The Agonist - USA: E-Voting

A tale of two companies

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:39:06 -0700

Leah and I went to see Michael Moore’s movie about Capitalism last night in Austin. As you might expect, the movie will not be showing in small town Texas. Attending the show became worthy of a story in and of itself. We arrived late but were able to park near the entrance to the 14 screen theater complex because there were almost no cars in the parking lot. A single security guard stood in front of the facility; he looked to be a bored off-duty policeman earning a few bucks on the side. A sign at the ticket booth said, buy tickets inside.

All but one set of doors at the entrance were locked. Two employees stood behind the refreshment counter. One sold us tickets and then moved over to sell us popcorn and a soft drink. Between the cost of admission and our refreshments the toll came to $37.

We went into the theater to discover the entire place contained only five people. And it wasn’t just Moore’s movie that had failed to draw a crowd; the whole place was deserted. Of course it was a Monday night, but nevertheless... We’re talking a movie complex valued around 10 million bucks or so, right off of Interstate-35 on a piece of prime Austin real estate, and it’s empty.

The movie was a mixed bag. Moore, like so many others of left-leaning orientation does a good job in identifying the evils in this world. But I think part of the point that he’d have us to believe—that capitalism is the real culprit—and that somehow good honest American citizens are the innocent victims here doesn’t ring true to me.

As we were leaving the theater I began thinking about this company I had watched grow during my life. The company instituted a profit sharing plan that guaranteed a decent retirement for anyone that stayed with the company; they provided health insurance, paid decent wages, stressed company loyalty, going both ways, up and down the ladder. They favored well-made American made products.

Then I thought about this other company. This company paid horrible wages, moved people from full time jobs into part time status to avoid having to provide worker benefits. Cut-throat product acquisition teams beat producers out of potential profits to the fraction of a penny and scoured the world for the cheapest prices available without concern over the conditions under which products were created or the compensation that workers received for their labor.

Both companies are the product of capitalism. In fact these two companies are one and the same: Wal-Mart, before and after Sam Walton’s death.

I also think back to people of my generation, of the period in the sixties and early seventies, the awakening period, Strauss and Howe would call it. I remember back-to-earth hippie drop-outs I knew, smoking grass, getting back to nature, caring for the environment, eschewing the drive to make more money, be rich and the idea of surrounding themselves with creature comforts and trappings of wealth. Others that weren’t hippies still weren’t worried about jobs or overly concerned about how they’d make money. They listened to music and sought ways to enjoy life. They weren’t driven.

I remember revisiting these people in the 80’s. The hair was cut and styled, the hippy clothes were now business suits; they now carried brief cases. They’d moved to suburbs, had big new houses and a couple of brand new cars. They’d given up pot for cocaine and coffee, perhaps pharmaceuticals as well so they could sleep at night, and they were on the point for ways to make money any and every way possible. They had joined the establishment they once railed against.

For those of you just a few years younger than I, you missed seeing these changes. You came of age during the unraveling. Take my word for it. Something happened and we the people, virtually all of us, made a turn for the worse. I don’t know why or how, I just know it happened.

Capitalism is by design a system that entails unequal wealth distribution, but when people are compassionate, the effects of capitalism can and are mitigated by charity and good will. Socialism, in theory, seems the fairer way of dividing wealth, but in real practice can be and is corrupted by those of bad intent. Someone has to be in charge of the distribution of wealth; privilege and favor can and will be sold by corrupt officials. I tend to believe socialism disincentivises people, but that’s not the point of this article.

Problems with each of these systems begin with the individual. But individuals are not immune to the prevailing tides of an era. The hyperindividualism of the 80’s and the 90’s combined with a loss of social conscience destroyed this nation, and other nations as well, some which call themselves socialist. The wave affected people from three eras, those of the silent generation, boomers and Gen-Xers. Boomers probably deserve credit as the worst of the worst, but that’s just because Gen-Xers didn’t have the opportunities we did due to the stage of life they happened to be in when the unraveling began. They hadn’t yet achieved positions of power and control.

Laying all the blame on capitalism oversimplifies the condition and the state of affairs we now encounter. Notice I did not say problem, because problems entail solutions and we have no solutions for the ills that beset us.

You can’t vote it away. You can’t tweak the rules. We didn’t follow the rules we had and we won’t follow the new rules until we reap what we have sown and come to understand the consequences of the choices we have made.

A period of crisis is upon us and will be for a number of years to come. It is going to hurt like hell. It may kill a bunch of us. But the crisis is the cure.

Accept it and learn from it. Or die a fool. That choice is yours.

Computer scientists reveal new voting machine hack successfully changed votes

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:47:19 -0700

David Edwards & John Byrne | Aug 12

Raw Story - A team of computer scientists at University of California, San Diego, the University of Michigan and Princeton University announced a new way to electronically steal votes Monday.

“We wanted to find if a real criminal could do this, starting from scratch, with no access to source code or other closely guarded technical information,” the announcer begins. “We faced several challenges: getting a voting machine, figuring out how it works, discovering a weakness, overcoming the machine’s security features and constructing attack software.”

“In the end we found that it is possible to undetectably change votes and that such an attack takes a lot less time and money than one might expect,” the announcer said.

A Princeton professor was able to acquire five voting machines for just $82 that had been resold on a government surplus website. The acquired machines were originally sold by Sequoia Voting Systems.

Republican IT consultant subpoenaed in case alleging tampering with 2004 election

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:09:25 -0700

Larisa Alexandrovna & Muriel Kane | Columbus, Ohio | September 29

Raw Story - A high-level Republican consultant has been subpoenaed in a case regarding alleged tampering with the 2004 election.

Michael L. Connell was served with a subpoena in Ohio on Sept. 22 in a case alleging that vote-tampering during the 2004 presidential election resulted in civil rights violations. Connell, president of GovTech Solutions and New Media Communications, is a website designer and IT professional who created a website for Ohio’s secretary of state that presented the results of the 2004 election in real time as they were tabulated.

At the time, Ohio’s Secretary of State, Kenneth J. Blackwell, was also chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection effort in Ohio.

The Empire Strikes Back: Sarah Palin's Speech

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:18:09 -0700

September 4, 2008

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: SARAH PALIN’S SPEECH

John Chuckman

I’ve reassessed my view of Sarah Palin.

My first thought about her usefulness to John McCain was that she would be a draw for disaffected Hillary supporters in a close race, but then all I knew about Sarah was that she characterized herself as a soccer, or hockey, mom.

But already I’ve learned more about her than I ever would have wanted to know, and her simple, original description of herself proves disingenuous at best, and there is the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of her appealing to Hillary supporters.

A dizzying jumble of images and anecdotes now clutters the Internet. There’s a picture of her in a bikini, with an American flag motif no less, holding a rifle, with a loony grin, poolside. There’s another picture in a black leather mini-skirt, high platform shoes, satiny blouse with revealing décolletage, standing at a bar with a wine glass. There’s the head-shot of her looking through the sight of a military weapon, a la Thatcher in her tank. Then there are the many carefully-posed pictures of her dressed demurely in family groupings, sentimental pictures as familiar to me as her flat Midwestern accent, a holdover from Idaho in her case, which just happens to be America’s favourite refuge for survivalists, private militias, and Aryan lunatics.

Then there are her statements about the bloody, illegal invasion of Iraq being “God’s will.” How would she know that? Because George Bush told her? Or does God personally whisper in her ear? If it’s God, I wonder when He (Sarah being a fundamentalist, it could not possibly be a She) takes the opportunity of speaking to her? When she’s poolside in a bikini, toting a gun, or dressed and scurrying out the door with the clan for Sunday school?

She supported Pat Buchanan, poster boy for everything that is wrong with America, in his Junior Brown Shirt march for the presidency in 2000. Before that, she was a card-carrying member of the Alaska Independence party, not exactly in keeping with Stars-and-Stripes bikinis, but definitely consistent with erratic behavior. There were denials about the Independence party, but the records are there, as is her signature.

She has five children, including her most recent, sadly afflicted with Down syndrome. In this day of certainty through tests, it does seem irresponsible to have such a child, which likely will be dependent on family and society for its entire life. Yes, her behaviour is consistent with her views on abortion – about which she once claimed she would not have an abortion even for a raped daughter – but is it sensible? Does such a decision reflect sound, realistic judgment? Our world today is full of such complex situations and judgments, not a world of simplistic rights or wrongs.

She is against gay marriage, against abortion, and against just about anything else you can find in the “anti” repertoire of religious predators along the lines of Jimmy Swaggert or Jerry Falwell. If she accepts war and mass killing as God’s will, why does she not extend that thinking to gay marriage or tests which help us prevent tragic outcomes from pregnancy?

She’s not much more consistent in her other behaviour and thinking. She’s big on commandments and rules, but that did not stop her from trying to have her brother-in-law dismissed from his job in the state police. Nor did it prevent her hacking into an opponent’s computer to get information to secure her election as mayor. And respect for proper procedures did not cause her a moment’s concern when she used paid lobbyists to land pork-barrel projects for her town.

Sarah is almost an American cartoon character, Daffy Duck waving his wings and flapping his beak madly off in all directions.

Her acceptance speech at the convention was certainly competently delivered, but what did it say? It was literally a set of one-liners, Rush Limbaugh barking away on the radio, without any sense of purpose or direction stated other than winning the election and “serving the people.” God, I would hate to be tasked with listing all the monstrous crimes committed in the name of “serving the people,” almost as many, surely, as those covered by “God’s will” in history.

Actually, there’s very little that is new about Sarah Palin. I’ve seen this act before. In tone and substance and attitude, Sarah is Newt Gingrich in drag. But then Newt was almost as irreligious as John McCain. Sarah, though, has a big fat hunk of old Bob Jones tossed in – after all, in the heady ‘60s, the old man had guards with automatic weapons at the gates of Bob Jones’ University - and that brings us to one of her main purposes in this campaign.

Sarah is there to speak to the born-again crowd, people who do not actually trust John McCain as being sympathetic to their views, and with good reason. Born-agains are roughly a fifth of the American population, and the Republicans never can win without their support. So we’ve gone from having the nuttier class of fundamentalists burrowing into every corner of America’s government under George Bush, affecting even the language used in literature at the Grand Canyon, to having one of their own placed “a heartbeat away” from the presidency, and this by a man whose heartbeat just might not last his term.

PC World: U. S. Presidential Election Can Be Hacked

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:39:30 -0700

PC World Apr 10, 2008
U. S. Presidential Election Can Be Hacked
by Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

This year, the U. S. will pick a new president using electronic voting machines that can be hacked, security experts said Thursday at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.

As the November election approaches, the question before officials is not how to fix known bugs in their e-voting systems, but rather, how best to check them for fraud, said David Wagner, an associate professor with the University of California, Berkeley's computer science department.

Wagner was part of the team that audited California's voting systems during the state's review of electronic voting, and the problems his team found affect counties across the U. S. "The three systems we looked at are three of the most widely used around the nation," he said during an e-voting panel discussion at the show. "They're going to be using them in the 2008 elections; they're still going to have the same vulnerabilities we found."

full article

Cuyahoga's Election Day count complete

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:23:44 -0800

J. Horton | Cleveland | March 5

PD - At 5:14 a.m. Wednesday, a ballot out of Parma's Precinct 2E slid through an optical scanner at the Cuyahoga County Board of Election.

With that, Election Day came to a close in Cleveland.

Elections workers counted the 406,450th - and final - vote of the day nearly 10 hours after most of the county's polls closed. A nasty winter storm and a court ruling keeping 20 precincts open until 9 p.m. complicated the night.

Some ballots didn't reach the central counting site until after 1 a.m., when officials said three trucks still awaited unloading.

But overall, the count went smoothly - especially compared to recent elections in the county. More than 165 workers processed the ballots in efficient fashion. The first ballots arrived to cheers at 9:44 p.m. It took more than seven hours to complete the task.

Where’s My Rebate Check?

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:16:02 -0800

For the second time in his presidency George Bush has had to provide an “economic stimulus” to the failing economy. When will these clowns get it? These short-term band-aids will not fix a broken economy. These rebate checks are just a way for the politicians in Washington to be able to accept their checks from the lobbyists without guilt. The truth is just like the last rebates they will do little to rescue an economy that has inherent flaws. Rather than do the hard work needed to create a working economy, the Washingtonians have opted for a symbolic gesture designed to appease the masses in time for the fall elections. It is a win/win for both parties and a loss for the American public.

The economic research on effective stimulus is quite clear on this point: there is a greater bang-for-the-buck from rebates targeted at lower-income households than higher-income ones. As the Congressional Budget Office put it in a recent report:[PDF] "Lower-income households are more likely to be credit constrained and more likely to be among those with the highest propensity to spend.

Therefore, policies aimed at lower-income households tend to have greater stimulative effects." Given the well-documented increase in income inequality in recent years, excluding low-income households from the rebate also fails on the criterion of fairness. EPI

Rather than deal with the rampant corporate greed that has fed this recession, it is easier to hand out a few hundred dollars in hush money to the electorate while the fleecing continues. Let’s compare the “stimulus package” being offered up by Washington with the profit package that the corporations have been enjoying the last 8 years.

Since 2001, he noted, overall corporate profits have doubled, to more than $1 trillion. Contributors to that gain include a cumulative $440 billion increase in investment, a $375 billion expansion of budget deficits and a $140 billion decline in household savings. The only negative during the period was a $405 billion widening of the trade deficit. NY Times

The proposed stimulus package totals 150 billion dollars while the corporate profits are over a trillion dollars, is it just me or is there a small discrepancy here? Are we to believe that a $600 check is going to off-set the unprecedented growth of wealth and profiteering that is taking place in America today? The increase in the price of gasoline alone amounts to more than what is being offered the American public. Many economists believe that one of the main problems with our economy is the lack of savings, so what are we suppose to do with our rebate checks? Go out and spend them to generate more profits for the corporations. Why not just continue to give the money directly to the corporations and avoid the middle-man? So remember when those checks start to arrive in May or June you will be counted on to be a good little American and go out spend that money. Go buy yourself something nice, you really deserve it. Maybe it will help you to forget how truly bad the recession is and how worse it is going to get. Maybe it will help you to forget all your fellow Americans who are being evicted from their homes or who are still patrolling the streets of Iraq. Maybe it will help you forget all those millions of Americans who were forgotten in the negotiations; the unemployed, the food stamp recipients, and the seniors.

Yeah $600 is a pretty small price to pay for silence. I know it’s hard to say no to free money, but this money isn’t free. It will be directly added to the budget deficit which is currently hovering around 9 trillion dollars, so what’s another 100 billion? Our economy needs help, but not these onetime symbolic gestures. The time has come to make some much needed changes that will require making some difficult decisions. I just don’t see the political will or the populist surge to make it happen. So we will take our checks and continue to ignore the giant elephant in the room until there is a total collapse and then everyone will wonder what happened? What happened was that our infinitely expanding economy finally reached the limits of greed and corruption and rammed into the glass wall.

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. - Josh Billings

The Disputed Truth

20 percent of [Cuyahoga] election printouts were unreadable

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 05:50:47 -0800

Joe Guillen | Cleveland, Ohio | Nov 28

Cleveland Plain Dealer - A recount after next year's presidential election could mean disaster for Cuyahoga County based on problems discovered Tuesday with paper records produced by electronic voting machines.

More than 20 percent of the printouts from touch-screen voting machines were unreadable and had to be reprinted. Board of Elections workers found the damaged ballots when they conducted a recount Tuesday of two races, which involved only 17 of the county's 1,436 precincts.

The recount lasted more than 12 hours. Reprinting the damaged records and hand-counting them created an extra step that added hours.

more...

Destruction of Evidence - Ohio's 2004 Presidential Ballots

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:56:52 -0700

Letter from an Ohio Board of Elections (Holmes County) on missing 2004 ballots.

“Letters from the Edge” - Part 1

By Michael Collins
“Scoop” Independent News
Washington, D.C.

Overall this blatant destruction of evidence only reinforces the widespread belief that the 2004 election was stolen.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman,
Free Press August 2, 2007

The 2004 presidential election was mired in controversy all over the country. Candidate Kerry’s legion of volunteer lawyers was ready to fight anticipated election fraud. Serious challenges were defused when Kerry conceded the election in the early morning of November 3, 2004. Failing to recognize that candidates cannot concede the votes of citizens, the news media and political parties called it a night.

Ohio was ground zero for charges of election fraud. These are ably detailed in several articles and won’t be repeated here. One post election event is worth mentioning. The March 13, 2007 Toledo Blade ran this headline at the end of a major trial in Cleveland:

2 election workers get 18 months for rigging presidential recount.

The crime took place in the largest voting district in Ohio, Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland. Election workers created the recount that wasn’t thus denying the public of vital information about charges of election fraud.

The tale of the lost ballots and destroyed evidence begins with a law suit brought by citizens against Ohio officials: King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association (KLBNA) v. Blackwell. The suit charges Blackwell and other Ohio officials with: “election fraud, vote dilution, vote suppression, recount fraud and other violations.”

Specific charges include: “withholding unused (unvoted) ballots” in response to legitimate requests to review these ballots; violation of Ohio law by “breaks in the bipartisan chain of custody;” and “tampering with ballots” by marking Bush’s name on ballots with no presidential vote and switching ballots from Kerry to a third party candidate. Amended Complaint October 9, 2006

In order to prove their case, plaintiff’s counsel, noted voting rights attorney Cliff Arnebeck, needed all of the ballots from the 2004 election. Federal law stipulates a 22 month retention period for all federal elections, as does Ohio law for state elections. The presiding judge in the case, Algenon L. Marbley, issued a court order on September 6, 2006 extending the retention requirements for an additional 12 months. Blackwell was instructed to distribute the order to Ohio’s boards of elections.

The Judge then ordered that the ballots be turned over to the new Secretary of State, Democrat Jennifer Brunner on April 7, 2007. Brunner sent a request out for the ballot evidence two days later

When the Ohio Secretary of State sent requests for delivery of the ballots, 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties replied that they no longer had some or all of the ballots requested. Only 41 bothered to provide an explanatory letter as to the missing ballots. Fifteen counties offered no reason at all for noncompliance. Counties failing to return complete sets of ballots accounted for a majority of Ohio’s 2004 presidential votes.

Federal and State Law on Preserving Ballots

In the section on “Federal Election Records,” federal law (United States Code) clearly states the rule:

Section 1974. Retention and preservation of records and papers by officers of elections; deposit with custodian; penalty for violation:

Every officer of election shall retain and preserve (“records and papers”) for a period of twenty-two months from the date of any general, special, or primary election (involving federal candidates)

Ohio law requires that “the board shall carefully preserve all ballots prepared and provided by it for use in that election, whether used or unused, for twenty-two months after the day of the election.”

July 2004 Secretary of State Blackwell issued a reminder to all of the county boards regarding the 22 month retention standard for election records.

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Through the Secretary of State, a federal judge, and the lead attorney in a law suit, the 88 counties received multiple notices that they were to retain all ballots from the 2004 election for federal office, president in particular, for at least 22 months and after that “until such time as otherwise instructed by the court.”

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But look what happened.

Destruction of Ballot Evidence

The five types of ballots requested were: (1) voted; (2) unvoted; (3) absentee; (4) provisional; and (5) spoiled. All ballots are required to determine if fraud took place. Unvoted ballots are no exception. There are several key points to remember when reading the explanatory letters from the boards:

Federal law requires retaining all “records and papers” for 22 months.
Ohio law requires retention of “all ballots” for a similar period.
Federal and Ohio laws offer no exception for unvoted ballots.
There is an assumed standard of care for ballots that includes concerns like chain of custody and secure and safe storage.

The first letter in the collection is from the Ashtabula County Prosecuting Attorney. Why would the prosecuting attorney write this letter when all the other explanatory letters were written by election board members? Perhaps someone in that county understood the gravity of destruction of evidence and the penalties involved.

Unfortunately, the actual ballot cards were inadvertently discarded and destroyed by the Ashtabula County Board of Elections just prior to the receipt by the Board of Judge Marbley’s Order and subsequent directive to your office.

Thomas Sartini, Prosecuting Attorney, Ashtabula County Apr. 16, 2007

There is a clear intent to use the term inadvertently or somehow imply unintentional destruction of ballots in many of the letters. Webster’s defines inadvertent as: 1: not focusing the mind on a matter: inattentive. 2: unintentional.

In Athens County, for example, the board said “they feel that these unvoted ballots were inadvertently discarded.” These must have been very special feelings since they were powerful enough to intuit inadvertent discarding of ballot evidence. No further explanation was offered.

On April 11, 2007, Clermont said that they didn’t know where the ballot evidence was but that “no one remembers specifically discarding the ballots.”

Like Clermont, Brown County couldn’t find all the ballots but they were sure that they “were not intentionally destroyed.”

Guernsey County says that unvoted ballots “were destroyed in error due to the county maintenance worker.” This is inadvertent destruction of evidence by proxy. The janitor did it. Several counties blamed retired elections officials without indicating any effort to contact those officials for an explanation.

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As you look at the examples of ballot evidence destruction, keep in mind that destruction of ballots is the one way to be 100% certain that the charges in KLBNA v. Blackwell are never verified. Ironically, that destruction of 2004 ballots seems to break the very same laws charged in the civil action.

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Allen County had a “migrating water” problem that flooded their vault holding the ballots. This caused them to be “compromised by water damage and subsequently destroyed.” The dry ballots were also lost when a contractor threw them out, inadvertently no doubt. The ballot wipe out in Allen combined both inadvertent destruction (of damaged ballots) and destruction by proxy (all the rest).

Let’s look at two of Ohio’s largest voting districts, those including Cincinnati and Cleveland.

Cincinnati is part of Hamilton County, population 823,000. Election board director John Williams had this to say:

In January of ’06, the staff was engaged in a sizable effort to make room for the Hart voting system. To the best of my knowledge, the above ballots (unvoted precinct ballots) were inadvertently shredded between January 19^th and 26^th of ‘06 in an effort to make room for the new Hart voting system.

John M. Williams, Director of Elections, Hamilton County Board of Elections, May 16, 2007

So Hamilton had to make room for new voting machines but they shredded the ballots inadvertently; in which case the given reason for the destruction of evidence had nothing to do with the anticipation of new machines since it was inadvertent, “not focusing the mind on matter” or “unintentional,” meaning the absence of specific intent, i.e., moving them to make way for new machines.

Or possibly Hamilton destroyed the ballot for an unspecified reason and found that the shredding made room for the new voting machines; in which case they confused the unspecified reason with inadvertent shredding and used the new machine arrival as a convenient excuse.

Or possibly the staff of the board of elections was so concerned with clearing up storage space that they failed to notice the ballots, the key product of their role as election workers, and set them aside resulting in the shredding; only later rationalizing their negligence with the excuse of needing for extra space for e-voting machines.

Is there a fourth option? The statement by Hamilton as written makes no sense at all. What really happened in this huge voting district?

Hamilton County could produce a receipt for the inadvertent ballot shredding. That might provide clues that would make sense out of their nonsensical letter. But as we will see shortly, before even investigating, Secretary of State Brunner and Attorney General Dann applied a benign motive for what seem to be blatant violations of federal and state law.

Cuyahoga County, population 1.3 million, was unable to determine how many unvoted ballots it had in its possession. It took records for “ballots ordered” for 2004 and subtracted the total ballots cast, assuming the difference was sufficient instead of actually counting the unused ballots.

From Cuyahoga County transmission to Ohio Secretary of State,
April 17, 2007. Collection of Letters and Reports, (p. 222)

The unused ballots are of grave importance for Cuyahoga. The county was the site of a wide range of election problems. One would think they’d want to explain why they needed 1,135,265 ballots for 1,007,187 registered voters when turnout is rarely exceeds 60%. That’s a lot of extra ballots floating around in a county that produced a “rigged” presidential recount. There were several other counties with large quantities of extra ballots.

Cuyahoga County acting elections director Jane Platten was so concerned about the state of the ballots delivered that she amended her certification statement to the Secretary of State.

Statement of Jill Platten, April 17, 2007
Full Collection of Letters and Reports, (p. 223)

Platten wrote in an email regarding the issue on April 17, 2007: “I did not know the chain of custody and storage of those ballots since the November 2004 election. None of the persons responsible for those ballots … work at the BOE any longer.” (Full Collection, p. 225) Did those persons cease to exist altogether? Surely they could have been reached by phone, paid a visit, or asked for a sworn statement or deposition. Was any such effort made? Apparently not.

Platten had no doubt seen this report on the board’s activities dated January 17, 2007, three months before her amended certification above. The Center for Election Integrity at Cleveland State University did a study of the board and reported the following:

The key system as currently structured permits any one staff member, or even a contractor or consultant, to gain unauthorized an unsupervised access to voted and unvoted ballots, memory cards holding votes, and other sensitive materials. Structuring the key access in these ways may violate Ohio statues an SOS directives that required “sealed containers.” E.G. OCR SS 3501.27 (protections for recounts). We raised this problem with several Ballot Department managers and Administrator Irizarry, who expressed interest in resolving it.

Center for Election Integrity, Cleveland State University, January 17, 2007, (p. 7)

This finding is presented as an understatement when it should be a headline. The essence of the gross security lapse in Cuyahoga is obvious: just about anyone associated with the board could have gained access to the 2004 ballots. Both ballot security and chain of custody were compromised. How would anyone know that the ballots delivered to the Secretary of State were the actual 2004 ballots with so many people allowed unsupervised access over time? Inefficiency and poor record keeping on the part of public officials trump the search for justice.

What regard do you have for ballots when you fail to produce them and then don’t even bother to explain why? Fifteen counties never bothered to explain their failure to obey federal law and a federal court order. For those who wrote letters, why not simply say “we’re very sorry to report…” or “we deeply regret to inform you?” How many expressed regrets? There were only two or three by my count.

Did any of those who had already destroyed ballots by the time of Judge Marbley’s order bother to write the Secretary of State explaining that fact when they received the order? If not, why not? Did any of those who had already destroyed ballots after the 22 month federal retention period but prior to the request for delivery in April 2007 bother to report this to the Secretary of State? If not, why not?

Reaction by Ohio’s Secretary of State and Attorney General

Both Attorney General Dann and Secretary of State Brunner made clear promises to pursue 2004 election fraud investigations during their campaigns. Their words on this subject are well documented. Once elected and faced with the massive destruction of evidence from the 2004 election, they may have experienced an inadvertent memory lapse.

2006 general election winner, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (D), was quick to respond to the destruction of evidence. The Cincinnati Enquirer of August 11, 2007 reported Brunner’s remarks: “If I had evidence of a cover-up, I would investigate. For me, the bigger question in 2004 was how many people were prevented from voting (something) you can’t quantify?” Attorney General Marc Dann (D), also elected in 2006, responded quickly by seconding Brunner’s position. So much for campaign promises.

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While the two Democratic officials were quick to absolve those who destroyed evidence, both have refused to meet with voting rights activists to receive and discuss extensive data and analysis that supports election fraud in the 2004 presidential election.

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How Do We Interpret the Destruction of Ballot Evidence?

There are a number of ways to look at the vanished ballots. Let’s consider two broad approaches.

This could just be a series of coincidences Explanations for the missing ballots include: (a) inadvertent shredding or other forms of unintended ballot destruction; (b) aggressive maintenance personnel removing what was taken to be trash; (c) retired officials blamed by their replacements; (d) ignorance of the law; and (e) this is just the way we do things. The benign interpretation of the destruction or loss of evidence would accept each and every explanation is accurate. Furthermore, the benign interpretation would also include an assignment of coincidence to 56 of 88 counties performing these acts, many in areas where charges of election irregularities were raised. The explanation might go something like this:

We’ve got a loose patchwork of election boards who’ve become accustomed to doing things their own way. The summary sheets are sufficient since there was no ill intent. It’s not really destruction of evidence. It’s just what happened. Nothing to worry about here. Lets move on to a new election cycle in 2008.

A less benign interpretation is expressed in the following analogy:

Your neighbor is charged with assaulting you and stealing all your money. The neighbor vigorously denies this. The police know that the neighbor has a security video camera and taping system that covers his front yard, the scene of the assault. The police tell the neighbor to preserve the tape and bring it down town to police headquarters. The neighbor sends the police a fax saying, “I no longer have the tape. I spilled coffee on it and then my cleaning crew threw it out. As proof of my innocence here is the tape summary I compiled which says: Summary of video - No unusual events noted. “

Now imagine how you would react when the police chief appeared on television and announced, “I’m sure that the destruction of evidence was unintended. If I thought there was a crime, I’d conduct an investigation. There’s no reason to think a crime took place. Besides, I’m more interested in car theft anyway.”

The explanations shouldn’t matter at all. The federal statutes are clear. Ballots are to be preserved for 22 months following elections. Those counties that destroyed them prior to that deadline violated both federal and state statutes and should be considered for prosecution under federal and state law. Ignorance of the law, particularly for public officials, is no excuse.

The court order for ballot preservation was delivered by the plaintiff’s attorney, by the Secretary of State, and was the subject of media coverage. The counties who still had ballots after the federal deadline had adequate notice to retain them from plaintiff’s attorney. County personnel should be held accountable to federal and state laws on ballot preservation and destruction of evidence.

All counties had a responsibility to know and obey federal law and the court order. All counties had a responsibility to store safely and with care all of the 2004 ballots and any other ballots they had in their possession. All counties had a responsibility to have a chain of custody procedure in place to assure that the ballots stored could be accounted for as the original set from the election. This is standard operating procedure for any organization. Why wasn’t this done?

Will there be justice and accountability? Will the possible theft of a presidential election cause the newly elected Secretary of State and Attorney General to reconsider their quick dismissal of destruction of election evidence? Will the federal courts take note and provide a consequence for those who inadvertently or intentionally destroyed evidence?

America has been robbed of its history here. The public has a right to know the true outcome of the 2004 election, and to have its laws about preservation of critical records honored.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Free Press August 2, 2007

END

Letters of explanation from counties that provided them, including those referenced in this article. (1.02 MB)

The full collection of letters and records for the provision of ballots from the 2004 election can be found here (at the Free Press). (19.1 MB)

Index for full collection of letters and records (at the Free Press) (6.75 KB)

Explanatory letters only (1 MB)

Permission to reproduce this article in whole or part with a link to the original article in “Scoop” Independent News and attribution of authorship to Michael Collins.

"Microsoft 811" - Maqking the World Safe for Voting Machine Vendors

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:19:22 -0700

"Microsoft 811"

Making the World Safe

For Voting Machine Vendors

Michael Collins
Scoop Independent News
Washington D.C.

At a New Jersey town meeting this July, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) said of his bill, House Resolution 811, “It’s not my bill anymore.”

Why shouldn’t the world be safe for vendors? Microsoft in particular? After all, they pay the bills. Just let them have whatever they want and let the rest of us be thankful we’ve got jobs. This is the prevailing philosophy in Washington, DC, your capitol and the supposed heart of modern democracy.

House Resolution 811 (“The Holt Bill”) is coming up for a vote this week, word has it. The questions are stark. What will we Congress be voting for? Whose interests are represented in the final mark up of this legislation?

Voting in the United States is hardly inspirational. In fact, it’s become down right depressing for both those who follow it closely or those who keep their distance due to the dreadful outcomes in terms of legislative performance.

Let’s look at the close up. But first an acknowledgment. It’s hard arguing with those who say they wouldn’t let us vote if it made a difference because it hasn’t. It’s been eight months since the new Congress was seated and where are we? We’re still hip deep in Iraq and the Senate has done nothing to prevent the president from starting his next project, a military attack on Iran. We have no solutions to universal health insurance. and the rebuilding of New Orleans has been paid for but not begun. What a record! No wonder so many people don’t bother to vote.

For those of us who do vote, what is on the line with H.R. 811, the Holt Bill?

The Vendor Protection Act: Microsoft Uber Allis

A cardinal principal of almost all factions of the election integrity movement has been open computer source code for voting machines. Open source code is defined as, “…source code of software that is available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions.” The basis for computerized voting machine software and methods could be examined by any citizen. As a result, it would be much easier to examine those nail biting elections we have so often or simply check on the integrity of any election, no matter how close. For the technically informed, this is one of the key elements required for transparent and fair elections where computerized voting (e-voting) is in place.

Advocates argue that open source computer code in voting machines will give greater access to understand how the machines operate. Quite simply, open source code will make it easier to assure that the votes cast are those counted. Not only will it be easier to check on any private vendor’s voting machine operations, with open source, this inspection will take place on an even playing field.

That was the original idea behind H.R. 811. The 2003 version of Holt’s bill was very clear. It stated:

No voting system shall at any time contain or use undisclosed software.

The bill, as introduced in 2006 was just as clear:

…source code, object code, executable representation, and ballot programming files [shall be made] available for inspection promptly upon request to any person.

The current version of Holt’s bill up for vote this week backs off of the public right to inspect voting machine software, open source code, in a big way and lets vendors keep secret the software and methods that determine your elections. Let me put it another way, you don’t get to see how the voting machines work that elect the officials who govern you – ever!

Washington to Citizens: Drop Dead

Citizens of the United States of America still believe that the government is a servant, hence the designation public servants for politicians and government officials. The idea wasn’t for them to serve themselves or private interests, like voting machine vendors. They’re supposed to serve us!

Here’s the new Holt Bill language:

an accredited laboratory that inspects voting machines shall hold the technology in escrow (read hold in secret). The laboratory (a private company, likely) can disclose technology and information to another person, if and only if that person or entity is a government agency responsible for voting, a party to litigation over an election or an academic studying elections. H.R. 811

What happened to disclosure of software and methods upon request of any person?

The Washington Two Step

Here we go again. We elect people to make our laws more open and transparent in order to know what is being done by those whose job it is to serve us. What do they do? They take the most fundamental right that we have, voting – electing our representatives – and they make it secret. Sure, a government agency can look at the software that counts the votes, the agency run by the politicians elected by the machines that need inspection. That will do a lot of good won’t it? Oh, and if you have the six or seven figures required to bring a law suit, you might be able to look at source code. Finally, as if to show that they‘re not as anti-intellectual as they seem, the bill says academics can look at the source code and other software and methods. That will do a lot of good, years from now …. maybe.

Nancy Tobi of Democracy for New Hampshire wondered how this all happened. The word from Capitol Hill was “take up your concerns with Microsoft and others in the proprietary software industry.”

It’s Official – Voting is Now a Rigged Game Run by the Government

Why not just change the name from elections to voting lotto? Except in this lotto game, the contestants are the very same people who make up the rules, pick the winners, and hand out the cash. It’s all so elegant and logical:

Politicians administer elections that determine whether or not they keep their jobs. They expect us to believe that they’ll catch each other when there’s any cheating going on and that they’ll report it to us right away. But we’re not allowed to see how the game works, how the equipment operates, or who does what behind the scenes.

Can any of you imagine how Mr. Trump would respond to any casino machine vendor who said, “Look buddy, it’s our software, our machine, and our game – mind your own business.” The words are (correct me if I’m wrong), “You’re fired!”

Long term researcher and activist Ellen Theisen of Voters Unite has supported the Holt Bill in its various forms since 2003. This is no longer the case. Theisen outlined her objections to the current Holt Bill clearly on June 11, 2007. I recommend a review of this brief but comprehensive editorial. She pulled her support because the current bill leaves some ballots uncounted; endorses secret vote counting and secret voting software; allows some wireless communication to slip through the cracks; and perpetuates the Election Assistance (sic) Commission, appointed solely by the president.

But I’ve saved the most ironic and outrageous aspect of all of this for last. If you’re still reading, check out these articles by voting issues author Michael Richardson. He did a comprehensive series of articles on the laboratories that will have the honor of holding tight the computer software, source code that determines the outcome of our elections.

Here they are, the laboratories who will store voting source code software; the vote taking and vote counting software that elects our representatives:

Banned Lab Certifies Nearly 70% of US voting machine 15 Jan 2007

State Elections Directors approved test labs rejected by National Institute of Standards and Testing 19 Jan 2007

CIBER Voting Machine Test Lab Failures is 'Old News' Known by Top Election Officials for Years 02 Feb 2007

U.S. Election Assistance Commission Chair, Donetta Davidson, Knew About Problems of Voting Machine Test Labs But Kept Quiet 20 Feb 2007

This is not quite as outrageous as giving the president the ability to start a war with Iran, but its damn close. Great legislating Congress! We knew you had it in you.

ENDS

Disclosure: I’m an advocate for an immediate return to hand counted paper ballots. However, since my view has not prevailed, I’m more than willing to discuss and critique improvements in any system in use.

Permission to reprint in part or in whole with a link to this article in “Scoop” and attribution of authorship.

Pentagon Setting Up War Information Room

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:33:15 -0700

Lolita C Baldor | Washington | August 24

AP - (I think, unlike Posse Commitatus, the law against the military diseminating propaganda in the US is still on the books - Ian.)

Shaping the Bush administration's message on the Iraq war has taken on new fervor, just as anticipation is building for the September progress report from top military advisers.

For the Pentagon, getting out Iraq information will now include a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week Iraq Communications Desk that will pump out data from Baghdad - serving as what could be considered a campaign war room.

According to a memo circulated Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, is looking for personnel for what he called the high-priority effort to distribute Defense Department information on Iraq.

The move comes as administration officials are gearing up for a rash of reports on progress in Iraq and recommendations from the military on troop levels going into next year. The key report will come from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

Other reports are expected from Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, retired Gen. James Jones - who will examine the progress of the Iraqi security forces - and the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, which will review whether the Iraqi government has hit security and political benchmarks outlined by Congress.

The Pentagon dismissed suggestions that the communications desk will be a message machine or propaganda tool, and instead said it is being set up to gather and distribute information from eight time zones away in a more efficient and timely manner.

"I would not characterize it as a war room," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Friday. "It's far less sinister than that. It's more like a library."

Morrell called it a "smarter way of doing business" and said the intent is to "create a central clearinghouse of information so we can pull in all that is coming out of Baghdad and Iraq and have it come into one point, so we can better be able to share it with people who are interested."

Some of the information collected, he said, would include data from briefings in Iraq, which take place when people on the U.S. East Coast are sleeping.

"It's for our benefit and for your benefit," said Morrell.

Defense officials familiar with the plan said it will provide information to other federal agencies, including the White House and State Department, so that officials can speak more consistently and accurately about the war.

The plan would put a team of people in the Joint Chiefs of Staff top-secret operations center.

Less than a year ago, Smith developed plans for teams of people to "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and "correct the record" when news agencies put out what the Pentagon considered inaccurate information.

Diebod Election Systems? Would cha believe "Premier Voting Solutions?"

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 23:04:29 -0700

Election Unit Spins off from Corporate Parent, Becomes 'Premier Election Solutions' After Failure to Find Buyer for Failing Unit!
Is Full Bankruptcy Far Behind?

-- By Brad Friedman from St. Louis, MO...
at Brad Blog

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 its 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 [PDF] 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.

Applying full lipstick to the pig, the company statement declares, "The change to Premier signals a new beginning for the company." And President Byrd picks up where he left off, furiously polishing his turd with the claim that "This is both a fresh identity for our company and a unique opportunity for us to concentrate our focus solely on providing best-in-class elections solutions for current and potential customers."

No word on when they'd begin that "focus" after years of claiming same, but doing anything but. They have, however, radically lowered their expected revenue statement for the year by $120 million.

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 it can at this point to save the corporate parent.

Voting Officials Face New Rules to Bar Conflicts

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 06:02:20 -0700

IAN URBINA | August 1

NYT - The state officials who run the nation’s elections — most with little oversight — are facing new efforts to limit what have been widely criticized as political and financial conflicts of interest.

Across the country, state voting officials routinely participate as candidates in races they are responsible for overseeing or act as leaders in their political parties. In the last presidential election, the secretaries of state in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio, were chairmen of their states’ re-election campaigns for President Bush.

While federal ethics rules require lawmakers to wait a year after leaving office before they can take a job lobbying their former colleagues, no such rules exist for election officials, creating a revolving door between election administration and the voting machine industry. In recent years, top election officials in at least five states have moved from government posts directly into jobs as lobbyists for the voting machine industry, which itself grew immensely after Congress allocated billions of dollars to help states update equipment.

Accusations of overt impropriety or bias are rare. But voting experts and a growing number of lawmakers say the perception of conflicts of interest undermines public confidence in the integrity of the voting process.

"I think we are reaching a crunch point where Americans are coming to realize that they cannot afford an election that is run by people who have a stake in the outcome," said Robert Pastor, director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University and executive director of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, a panel convened in 2005 to recommend ways to improve elections.

Most vote machines lose test to hackers

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:00:42 -0700

John Wildermuth | California | July 31

San Francisco Chronicle - State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday.

The researchers "were able to bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested," said Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who authorized the "top to bottom review" of every voting system certified by the state.

Neither Bowen nor the investigators were willing to say exactly how vulnerable California elections are to computer hackers, especially because the team of computer experts from the UC system had top-of-the-line security information plus more time and better access to the voting machines than would-be vote thieves likely would have.

"All information available to the secretary of state was made available to the testers,'' including operating manuals, software and source codes usually kept secret by the voting machine companies, said Matt Bishop, UC Davis computer science professor who led the "red team" hacking effort, said in his summary of the results.

The review included voting equipment from every company approved for use in the state, including Sequoia, whose systems are used in Alameda, Napa and Santa Clara counties; Hart InterCivic, used in San Mateo and Sonoma Counties; and Diebold, used in Marin County.

continues

Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election Records Are Destroyed

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 12:19:23 -0700

Steven Rosenfeld, | July 30

AlterNet - In 56 of Ohio's 88 counties, ballots and election records from 2004 have been "accidentally" destroyed, despite a federal order to preserve them -- it was crucial evidence which would have revealed whether the election was stolen.

Two-thirds of Ohio counties have destroyed or lost their 2004 presidential ballots and related election records, according to letters from county election officials to the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner.

The lost records violate Ohio law, which states federal election records must be kept for 22 months after Election Day, and a U.S. District Court order issued last September that the 2004 ballots be preserved while the court hears a civil rights lawsuit alleging voter suppression of African-American voters in Columbus.

The destruction of the election records also frustrates efforts by the media and historians to determine the accuracy of Ohio's 2004 vote count, because in county after county the key evidence needed to understand vote count anomalies apparently no longer exists.

"The extent of the destruction of records is consistent with the covering up of the fraud that we believe occurred in the presidential election," said Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney representing the King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association, which filed voter suppression suit. "We're in the process of addressing where to go from here with the Ohio Attorney General's office."