Diebold

Microsoft Authoring Our "Election Reform" Legislation? Were We Short on Viruses or Something?

davidswanson — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:09:08 -0400

From Clare Maher via Mark Crispin Miller:

'MICROSOFT 811'

Holt: "It's no longer my bill."

In a town meeting in his New Jersey home district in July, Congressman Rush Holt made some disturbing statements which leave no doubt that H.R. 811 has become a bill that protects the interests of software corporations over the rights of citizens. In fact the Holt bill is NOT the Holt bill anymore! It has become 'Microsoft 811'!

Mr. Holt: "The bill has been changed since I introduced it. It's no longer my bill -- well, it's still my bill but it's been marked up in committee."

Further he added:

"Unfortunately, the committee that made this change heard from Microsoft. They heard that Voice. The point is Microsoft did lobby strongly. It wasn't just Microsoft. It was everybody who..."

Audience question: "Diebold?"

Holt: "No, it was software -- the software industry."

There is something seriously wrong when a U.S. Congressman can say that an election reform bill he introduced was significantly changed through the lobbying effort of Microsoft and the software industry....that their voices were heard!

Since when was the rule passed in Congress that whoever lobbies hardest gets to determine the content of U.S. legislation?

When a U.S. Congressman can agree that "the software industry won!" - as Mr. Holt admitted at the July meeting, we have a critical problem that threatens the foundation of our Democracy.

This bill is no longer the Holt bill...he said so himself. Clearly, the bill is now 'Microsoft 811!'

When Congressman Holt - the election reform leader in Congress - puts his trust in an audit that many experts say is inadequate, when he advocates for questionable paper trails linked to secretly programmed machines and then adds " I don't care what Microsoft does with their electronics in there" (as he did), it begins to look like our elections are a game of Russian roulette.

Where once the bill called for complete openness, full public disclosure of all software used to count OUR votes, now we have the opposite. 'Microsoft 811' enshrines in LAW the right of corporations to privatize our election through control of programming secrecy, prohibiting public disclosure of what's inside OUR voting machines! Only under strict conditions, people selected for very specific purposes can review the software, but only after signing non-disclosure agreements. Thus, what should be a contractual agreement is enshrined in federal law.

When you vote on Election Day you will not know what is happening inside that electronic machine. Under 'Microsoft 811', on Election Night the results reported will be generated from those secretly programmed electronic bytesŠ.from the very machines that top security experts have labeled "fatally flawed." Can we trust the results? How will we know?

A few months ago in New York State, during the hectic closing days of the legislative session, Microsoft along with other software vendors/lobbyists tried to sneak through provisions to destroy some of the strictest, hardest won, voting security legislation in the country by attaching those provisions to another bill which was simply about a minor change in the primary. Fortunately activists were vigilant and raised an alarm. Thousands of New Yorkers called their legislators in the next two days and the vendors' effort was defeated. Citizens can win if they speak out.

Now we have a far bigger challenge. Microsoft and other software companies are trying to get another bill passed that would protect their rights over the rights of the public. It is up to We the People to say "No" Š say it loud and clear till OUR VOICES - not the corporations' - are heard and heeded.

There are more problems with 'Microsoft 811' than just the assault on the public's right to know. See http://www.votersunite.org/info/hr811Report.pdf . Right now it must be stopped, and then we must demand that Congress pass a "stripped down" bill focused on the most vital steps to better secure election 2008. We MUST BAN DREs and provide states funding to replace them with systems that use paper ballots, marked by hand or by accessible ballot-marking devices, and counted by hand or by automatic tabulator. And any time we use computers to tabulate votes, we must have statistically significant hand-count audits to check the accuracy of the machines then continually improve the entire system.with citizen involvement.

People "say" Congress will never ban DREs. But where's the proof? Congress' reason for being is to serve "We the People." It is up to all of us to act. So, call your Representative and engage at least ten other people to call or fax. Call until you are have been heard. Tell Representatives to vote NO on H.R. 811 and to insist on a real election reform bill that bans DREs and restores to our elections the requirement of true separate and independent checks and balances which can be open to the American people. Only our vote should be secret.

Abraham Lincoln said, "Elections belong to the people. It is their decision."

Would that Congress heard these words rather than the words of 'Microsoft & Co.'

So now it's time to have our voices heard, and make it OUR decision.

Microsoft 811 will be on the floor for a vote this week. It is vital that you act now. We are up against some powerful interests but New York citizens won, so can all of usŠif each of us takes action. Stop Microsoft 811! Then Ban DREs!

To get telephone number of your representative or get info: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt?action=myreps_f...

BradBlog Reports: Diebold Goes the Way of Turdblossom

davidswanson — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:18:21 -0400

'DIEBOLD ELECTION SYSTEMS, INC.' IS NO MORE!
Election Unit Spins off from Corporate Parent, Becomes 'Premier Election Solutions' After Failure to Find Buyer for Failing Unit!

-- By Brad Friedman from St. Louis, MO
Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. is no more. At least in name.

After a year and a half of conversely trying to dump their failed voting unit and/or lying to customers about the reliability and security of their voting systems, corporate parent Diebold is giving up the ghost of their election business which, according to an analyst in a Reuters report, was "responsible for less than 10 percent of Diebold's revenue, and 100 percent of its bad publicity.

According to a company statement just released, Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. will become Premier Election Solutions as of today. The company president, David Byrd, who has overseen the disastrous election unit for some time, will stay on as President to go down with the ship, apparently.

After a string of disastrous reports on the quality and security of their voting systems, along with plummeting stock prices since last week, it seems clear that Diebold, the once-great, more-than-100-year old company, is doing whatever they can at this point to save the corporate parent. While their stock price (DBD) plummeted at today's opening bell, and is currently down some 5.6% from yesterday, the price has begun to rise again in the last hour or so on news of the sale.

More than anything, however, the move may well be a harbinger of a coming declaration of bankruptcy for Diebold/Premier as we see it. With the unit now spun off from the blue chip Diebold parent, declaring bankruptcy or dissolving the company all together would be less trouble for investors and the main company as a whole...

DEVELOPING HARD...MORE:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4962

California Reports: "Are Our Voting Systems Secure, Accurate, Reliable and Accessible?"

Chip — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 17:53:03 -0400

Yesterday, as a result of voting system reviews, Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertified for state use the voting systems of Diebold Election Systems, Inc., and Sequoia Voting Systems. A third vendor, Election Systems and Software (ES&S), declined to participate in the review process mandated by law, and so Secretary Bowen withdrew approval of their Inkavote Plus Precinct Ballot Counting System for use in California. A fourth firm, Hart InterCivic, Inc. chose not to submit the voting system previously used by California voters for examination and certification, and voluntarily withdrew from the certification process. Instead, the company plans to upgrade their county customers to a newer version and submit that version for review and certification by the Secretary of State.

Diebold was in the center of 2004 election controversies pitting its tabulation results against exit polls. Sequoia Voting Systems offers a product called "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail" (VVPAT) that was reported by the review team to have a series of serious and often undetectable flaws. Their voting software was also found publicly available online in 2003, raising questions about future vote tampering. In 2006, during a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review, the company, owned then by 3 Venezuelans, was allowed to withdraw from that review on news of its pending sale.

When California's Secretary of State Bowen was inaugurated January 7, 2007, she announced her intention to conduct a "Top to Bottom" review of voting systems used in California. "The review was designed to restore the public's confidence in the integrity of the electoral process and to ensure that California voters are being asked to cast their ballots on machines that are secure, accurate, reliable, and accessible." The review began two months later, in March, 2007.

In early May, Secretary Bowen outlined the possible outcomes. “This kind of a comprehensive review is essential...One of three things will happen to each voting system that’s being reviewed. The first possibility is that a system will be found to be secure, accurate, reliable and accessible as it stands, so voters can have confidence when they use it on Election Day. Second, a system may be required to use additional safeguards, such as an expanded post-election audit process. The third possibility is that a voting system can’t be made secure, accurate, reliable and accessible even with additional safeguards, so that system may be decertified, which means it could not be used for any election in 2008.”

The need for review of the new voting systems which were mandated by Help America Vote Act and signed by Bush in 2002 became apparent in a series of reported problems at the polls. Two examples cited in a California summary are:

In December 2005, California discovered voting system programming code that escaped the review of federal testers.
On May 2, 2007, a congressional task force voted to investigate anomalies in 2006 election results in Florida’s 13th Congressional District. These are just two examples that have fueled the debate about whether the systems voters are asked to cast their ballots on are trustworthy and whether the testing processes used to certify voting systems are adequate.

The review's urgency is intensified by the fact that California faces 3 statewide elections in 2008. According to the Secretary of State's summary:

Approximately $450 million has been spent or allocated to buy new voting equipment in California over the past few years. The top-to-bottom review will cost approximately $1.8 million and will be paid for by the voting system vendors and federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) money allocated by the Legislature and the Governor in the 2006-07 budget.

Despite the review's good intentions, there remain reasons to question whether, even after this intensive review, the voting systems meet the standards of security, accuracy, reliability and accessibility.

As Matt Bishop, a principal investigator on one of the review teams noted:

The short time allocated to this study has several implications. The key one is that the results presented in this study should be seen as a “lower bound”; all team members felt that they lacked sufficient time to conduct a thorough examination, and consequently may have missed other serious vulnerabilities. In particular, Abbott’s team reported that it believed it was close to finding several other problems, but stopped in order to prepare and deliver the required reports on time.

And there was ample regard and concern given to the possibility of adding to the numerous and multiple security breaches uncovered, as noted by David Wagner, another principal investigator.

A common, widely accepted practice in the security literature is to describe attacks in sufficient detail to allow others to independently reproduce and evaluate the threat and, ultimately, build systems that better resist attack. Because of the severity of the attacks we found, and because we wanted to avoid making it easy for would-be attackers to subvert elections, we did not follow that practice here.
Instead, in preparing our public reports, we deliberately chose to err on the side of caution. We carefully screened all of the information that we included in our public reports. Our objective was to avoid reducing the amount of access an attacker would require to attack elections. We attempted to accomplish this by omitting details that would have the effect of converting an attack that would require reverse engineering or access to the source code into one that would not. These details were relegated to a confidential appendix provided to the Secretary of State.

The California Secretary of State's site has related documents.

Congress Members to Ask Pelosi for Better Election Reform Bill

davidswanson — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 12:48:59 -0400

Ask your Congress Member to contact Congressman Kucinich to sign onto this letter.

Speaker Pelosi:

We have been made aware of a growing concern with H.R. 811, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007.

Many constituencies important to the Democratic Caucus, including but not limited to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties, VotersUnite.Org, and Election Defense Alliance, have expressed frustration with our offices about the process and current legislative text of the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act.

These constituencies represent a broad range of interests that reflect many of the core values of our party. H.R. 811 now finds opposition from organizations focused on upholding the integrity of our elections and local and states governments. For these constituencies, H.R. 811 falls short of its intended goals to ensure votes are cast and counted as intended by the voters.

Below are representative examples of the negative feedback we are receiving.

VotersUnite.Org statement by founder Ellen Theisen

After more than three years of supporting election reform bills introduced by Representative Rush Holt, I am saddened to see the many severe flaws in the version of HR 811 as it was passed out of committee last month." June 11, 2007

National Association of Counties letter to Congress

County officials welcome federal lawmakers' interest in strengthening the integrity and accessibility of our most basic democratic institution. We look forward to working with you to address the myriad challenges facing county officials in this environment of unprecedented change in election technology rather than exacerbating these challenges by enacting legislation such as H.R. 811. March 14, 2007

Before this bill is scheduled for a vote before the House of Representatives we urge you to ensure the legislative process addresses these very valid concerns and a substitute is developed that has broad, vocal support.

Sincerely,

Member of Congress

Major Miscount of Vote in 2006 Election - Reported Results Skewed Toward Repubs by 4 percent

CactusPat — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 04:34:28 -0500

So, the landslide was denied. I guess it's a matter of interpretation, but if accurate, these reports show the Democratic tsunami would have been even bigger than the thirty+ seat gain in the House. Would have been more like fifty-sixty seats... Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006 - Major Miscount of Vote in 2006 Election: Reported Results Skewed Toward Republicans by 4 percent, 3 million votes

Election Defense Alliance Calls for Investigation BOSTON, MA - November 16, 2006 Election Defense Alliance, a national election integrity organization, issued an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment, after analysis of national exit polling data indicated a major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in U.S. House and Senate races across the country.... “These findings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and vote counting systems used in the United States,” according to Sally Castleman, National Chair of EDA. This is a national indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!
“These findings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and vote counting systems used in the United States,” according to Sally Castleman, National Chair of EDA. This is a national indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!

As in 2004, the exit polling data and the reported election results don’t add up. “But this time there is an objective yardstick in the methodology which establishes the validity of the Exit Poll and challenges the accuracy of the election returns,” said Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance. The Exit Poll findings are detailed in a paper published today on the EDA website.

The 2006 Edison-Mitofsky Exit Poll was commissioned by a consortium of major news organizations. Its conclusions were based on the responses of a very large sample, of more than 10,000 voters nationwide*, and posted at 7:07 p.m. Election Night, on the CNN website. That Exit Poll showed Democratic House candidates had out-polled Republicans by 55.0 percent to 43.5 percent – an 11.5 percent margin – in the total vote for the U.S. House, sometimes referred to as the “generic” vote.

By contrast, the election results showed Democratic House candidates won 52.7 percent of the vote to 45.1 percent for Republican candidates, producing a 7.6 percent margin in the total vote for the U.S. House — 3.9 percent less than the Edison-Mitofsky poll. This discrepancy, far beyond the poll’s +/- 1 percent margin of error, has less than a one in 10,000 likelihood of occurring by chance.

By Wednesday afternoon the Edison-Mitofsky poll had been adjusted, by a process known as “forcing,” to match the reported vote totals for the election. This forcing process is done to supply data for future demographic analysis, the main purpose of the Exit Poll. It involved re-weighting every response so that the sum of those responses matched the reported election results. The final result, posted at 1:00 p.m. November 8, showed the adjusted Democratic vote at 52.6 percent and the Republican vote at 45.0 percent, a 7.6 percent margin exactly mirroring the reported vote totals.

The forcing process in this instance reveals a great deal. The political party affiliation of the respondents in the original 7:07 p.m. election night Exit Poll closely reflected the 2004 Bush-Kerry election margin. After the forcing process, 49-percent of respondents reported voting for Republican George W. Bush in 2004, while only 43-percent reported voting for Democrat John Kerry. This 6-percent gap is more than twice the size of the actual 2004 Bush margin of 2.8 percent, and a clear distortion of the 2006 electorate. There is a significant over-sampling of Republican voters in the adjusted 2006 Exit Poll. It simply does not reflect the actual turnout on Election Day 2006.

EDA’s Simon says, “It required some incredible distortions of the demographic data within the poll to bring about the match with reported vote totals. It not only makes the adjusted Exit Poll inaccurate, it also reveals the corresponding inaccuracy of the reported election returns which it was forced to equal. The Democratic margin of victory in U.S. House races was substantially larger than indicated by the election returns.”

“Many will fall into the trap of using this adjusted poll to justify inaccurate official vote counts, and vice versa,” adds Bruce O’Dell, EDA’s Data Analysis Coordinator, “but that’s just arguing in circles. The adjusted exit poll is a statistical illusion. The weighted but unadjusted 7 pm exit poll, which sampled the correct proportion of Kerry and Bush voters and also indicated a much larger Democratic margin, got it right.” O’Dell and Simon’s paper, detailing their analysis of the exit polls and related data, is now posted on the EDA website.

Election Defense Alliance continues to work with other election integrity groups around the country to analyze the results of specific House and Senate races. That data and any evidence of election fraud, malicious attacks on election systems, or other malfunctions that may shed more light on the discrepancy between exit polls and election results will be reported on EDA’s website.

This controversy comes amid growing public concern about the security and accuracy of electronic voting machines, used to count approximately 80 percent of the votes cast in the 2006 election. The Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy, in a September 2006 study, was the latest respected institution to expose significant flaws in the design and software of one of the most popular electronic touch-screen voting machines, the AccuVote-TS, manufactured by Diebold, Inc. The Princeton report described the machine as “vulnerable to a number of extremely serious attacks that undermine the accuracy and credibility of the vote counts it produces.” These particular machines were used to count an estimated 10 percent of votes on Election Day 2006.

A separate “Security Assessment of the Diebold Optical Scan Voting Terminal,” released by the University of Connecticut VoTeR Center and Department of Computer Science and Engineering last month, concluded that Diebold’s Accuvote-OS machines, optical scanners which tabulate votes cast on paper ballots, are also vulnerable to “a devastating array of attacks.” Accuvote-OS machines are even more widely used than the AccuVote-TS.

Similar vulnerabilities affect other voting equipment manufacturers, as revealed last summer in a study by the Brennan Center at New York University which noted all of America’s computerized voting systems “have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state, and local elections.”

The most prudent response to this controversy is a moratorium on the further implementation of computerized voting systems. EDA’s O’Dell cautioned, “It is so abundantly clear that these machines are not secure, there’s no justification for blind confidence in the election system given such dramatic indications of problems with the official vote tally.” And EDA’s Simon summarized, “There has been a rush by some to celebrate 2006 as a fair election, but a Democratic victory does not equate with a fair election. It’s wishful thinking at best to believe that the danger of massive election rigging is somehow past.”

EDA continues to call for a moratorium on the deployment of electronic voting machines in U.S. elections; passage of H.R. 6200, which would require hand-counted paper ballots for presidential elections beginning in 2008; and adoption of the Universal Precinct Sample (UPS) handcount sampling protocol for verification of federal elections as long as electronic election equipment remains in use.

The Exit Poll analysis is a part of Election Defense Alliance’s six-point strategy to defend the accuracy and transparency of the 2006 elections. In addition to extensive analysis of polling data, EDA has been engaged in independent exit polling, election monitoring, legal interventions, and documentation of election irregularities.

*The sample was a national sample of all voters who voted in House races. It was drawn just like the 2004 sample of the presidential popular vote. That is, precincts were chosen to yield a representative (once stratified) sample of all voters wherever they lived/voted--including early and absentee voters and voters in districts where House candidates ran unopposed but were listed on the ballot and therefore could receive votes. As such, the national sample EDA worked with is exactly comparable to the total aggregate vote for the House that we derived from reported vote totals and from close estimates in cases of the few unopposed candidates where 2006 figures were unavailable but prior elections could be used as proxy. It is a very large sampling of the national total, with a correspondingly small (+/-1%) MOE. There were four individual districts sampled for reasons known only to Edison/Mitofsky

ABOUT ELECTION DEFENSE ALLIANCE
The purpose of EDA is to develop a comprehensive national strategy for the election integrity movement, in order to regain public control of the voting process in the United States. Its goal is to insure that the election process is transparent, secure, verifiable, and worthy of the public trust. EDA fosters coordination, resource-sharing, and cohesive strategic planning for a nationwide grassroots network of citizen election integrity advocates.

Jonathan Simon, Co-founder, Election Defense Alliance. He is an attorney who prior work as a polling analyst with Peter D. Hart Research Associates helped persuade him of the importance of an exit poll-based election “alarm system.” 617.538.6012

Bruce O'Dell is head of the Election Defense Alliance Data Analysis Team. His expertise is in the design of large-scale secure computer and auditing systems for major financial institutions. 612.309.1330

Sally Castleman, Co-founder and National Chairperson, Election Defense Alliance. She lends her skills in conceptualizing, designing, implementing and managing programs as well as her experience as a strategist. She has a long career in grassroots political activism. SallyC@ElectionDefenseAlliance.org 781.454.8700

You can read the full report - Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006...

Another Stolen Election In Florida - KKKatherine Harris' Fl-13

CactusPat — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 16:24:24 -0500

Yes, there's another stolen election in Florida, KKKatherine Harris' old seat, FL-13..... seems 18,000 voters (13%) in Sarasota County declined to vote for their new congress-critter...

Dist. 13 voting analysis shows broad problem
A review of Sarasota County voting results shows that in almost every precinct a high percentage of voters didn't cast ballots in the hotly contested 13th Congressional District, a trend that likely affected the outcome of the race. Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes, making it the second closest congressional race in the country. More than 18,000 voters who showed up at the polls voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race.

That means nearly 13 percent of voters did not vote for either candidate... -- a massive undercount compared with other counties, including Manatee, which reported a 2 percent undervote.

If the missing votes had broken for Jennings by the same percentage as the counted votes in Sarasota County, the Democrat would have won the race by about 600 votes instead of losing by 368, according to a Herald-Tribune review. Even if the undervote had been 8 percent -- more than three times what it was in Manatee -- Jennings would have won by one vote.... (read the whole article)

The news is all over the blogosphere and has broken into the corporatist media. Latest news via Muckraker, SoE Dent is asking for a state audit, even though the Sec. of State has previously refused to investigate...

Dent asks state to audit election
Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent has asked the Florida Department of State to audit Tuesday's election after the recounts are completed. In the 13th Congressional District, Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes, making it the second closest Congressional race in the country. More than 18,000 voters who showed up at the polls voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race. "Because of the hullabaloo and the focus on this race, I just think it's a good idea to have this audit," Dent said. "They would look at everything ... soup to nuts." Dent is spending the morning planning the logistics of the recount, expected to occur Monday. She made a request to the Secretary of State, who is sending workers down to observe and help with the recount.

We also now have Congressional staffers on hand to oversee the scheduled Monday recount, an effort that is an exercise in futility since there aren't any ballots to recount from the Diebold touch-screen electronic voting machines. This one's headed to a court fight...

U.S. House staffers arrive for 13th District recount
Staff from the U.S. House of Representatives committee that oversees election disputes visited the site Friday where the 13th Congressional District race will be recounted. Janelle Hu for the Democratic party and David Kavanaugh for the Republican party, staff members of the Committee on House Administration, who plan to be there for the recount on Monday. On Friday, they inspected the touchscreen voting machines with Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent.

The staffers asked questions about the security of the machines and other voting equipment and how voters were instructed on using the machines. They tried out the touchscreen machines in Dent’s office, finding out what the machine did in all sorts of senarios, such as when someone undervoted or wanted to correct their vote. Dent also showed them how the Christine Jennings-Vern Buchanan race looked on every ballot type used in the election.

According to Muckraker, the new Democratic majority in the US House could step in, too...

House could end up in the 13th District
There was talk of mandatory recounts and possible court challenges Wednesday following Vern Buchanan's narrow victory in the 13th Congressional District race, but the ultimate arbiter in the dispute could be House-Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat-controlled U.S. House. While Buchanan declared victory by 368 votes, Democrat Christine Jennings refused to concede defeat.

"Sarasota voters have been victimized by not having their vote count," Jennings said Wednesday, vowing that her campaign would "not rest until every vote is counted."

But recounts involving touch-screen systems, which lack a paper trail, are usually inconclusive, so this case could be headed for the courts, said Chris Sautter, a Democratic recount expert. It would be "extraordinarily rare" for a court to order a new election even if the Jennings camp makes a convincing case that enough votes weren't counted to make a difference in the outcome, Sautter said.

But a strong court case could pave the way for the incoming Democratic House to step in, since the U.S. Constitution makes the House the final arbiter in House races, he said. Congress has gotten involved twice in tight races, both involving Democrats being seated over Republican protests.

"We're been watching this closely in Sarasota," said Lowell Finley, co-director and legal director for Voter Action, a national group formed in 2005 to challenge cases of voter fraud caused by electronic voting machines. "The results are extremely irregular and the fact that a large number of votes don't seem to be counted in just one race on these electronic machines is a very suspicious circumstance. We don't think the official results are accurate by any means."... (full article)

Make Them Steal Your Vote - Election Protection

CactusPat — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 06:30:49 -0500

There's been much wringing of hand and gnashing of tooth over the impending 2006 Stolen Elections (myself included). With stories breaking into the corporate MSM (esp. Lou Dobbs on CNN) of Dieblod's voting machine vulnerabilities, touch screen machines flipping votes to repubs in S FL, and voting machine "sleep-overs" in San Diego,CA.

While not, perhaps, the intended effect, this news has the psychological effect of discouraging and dissuading active participation in our democratic process (ie: Voter Suppression). The wife, however, in her infinite wisdom, has a simple answer to these developments - "I'm going to vote, they're not going to stop me, I'm going to make them steal my vote". So what can we do to catch the Republican Dirty Tricksters trying to steal our votes? Below are listed several Election Protection initiatives to help stop the disenfranchisement by the Republican election suppression machine and maybe catch them red-handed. Make them steal your vote....

There are several ways to participate in Election Protection activities. One of the latest is called Video the Vote. Our own Bob Fertik has started a Blue Revolution slated for election night. There are toll-free hotlines to call in problems. Even do-it yourself exit polling...

Election Protection Hotline. If you encounter any problem in the voting process call 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) for English or 1-888-VEY-VOTA (1-888-839-8682 para la ayuda en espanol).
Working Asset's Voter Protection Immediate Response Network. We may not have enough time to email you, but we can deliver a text message or place a call straight to your phone with a short and easy action that could help save the election. Signing up takes only a moment, and you'll be a great service in helping protect the election. We may need to urge the local election offices to keep the polls open to compensate for delayed poll openings, such as what happened in Maryland's primary this year. We might push for more voting machines to be delivered to precincts with very long lines. We may need to show up in person and witness poll-closing procedures. We might also need to show up in person at our county election offices to protest voter fraud or voter intimidation at the polls. And we may need people to go with video cameras in hand, interview voters who've had problems, and then post that video to the web. You can also sign-up with WA partner, the Ruckus Society...
People for the American Way's Election Protection 365. National, state, and local members of the Election Protection coalition are working at a fever pitch to get this historic voter protection program's Election Day components ready to go. Are you part of the effort? People For the American Way Foundation has taken responsibility inside the coalition to help in five key states: Ohio, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida and New Jersey. We need you to help us there. Can you volunteer?
Election Verification Exit Poll. To protect the vote count, we must have an independent way to assess the will of the voters. For this reason, the Vote Count Protection Project includes an Election Verification Exit Poll. In selected precincts, we will interview a representative sample of voters to determine their choices of candidates. The raw data, precinct by precinct, will be publicly posted. This transparency will allow statisticians of every political stripe to perform independent analyses. Note that media-sponsored exit polls, such as the 2004 US Presidential exit poll, do not make their raw data available in this way, and are not Election Verification Exit Polls. Read the Election Verification Exit Poll plan details (PDF, 104Kb).
Do Your Own Exit Poll: While we cannot take responsibility for exit polls that we do not supervise ourselves, there is no harm in your doing a poll in your own region. Here are instructions for doing your own election verification exit poll...
Election Defense Alliance. The purpose of EDA is to help build and coordinate a comprehensive, cohesive national strategy for the election integrity movement, in order to regain public control of the voting process in the United States, and to insure that the process is honest, transparent, secure, subject to unambiguous verification, and worthy of the public trust.
Verified Voting.org's Election Transparency Project. Do you wonder whether your vote counts? Are you losing faith in our electoral process? Do you think our elections are as accurate as they should be? Are you concerned that the results might be vulnerable to fraud or machine failure?
VotersUnite.org. A non-partisan national grassroots resource for fair and accurate elections! We believe in the power of facts.
Video the Vote. In 2000 and 2004, problems plagued the polls in different parts of the country: long lines, eligible voters turned away, voter intimidation, misallocation and malfunctioning of voting equipment. They were underreported on Election Day. Days and weeks later, a more complete picture of voter disenfranchisement emerged—but it was too late. The elections were over and the media had moved on. Starting this election, citizen journalists—people like you and I—will document problems as they occur. We'll play them online, spread word through blogs and partner websites, doing our part to make sure the full story of our elections is told.
VelvetRevolution.us has launched an Election Protection Strike Force as a new approach to grassroots action, a multi-pronged campaign to put elections back in the hands of the people. The Election Protection Strike Force will target electronic voting problems and voter disenfranchisement schemes through: $250,000 ELECTION FRAUD REWARD FUND to encourage whistleblowers to share information about election rigging. This reward will be paid for information about election fraud leading to overturning a House or Senate. Hotline - call: 1-888 VOTETIP

If you know of any other Election Protection initiatives please list them below in comments. Also check Alternet editor Don Hazen's excellent article "How to Stop the November Elections from Being Stolen" quoting democrats.com's own Bob Fertik...

...So what do you tell voters to help them combat this psychological problem that could depress voting? "I tell voters we have to win by such an overwhelming margin that it isn't close enough to steal," says Bob Fertik, the head of Democrats.com, an activist web site not part of the Democratic party, that calls themselves aggressive progressives...

...Democrats.com's Bob Fertik says, "We have to get involved in organized efforts to audit the elections by groups like www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org, www.VelvetRevolution.us, www.BlackBoxVoting.org, etc. I'd also like to see Democratic voters hold candlelight vigils outside each county's board of elections after the polls close, holding signs saying 'Count Every Vote' and 'No More Stolen Elections!' Imagine a Blue Revolution, every bit as joyous and historic as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution Lebanon, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia -- right here in the United States of America...."

Fitrakis Ohio Voter Purge Investigation Continuing - Letters Found

CactusPat — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 21:24:57 -0400

OpedNews editor Rob Kall has an update on the OH Voter Letters Purge story. Seems he and Fitrakis are gettin' their ducks in row...

"I asked him if he agreed that there was "no truth to the Ohio Purge Letters." He replied, "WE are not satisfied at this moment that this purging did not occur. WE don't know yet.""

Fitrakis Ohio Voter Purge Investigation Continuing-- Letters Found
This article will recap the the evolution of the last few days of news regarding voter roll purging in Ohio, with an update from Bob Fitrakis, since he has seen and had reports of several vote purge related letters and uncovered more information on statewide vote purge activities, including private, vendor control of the voter rolls. After an initial report that letters were sent out to many Ohio voters, particularly in Democratic voting areas, questions have been raised as to whether inappropriate voter purging, particularly of young, student voters and apartment dwelling, city African American voters occurred.... (more)

Two days ago, OpEdNews reported in an article,Ohio Lawsuit to Reinstate hundreds of thousands of Purged Democratic Voters to be Filed Fri or Monday that Robert Fitrakis intended to file a suit blocking inappropriate purges of young or minority voters. One blogger posted a diary disputing the voter roll purge on dailykos. The article was titled No truth to Ohio "purge" letters

The diarist, in the opinion of some readers, suggested that things were all safe and comfy, perhaps persuading some to let their guard down. The title along suggested factual proof, when all the diarist reported was failure to find evidence.

OpEdNews received calls and emails from a number of people.

Some said that they'd heard the whole story of voter purging in Ohio was false.
Others wrote or said in phone calls that Markos Moulitsas and the Dailykos site are reputed to oppose discussion of the theft of the 2000 and 2004 elections, vote theft and risks of vote problems in the 2006 elections.

Others reported that the Democratic leadership wanted to downplay discussions of threats to the vote because they feared it would discourage a strong voter turnout. Most of these people disagreed, saying people have the right to know the truth.

Just to clear things up, my first conversation with Bob Fitrakis was about the report of purging and letters sent out that the senders didn't want recipients to answer.

Early in our Wednesday evening conversation, I asked him, referring to the report of Blackwell's vote purging, "What do you know about what's been reported on Kos and by Hartmann?"

He replied: "It's very similar to the stuff we reported after '04. We've already reported that they had purged half a million voters in the major democratic cities-- Cincinatti, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo since the 2000 elections and this is the same pattern."

This was not a conversation about other problems. It was a discussion directly in response to the original posting, linked to above, on dkos.

But, in response to the counter-claiming diary mentioned above, I called Fitrakis to follow up. I asked if he had any problem with my first article and he replied that he did NOT. Then he started telling what he was up to and what he was doing.

He has had a ton of experience with the multitude of assaults on vote integrity in OHio, so he knows how to "play the Game," fighting back and making sure the vote and voter rights are protected.

I asked him if he agreed that there was "no truth to the Ohio Purge Letters."

He replied, "WE are not satisfied at this moment that this purging did not occur.
WE don't know yet."

Since we last spoke Fitrakis reports he has seen or had read to him letters from two different counties.

"Letters were sent out on or about August first, (in Miami county August 6th.) We talked to one person who read us the letter and told us what was in it. And we got a change of address letter that was sent about that time."

Fitrakis reports that, though some basic elements were required by the state, different counties created different letters. That means there could have been as many as 88 different letters sent out. He determined that in Ohio's Miami county, the letters did not require a response which, failing, would cause a purge. The vendor managing the registered voter roll was instructed not to purge voters. But Fitrakis added that all registered voter databases created at the county level are sent up to the Ken Blackwell's central state voter databank, and that it is possible they were purged there, in spite of the local county official's instructions to the vendor managing the records at the local level.

To ascertain just what has been going on with letters to voters, Fitrakis says, "This weekend, we are requesting the letters of all 88 counties."

Fitrakis says, as he reported to OpEdNews earlier, "If we find after our due diligence invstigation there was any inappropriate purging-- if mistreatment for minorities or young people, we will move for an injunction.

"What we're trying to do now is to examine the letters and also, compare the data bases, electronically, from all 88 counties, with the secretary of state's office (database.) But there is the possibility that exists that the private companies that have been contracted to run the voter registration may have taken action, unless otherwise authorized (instructed) not to by the board of elections. And the possiblity remains that the secretary of state's office could have taken action (purged voter names from rolls) and this is still under investigation. It's not a settled issue."

OpEdNews asked, "With the history you already know of, do you have serious concerns that this happened?"

Fitrakis replies,

"This is the exact same pattern of purges that occurred in three key democratic areas in 2004-- Toledo, Cleveland and Cincinatti."

"We believe that past abuses have occurred and these initial reports would be directly in line with the past abuses. The potential that these abuses occurred still exists.

"We are pursuing it. We are gathering information and if that information suggests any of these purges targetted young people or minorities, we are in fact, going into federal court.

"We are not satisfied at this moment that this did not occur. In fact, the evidence suggests the clear possibility that the system would allow such a purge."

OpEdNews replied, "Thanks, because there was a posting on Dailykos, which was titled, No truth to Ohio "purge" letters

Fitrakis replied, "We're going to get to the bottom of this.

"WE don't know yet. We really don't want to be lulled into-- I mean, we should be checking these rolls every week and right before the election, every day."

OpEdNews asked; "Do you advise that people check in with their voting board to see if they're registered or not?"

"Yes, they have to."Fitrakis replied.

OpEdNews; "Ahead of time?"

Fitrakis: "Eight to ten thousand people disappeared off the Deibold electronic (records) system in 2004."

OpEdNews: "What's the connection between Diebold and the record system of the voting rolls?"

Fitrakis: "They have a "D.I.M." system-- electronic voter registration system-- and a lot of the counties have this computerized system. People are on it one day, then suddenly there's a computer glitch and eight to ten thousand people are gone the next day.

"ES&S has a system, Triad has a system. All the manufacturers have computerized voter registration software."

OpEdNews "So there's a very good possiblity not only that there have been purges but that Diebold could have been involved in doing the purges?"

Fitrakis "Diebold and Triad at the county level. We know they inadvertently purged eight to ten thousand people in '04."

"Thats the key question that's been raised in all of this --who is controlling the voter registration rolls-- the vendors, the secretary of state or the county? And we don't know yet. All we know is that people have raised the possibility of purges."

Botom line-- Ohio is generally recognized as one of most at-risk states in the nation, in terms of vote theft, manipulation and voter disenfranchisement. Now is the time to be vigilant, to turn over every rock, to scrutinize every potential whiff of possible vote integrity threat. In the past, Democrats failed to take the threat seriously. John Kerry minimized or ignored the reports of problems in Ohio and failed to use the reputed $20 million war chest that was raised specifically to investigate and fight vote theft and corruption efforts.

Bob Fitrakis is a voting integrity hero, committing enormous amounts of time, energy and resources to fighting the good fight, forcing the actions of nefarious Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to see the light of day. He needs and deserves support from the net roots You can make a contribution to help support his efforts to evaluate actions in all 88 Ohio counties by going here.

http://www.opednews.com

For background see "No Truth to Ohio "purge" Letters" and "Follow-Up: No Truth to Ohio "purge" Letters"...

Follow-Up: No Truth to Ohio "purge" Letters

CactusPat — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 03:05:58 -0400

Looks like the source for the OH voter purge letters story has bugged out of the conversation he instigated, with this cryptic sign-off -

Update on Possible Ohio Voter Purge by KStreetProjector Thu Oct 19, 2006 at 08:38:02 AM PDT Sorry to have bothered you all. Best to all.

Going through the three relevant posts over at kos (and pawing through some of the 1356 related comments [1,2,3]) no clear answer is apparent, as of yet, as to the validity of the tip from an "insider...very close to Ken Mehlman". The original post has been updated (the full ver. w/758 comments included ) by Mr. Kstreetprojector w/ further expalnation...

UPDATED. I am surprised at the scope and range of response. I am very pleased that a handful of the posts appear to be gathering additional data. Again, I apologize for causing any discord. It was certainly not my intent. I would like to update the dKos Community on four (3) lines of thought or questions coming out of the spirited dialogue here. 1) The additional data, as of 10AM, on other voters in Ohio 2) Additional information from my friends in Lorain and Wayne County Ohio 3) The nature of the way information as seen by IT Wonks, vs. Management, this is particularly directed to Anastasia's concerns. 4) Offer a perspective on the nature of DC information sources.

1 - I have read all 790 posts. I appreciate the range of opinion and vigor of the community in writing. It does not appear that anyone has conducted my suggested action of going to their local BOE, voting, and seeing what is happenning. I still suggest this be done. There are posts, from Lorain, Franklin, Erie, Cayahoga and others which do confirm some people got a letter, flyer, or postcard instructing them on new voting ID rules.

No one has confirmed the specific statement repeated to me requesting voters with concerns to check with local BOEs. I am unclear what letter (or letters, or postcards or mailers) Mr. Mehlman's insider was refering to. Nor should I or anyone care. What is confirmed is that a very large and very recent waive of mailings have gone out.

Other posters have confirmed that if that mailing is returned to the BOE it is immediate grounds for purging a voter and/or forcing them to vote on provisional ballots. This is precisely the strategy described at the lunch attended by my friend.

There are posts from Lorain, Franklin, Erie, Columbus and Cincinnati confirming people who have voted before can not find their names in data bases where they would expect to be. The two most compelling pieces of information come from Lorain and Franklin Counties. The First, in Lorain, a post states a 20 year+ voter had a absentee ballot request rejected because of a failure to confirm a birthday. This is precisely the type of data point technical exclusion softwares which I fear have been used would generate. The Second, in Franklin details that over 100,000 people have been purged in the last few months from voter rolls.

Also of great interest to me is the posting from Warren County. In this case a GOP voter, long gone from the state has had rejected mailings repeatedly (and with some care) resent by the BOE. This data point is the opposite side of the same strategy. Remove D voters on tiny technical issues. Work like mad to keep R voters until sued to remove them.

2 - I have spoken to my friends who both voted Monday in Wayne and Lorain Ohio and related the points above. For those who seemed obsessed that this diary was fact-less, I would suggest it should be easy to confirm that the Wayne County Early Voting Area has 3 Diebold TSX machines, and that a Poll Worker Class was conducted during the time described. I added a post detailing the turned away student was from Wooster College. In a second call to my friend about the local guy with dirty chinos and the two houses, he provided me further detail that as he overheard Chino Man working out the problem with his registration, that the guy was clearly local surprised, and had voted many times in the past. He says it clearly appears he was stuck because some of his voter data, did not match other, non-voter-government data. My friend in Lorain County said that of the people he waited with, nearly all of them were long time residents, had lived in the area, and all of them were surprised they had to "re-prove" their eligibility. He could not remember anyone there who had absentee ballot problems like those described with other postings from Lorain.

3) Anastasia P. I deeply appreciate and admire the work you are doing and the sincerity, energy and skills you bring to the process. I am going to assume you are a brilliant organizer and election activist. I had no intention of distracting you, or anyone from your efforts to restore Democracy. I will however, retell a short story.

Yesterday afternoon as this posting generated responses I was working with two very brilliant administrators who understand their business inside and out. But the are not IT Wonks. Regardless of ongoing concerns they are having with information exfiltrations, and system oddities, they could not be convinced that there is an extremely high probability they have a digital insider monitoring relatively sensitive data in their systems. This is a conversation I have had many times, in many places, with many people. They are brilliant at the work they do, but the refuse to believe that with nearly instant and utterly invisible program changes entire functionality issues, and in this case System Access issues can be altered. Please. Rather than spending time and effort on calling lawyers activists and poll officials, and denying "such a letter exists" just ask 20 people in different Ohio Counties to go their BOE, Vote Early, and report back what they see. Wouldn't that be easier. I only knew two people, sent them, and they both reported back problems. And, please. I would love to be proven wrong, and it's very easy to do.

4) To the doubters and the frat-boys on this site. Shame on you. I never made any claims to the factual nature of the story. I deeply believe it is true and am seeking to find out. I have worked in IT in the DC region for many years. I have heard many conversations that have disturbed me. And for many years I would, as most people still do... turned a blind ear. I have a job. I have a family. I have people and clients who depend on me. I also am a patriot and a citizen who believes something has gone very wrong in my homeland.

People who I know and love have been purged from roles here in DC during this administration for failures of loyalty and for saying much less than I have said here and elsewhere. In 2001, when Bob Ney, Abramoff, Urosevich and their team locked in on ramming e-voting on our nation I began working, first quietly, now rather loudly to reverse the e-hijacking of our democracy. I appreciate this community has an efforts to "out" trolls, I equally appreciate the efforts of the administration to out non-extremists. The tactics of personal humiliation and frat-boy jockularity exhibited by Bob Johnson and others on this site, frankly, are identical to those used by Team Rove. The difference I suppose is Rove plays for keeps. Including a willingness to destroy national security assets and agents who will not toe the line on their goals. Which is the other subject I cover from time to time. I hope the remainder of this dialogue is focussed on testing the truth of the very credible rumor shared with me....

We also have a response to anastasia p's debunking article from OpedNews.com editor Rob Kall, shared with dems.com own Rantin' Ranelli, confirmed by phone... as well as anastaisia p's response to issues raised in Kall's rebuttall...

Also, many people I spoke with are people working in the communities with voters to educate them about voting and to get them to vote, not people sitting in rooms spinning theories. I spoke with people who have been organizing in the poor, black communities of Cleveland's east side, speaking with hundreds or even thousands of voters there over the cycle. These are people to whom any reports of such a letter would have been instantly reported because they have been in the projects, the section 8 housing, the poor neighborhoods, since last spring. I'm not talking to people like Bradblog, fine as the work he's doing may be, who collect stories from around the country, but people who are in the trenches in Cleveland. If they don't know about it, it pretty much didn't happen. by anastasia p on Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 10:12:46 AM PDT

For more info see the first post on this subject - "No Truth to Ohio "purge" Letters". Also, check the latest developments....

No Truth to Ohio "purge" Letters

CactusPat — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:26:12 -0400

Suspected Repub hoax or plant? via anastasia p over at kos...

Yesterday, a diary posted here said that an "insider...very close to Ken Mehlman" had revealed a voter disenfranchisement plan engineered by Diebold that involved sending letters to voters that appeared merely informational but, in fact, required a response within 60 days or that voter's registration would be purged. The source asserted that this system had been "tested" in Ohio in late July and early August with 1.2 million voters, targeted at voters in high-transient areas such as universities and low-income neighborhoods. I'm a journalist in Cleveland, OH who has followed election issues closely. I hadn't heard about this so I started to make calls. By last night, I had talked to seven people: election protection activists, organizers and attorneys, and people with Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones' office and the Ted Strickland gubernatorial campaign. I spoke with Vicki Lovegren, founder of Ohio Vigilance and organizer of two big election conferences here, who is all over anything she perceives as an attempt to game the system. I spoke with the Cuyahoga County election protection coordinators, Chris Nance (also of the congresswoman's office) and attorney Lesley Huff. I spoke with the election observer coordinator in Strickland's Cleveland campaign office and with a spokesperson in his Columbus campaign office. None had seen such a letter or heard of anyone receving it. It seemed incredible to me that such a letter could go out and no one in the most urban, Democratic county in the state had heard about it.... (more)

I would have posted this diary last night, except that in the evening, a piece from OpEdNews came to my attention, purporting that Columbus lawyer, investigative journalist, election activist and also our Green candidate for governor, Bob Fitrakis, was going to court over voter purging, the implication being (although it wasn't spelled out in the article) that it was over this particular letter. I wanted to speak to Bob before posting anything. I left a message for him this morning and didn't hear back, although I did speak in the meantime to Randy Borntrager, the communications director of the Ohio Democratic Party, who said the same thing as everyone else: "If there is such a letter, we haven't seen it." He also said it was his understanding that a voter purge could not happen this way under state law.

This afternoon at 4:30 p.m., I went on the Ed Schultz Show to talk about this. (I wrote to the show an e-mail last night in response to a caller I heard on the way home and this morning I got a call from his producer asking me to go on). A few minutes later, I got an enraged phone call from Fitrakis's campaign manager, who insisted I speak to him immediately. I'm not sure what she was enraged about, because when I spoke to Bob, he simply reiterated what everyone else has said. He has seen no such letter, and the concerns he's legally pursuing (he's always going after some election travesty and you don't have to invent them to find them in Ohio) have nothing to do with any such letter. He mentioned a whole bunch of voter-purge attempts (the man is a fountain of elections-related information -- if you're interested, go to his website and check out his articles and books), but none vaguely similar to this one or within the same time-frame. He also echoed what Borntrager said about this particular ploy not being valid.

So to sum up: I have spoken to a large group of people in Ohio who are actively involved in the election, many specifically in voter protection, and none has heard anything about such a letter. I am NOT saying no purging has happened at any time or that no one's registration has been lost. I AM saying that no sinister Diebold program was activated to deliberately target certain demographic groups in time for this election. The way things are going, it won't be necessary to defeat Diebold investor/Secretary of State, chaos division/Republican gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell. He was unendorsed today by a staunchly Republican paper in Findlay, Ohio, due to his disgraceful meltdown in Monday night's debate. Unendorsed! How often have you heard of that happening???? http://www.thecourier.com/...

If you're in Ohio, we need you to be vigilant, we need you to volunteer to be an observer on election day (if you're in Cleveland, call Tom at the Cleveland Strickland office, 216.696.2006), and to work up until election day to make sure Blackwell and his cronies are looking for work outside politics on November 8, and most of all, we need you to vote! Don't let anything discourage you. Oh, and if you're in Northeast Ohio, come downtown to the Plain Dealer Pavilion in the Flats at 7 p.m. for the big Turnaround Ohio rally with the entire statewide ticket- and me! I will be singing with the "Singers for Strickland" Choir! It's free, and parking at the Powerhouse is discounted.

So is the OH purge story a hoax? Or a Repub Plant? if either, who's the perp? My guess is either the kos blogger or his anonymous source. It sucked in a lot folks who jumped on the bandwagon. I just can't figure Kall's "interview" with Fitrakis, it's inference doesn't jive with anatasia's phone conversation with him....

Be sure to check the update for more information on this developing story...