful election
fraud in the State of Georgia to better than one in one billion."
Brit Williams, Security in the Georgia Voting System, April 23, 2003
quote
