ELECTRONIC VOTE COUNTING ISSUES
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Table of Contents:(links to sections of this page, below)
NOTE1: 'executive' OR 'manager' OR 'ceo' OR 'scan' OR 'vote' OR 'switch'
NOTE2: That article is rather rambling. As one example of how this page re-organizes that article: This page accumulates 'suspicious events' in the 'SUSPICIOUS EVENTS' section --- by state.
End of Table of Contents.
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INTRODUCTION to Electronic Voting Issues
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Vote Counting -
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This graph does not indicate the election for which these discrepancies-by-county were reported. Presumably it was the 2004 presidential elections. Note that, according to this graph, we have more to fear from the optical-scan voting method than from the touch-screen voting method. And note that the beyond-expected-Republican-vote-totals in the counties doing optical scans were not just 10 or 20 percent beyond --- but 100, 200, 400, even 700 percent beyond the expected totals. At that level of 'over-voting', there must be some counties in which the Republican totals must have gone well beyond the total of registered Republicans in the county. Perhaps there may be some counties in which the Republican-vote-count exceeds the total of Republican-plus-Democrat registered voters. I have read of at least one case where a count like that occurred --- and was 'corrected'. To find more specific cases of suspicious voting events, you could try a WEB SEARCH on keywords such as suspicious voting counts fraud florida ohio georgia for Florida and for other states. The following quotes come from reference <1> : "During the presidential election [in 2000], more than 94,000 paper ballots had gone uncounted in Georgia --- almost double the national average --- and Secretary of State Cathy Cox was under pressure to make sure every vote was recorded properly." "... in May 2002, officials with Cox's office signed a contract with Diebold --- paying the company a record 54 million dollars to install 19,000 electronic voting machines across the state ... its bid was the highest among nine competing vendors." "Diebold had only five months to install the new machines --- a 'very narrow window of time to do such a big deployment'. The old systems stored in warehouses had to be replaced with new equipment; dozens of state officials and poll workers had to be trained in how to use the touch-screen machines. ... There was only one way that the job could be done in time --- if 'the vendor had control of the environment'." "That is precisely what happened. In late July, to speed deployment of the new machines, Cox quietly signed an agreement with Diebold that effectively privatized Georgia's entire electoral system. The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state --- all without any official supervision." "[Diebold] ran the election. [There were] 356 people that Diebold brought into the state. Diebold opened and closed the polls and tabulated the votes. Diebold convinced Cox that it would be best if the company ran everything due to the time constraints, and in the interest of a trouble-free election, she let [Diebold] do it." "... in mid-August [2002], the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrived in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas. With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a 'patch', a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program." "Georgia law mandates that any change made in voting machines be certified by the state. But thanks to Cox's agreement with Diebold, the company was essentially allowed to certify itself." "[Diebold employees] were told not to talk to county personnel about it. ... It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level." "Diebold employees altered software in some 5,000 machines in DeKalb and Fulton counties --- the state's largest Democratic strongholds. To avoid detection, [Diebold team members] entered warehouses early in the morning ... went in at 7:30AM and were out by 11. There was a universal key to unlock the machines." "The patch comes on a memory card that is inserted into a machine. Eventually, all the memory cards end up on a server that tablulates the votes --- where [one] can ... alter the outcome of an election." "[A] program [can say] 'I want my candiate to stay ahead by three or four percent or whatever. Those programs can include a built-in delete that erases itself after it's done." "It is impossible to know whether the machines were rigged to alter the election in Georgia. Diebold's machines provided no paper trail, making a recount impossible. But the tally in Georgia that November [2002] surprised even the most seasoned political observers. Six days before the vote, polls showed Sen. Max Cleland, a decorated war veteran and Democratic incumbent, leading his Republican opponent Saxby Chambliss --- darling of the Christian Coalition --- by five percentage points. In the governor's race, Democrat Roy Barnes was running a decisive ELEVEN POINTS ahead of Republican Sonny Perdue. But on Election Day, Chambliss won with fifty-three percent of the vote and Perdue won with fifty-one percent." "Diebold insists that the patch was installed 'with the approval and oversight of the state.' But after the election, the Georgia secretary of state's office submitted a 'punch list' to Bob Urosevich [president of Diebold election systems] of 'issues and concerns related to the statewide voting system that we would like Diebold to address.' ... In a separate letter, Secretary Cox asked Urosevich about Diebold's use of substitute memory cards and defective equipment as well as widespread problems that caused machines to freeze up and improperly record votes. The state threatened to delay further payments to Diebold until 'these punch list items will be corrected and completed." "Diebold's response has not been made public --- but its machines remain in place for Georgia's election this fall [Nov 2006]." In the words of a former contractor working on Diebold's installation of voting machines in Georgia, "What I saw was basically a corporate takeover of our voting system." The following quote comes from reference <1> : "As in Georgia, officials [in Maryland] granted Diebold control over much of the state's election systems during the 2002 midterm elections." "(In the interests of disclosure my sister [that is, the sister of Robert Kennedy Jr.] was a candidate for governor that year and lost by a margin consistent with pre-election polls.)" "On Election Night, when [a former consultant for Diebold] accompanied Diebold president Bob Urosevich and marketing director Mark Radke to the tabulation center in Montgomery County where the votes would be added up, he was stunned to find the room empty. 'Not a single Maryland election official was there to retrieve the memory cards', he recalls. As cards containing every vote in the county began arriving in canvas bags, the Diebold executives plugged them into a group of touch-screen tabulators linked into a central server, which was also controlled by a Diebold employee." " 'It would have been very easy for any one of us to take a contaminated card out of our pocket, put it into the system, and download some malicious code that would then end up in the server, impacting every other vote that went in, before and after', said [the Diebold ex-consultant]. 'We had absolute control of the tabulations. We could have fixed the election if we wanted. We had access, and that's all you need. I can honestly say that every election I saw with Diebold in charge was compromised --- if not in the count, at least in the security."
[A NOTE from the assembler of this page: "After the election, Maryland planned to install Diebold's 'AccuVote-TS' electronic machines across the entire state -- until four computer scientists at Johns Hopkins and Rice universities released an analysis of the company's software source code in July 2003." "'This voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts', the scientists concluded. It was, in fact, 'unsuitable for use in a general election'." "'With electronic machines, you can commit wholesale fraud with a single alteration of software', says Avi Rubin, a computer-science professor at Johns Hopkins who has received $7.5 million from the National Science Foundation to study electronic voting. 'There are a million little tricks when you build software that allow you to do whatever you want. If you know the precinct demographics, the machine can be programmed to recognize its precinct and strategically flip votes in elections that are several years in the future. No one will know it happened." "In response to the study, Maryland commissioned two additional reports on Diebold's equipment. The first was conducted by Science Applications International Corporation [SAIC] --- a company that, along with Diebold was part of an industry group that promotes electronic voting machines. SAIC conceded that Diebold's machines were 'at high risk of compromise' --- but concluded that the state's 'procedural controls and general voting environment reduce or eliminate many of the vulnerabilities identified in the Rubin report.' " "Despite the lack of any real 'procedural controls' during the 2002 election, Gov. Robert Ehrlich gave the state election board the go-ahead to pay $55.6 million for Diebold's AccuVote-TS system." "The other analysis, commissioned by the Maryland legislature, was a practical test of the systems by RABA Technologies, a consulting firm experienced in both defense and intelligence work for the federal government." "Computer scientists hired by RABA to hack into six of Diebold's machines discovered a major flaw: The company had built what are known as 'back doors' into the software that could enable a hacker to hide an unauthorized and malicious code in the system." "William Arbaugh, of the University of Maryland, gave the Diebold system an 'F' with 'the possibility of raising it to a 'C' with extra credit --- that is, if they follow the recommendations we gave them.' " "But according to recent e-mails obtained by Rolling Stone [magazine], Diebold not only failed to follow up on most of the recommendations, it worked to cover them up." " Michael Werheimer, who led the RABA study, now serves as an assistant deputy director in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence." " 'We made numerous recommendations that would have required Diebold to fix these issues,' he writes in one e-mail, 'but were rebuffed by the argument that the machines were physically protected and could not be altered by someone outside the established chain of custody.' "
[A NOTE from the assembler of this page: "In another e-mail, Werheimer says that Diebold and state officials worked to downplay his team's dim assessment. 'We spent hours dealing with Diebold lobbyists and election officials who sought to minimize our impact,' he recalls. 'The results were risk-managed in favor of expediency and potential catastrophe.' " "During the 2004 presidential election, with Diebold machines in place across the state [of Maryland], things began to go wrong from the very start. A month before the vote, an abandoned Diebold machine was discovered in a bar in Baltimore. 'What's really worrisome', says [an ex-Diebold-consultant],'is that someone could get hold of all the technology --- for manipulation --- if they knew the inner workings of just one machine.' " "Election Day was a complete disaster. 'Countless numbers of machines were down because of what appeared to be flaws in Diebold's system,' says [the ex-Diebold-consultant], who was part of a crew of roving technicians charged with making sure that the polls were up and running. 'Memory cards overloading, machines freezing up, poll workers afraid to turn them on or off for rear of losing votes.' " "Then after the polls closed, Diebold technicians who showed up to collect the memory cards containing the votes found that many were missing. 'The machines are gone,' one janitor told [the ex-Diebold-consultant] --- picked up, apparently, by the vendor who had delivered them in the first place. 'There was major chaos because there were so many cards missing,' [the ex-Diebold-consultant] said." More on Maryland from reference <1> : ".. touch screen technology continues to create chaos at the polls. On September 12th [2006? or 2005?], in Maryland's first all-electronic election, voters were turned away from the polls because election officials had failed to distribute the electronic access cards needed to operate Diebold machines. By the time the cards were found on a warehouse shelf and delivered to every precinct, untold numbers of voters had lost the chance to cast ballots." From reference <1> : " "ES&S (Election Systems and Software) in an earlier corporate incarnation was chaired by Chuck Hagel who in 1996 became the first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Nebraska in twenty-four years --- winning a close race in which eighty-five percent of the votes were tallied by his former company." The following quote comes from reference <1> : "In Ohio, --- where dirty tricks may have cost John Kerry the presidency --- a government report uncovered large and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in Cuyahoga County." In the 2004 national election --- "In Ohio, jammed and inoperable machines were reported throughout Toledo. In heavily Democratic areas of Youngstown, nearly 100 voters pushed 'Kerry' and watched 'Bush' light up. At least twenty machines had to be recalibrated in the middle of the voting process for flipping Kerry votes to Bush. Similar 'vote hopping' was reported by voters in other states."
[A HUMOROUS ASIDE : If you have trouble playing this video with your default wmv-file-player by simply clicking on the link, right-click on the link and choose to save the link-target to your local disk. Then play the wmv-file with a wmv-player of your choice.] "The widespread glitches didn't deter Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell --- who also chaired Bush's re-election comapign in Ohio --- from cutting a deal in 2005 that would have guaranteed Diebold a virtual monopoly on vote counting in the state." "Local election officials alleged that the deal, which came only a few months after Blackwell bought nearly $10,000 in Diebold stock, was a violation of state rules requiring a fair and competitive bidding process. Facing a lawsuit, Blackwell agreed to allow other companies to provide machines as well." "This November [2006], voters in forty-seven [Ohio] counties will cast their ballots on Diebold machines --- in a pivotal election in which Blackwell is running as the Republican candidate for governor." [Sounds like Nebraska and Chuck Hagel.] The following quote comes from reference <1> : "In Tarrant Count, Texas, [in early 2006, in primaries] electronic voting machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast." More on Texas from reference <1> : "Questions also arose in Texas in 2004. William Singer, an 'election programmer' in Tarrant County, wrote the secretary of state's office after the vote to report that ES&S pressured officials to install unapproved software during the presidential primaries." " 'What I was expected to do in order to 'pull off' an election,' Singer wrote, 'was far beyond the kind of practices that I believe should be standard and accepted in the election industry.' " "The company denies the charge, but in an e-mail this month [in 2006], Singer elaborated that ES&S employees had pushed local election officials to pressure the secretary of state to accept 'a software change at such a last minute there would be no choice, and effectively avoid certification.' " "Despite such reports, Texas continues to rely on ES&S. In primaries held in Jefferson County earlier this year [2006], electronic votes had to be recounted after error messages prevented workers from completing their tabulations." "In April, with early voting in local elections only a week away, officials across the state were still waiting to receive the programming from ES&S needed to test the machines for accuracy." "Calling the situation 'completely unacceptable and disturbing', Texas director of elections Ann McGeehan authorized local officials to create 'emergency paper ballots' as a backup." " 'We regret the unacceptable position that many political subdivisions are in due to poor performance by their contracted vendor,' McGeegan added." Reports on voting 'events' in MULTIPLE-STATES : Here is a PDF file that shows 51 counties in which there was evidence of mis-counts of the vote-swiching type --- between 2002 and 2006. The locations are indicated on a map of the United States. And a bibliography of newpaper reports of the occurences follows the map. In two (2) of the counties, the vote gathering and counting was done by Diebold. In one (1) county, the vote gathering and counting was done by Hart InterCivic. In the other 48 counties, the vote gathering-counting was done by ES&S. It seems some serious auditing of ES&S is needed. And if vote-counting-treason is discovered, their contracts should be voided and some executives should be sent to ass-pounding prison. (Why are 'white-collar' criminals never charged --- much less sent to jail --- while a person who steals a loaf of bread to eat is sent to jail for 20 years? At most, in 'white collar' criminal cases, there is a settlement 'out-of-court' with 'no admission of guilt', i.e. immunity --- and the taxpayers or stockholders have to pay any monetary penalties. It's part of the 'American Way' --- embedded in laws enacted by both Republicans and Democrats.) |
Vote Counting -
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A little humor about a very serious matter :
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For your reference, here is a map showing the Republican-Democrat (red-blue) percentages in the U.S. counties --- in shades of purple (gradations between red and blue) --- as determined by the vote counts (in some cases, 'enhanced' by vendors) in the 2004 national presidential election. This map gives the 'shades of gray' within each state --- in contrast to an electoral vote map, in which each entire state would be a solid color, red or blue.
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Page was created 2006 Nov 06.
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