Slashdot Mirror

http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/files/Stonewall_handout.pdf

This was written for the Stonewall Democrats. It includes boilerplate public records text at the end, some examples of dirty stuff seen in public records, examples of screwed-up facilities (with pictures) and more.

This is an example of an after-action report written along these principles:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/sequoia/Maricopa-County-Elections-Report.pdf

I'm doing another right now for Monterey County California for the election of June 3rd '08. Found all sorts of crazy stuff. That should be posted at http://blackboxvoting.org/ in a day or two.

Jim March
Member of the board of directors
Blackboxvoting.org

Based on this spreadsheet, Sutton was a hand-counted precinct, so I fail to see what this has to do with Diebold.

Interestingly, Clinton did far better than the exit poll numbers in the locales which were tallied by LHS from Diebold (now Premier) machines, while Obama won in the municipalities which were counted by hand. The discrepancy is about 5%. You can check this yourself. Here's the database of counting systems Bev Harris collated from information supplied by the Secretary of State of New Hampshire before the primary: http://www.bbvdocs.org/NH/state/Jan-08-votingsystems-NH.txt -- and here you can find the AP vote tallies: http://www.politico.com/nhprimaries/nhmap-popup.html (I'd appreciate a better source than this flash, BTW.)

http://www.bbvdocs.org/dean.pdf

http://www.bbvdocs.org/elder.pdf

There's their criminal records.

Mention of both are extensive in the various online databases of Global/Diebold's internal memos between 1998 and early 2003. Go google:

"Jeffrey dean" diebold ...and you'll get about 350 hits, so this is real well known among people paying attention to this stuff.

To be fair, at the time Diebold bought Global Dean was moved to consultant status, possibly to avoid the Diebold corporate background check. They damned well know about him NOW of course ever since Bev Harris broke the news.

Look, Global was based out of Vancouver BC. Bev and others have gone up there to talk to current and former employees...a LOT appeared to be "coked up" or talked about rampant drug abuse up there. If what we're hearing is anywhere close to accurate, Global acted like the set of a John Belushi movie or something.

Trust me on this: ain't no WAY Diebold will want to publish lists of programmers.

Notice how Diebold talks about source code escrow as the issue in NC? It's a red herring. Diebold does source code escrow in California no problem.

The issue is the programmer names. Major-grade doom involved.

http://www.bbvdocs.org/dean.pdf

http://www.bbvdocs.org/elder.pdf

There's their criminal records.

Mention of both are extensive in the various online databases of Global/Diebold's internal memos between 1998 and early 2003. Go google:

"Jeffrey dean" diebold ...and you'll get about 350 hits, so this is real well known among people paying attention to this stuff.

To be fair, at the time Diebold bought Global Dean was moved to consultant status, possibly to avoid the Diebold corporate background check. They damned well know about him NOW of course ever since Bev Harris broke the news.

Look, Global was based out of Vancouver BC. Bev and others have gone up there to talk to current and former employees...a LOT appeared to be "coked up" or talked about rampant drug abuse up there. If what we're hearing is anywhere close to accurate, Global acted like the set of a John Belushi movie or something.

Trust me on this: ain't no WAY Diebold will want to publish lists of programmers.

Notice how Diebold talks about source code escrow as the issue in NC? It's a red herring. Diebold does source code escrow in California no problem.

The issue is the programmer names. Major-grade doom involved.

I don't fault Diebold for being reluctant to move forward given the language of the statute.

It seems to be clear that the intent was to have the actual source code and not just a copy of the software. Also, it isn't at all clear if that means the underlying platform or just the voting application on top of it, but why take a chance. And really, what would be the point of having access to half of the software stack?

Either the state of North Carolina really doesn't want a windows based voting solution or they are accidentally sending the message that "no closed source solutions need apply".

In either case poor, misunderstood Diebold may have to take their ball and go home. I think we can all agree that given their track record, this is a good thing.

Definately a she, not on meds, has no use for Osama Yo Mama, ain't a commie :).

She has however been an action movie star:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/volusia2.mpg

Drop dead funny, taken from a "dumpster dive session" behind an elections department warehouse in Volusia County FL in which all sorts of real voting records (mainly the critical end-of-day polltapes) had been thrown out. Illegally.

("Poll tapes" are printed on older voting machines on "cash register rolls", they basically spit out about 3ft worth of "I took in 345 votes for Bush, 257 for Kerry" type stuff, keeping a "running tally". They're not as good as a voter verified paper trail, they can be "hacked" at least in Diebold's case, but that's not THAT easy and a cheating election official(s) with limited or no techie background would find it easier to just junk them.)

... A specific testing protocol was provided by Diebold and the California Secretary of State's office.

...negotiations remain on the procedures. Black Box Voting contends that the proposed testing violates California Election Code 19202, which governs the request for voting machine testing formally submitted to the state of California by Black Box Voting on June 16, 2005. Also, Black Box Voting identified areas of bias in the proposed procedures, which would violate normal scientific protocol and cause voters to lack confidence in the results.

Perhaps working with reports from field investigators, concerning problems with Diebold would be a better use of electrons than fobbing off mere assertion as accepted fact.

We could start with this report on the Florida elections and indications of startling Diebold inadequacies and problems, with field-based documentation:
Florida FEC Report (PDF Format)

There are plenty of documents on Diebold any citizen interested in fair, open and free elections would find worth reviewing. More can be found here:
Original Diebold Memos -- FULL SET

It would seem when real sunshine is put on Diebold adn the states using their machiens, it's not all that pretty a sight. Getting the paper trail, the electronic audit trails, and the ability to fully observe (within the state laws governing this) the election processing seem essential to preserving the integrity of our elections.

It is important to differentiate between vote fraud, voter fraud and voter disenfranchisement. Vote fraud occurs during the actual counting and/or certification stages and is what election officials can go to jail for doing. Voter fraud occurs at the polls by individual voters, although they may linked in a social group, and the individual voters could go to jail for this. Disenfranchisement occurs between the intended voter and the polls, cutting off a percentage of the eligible electorate from having their chance to be counted in the voting. The issues with the Diebold machines are mostly vote fraud.

Disenfranchisement might be alledged when insufficient machines are assigned to a polling place with a higher percentage of the opposition party and an overage of machines assigned to polling places where the party in power is favored. This in an of itself is not a Diebold problem. It's state election board problem. Now if what happens is lots of malfunctioning machines appear in the opposition polling place while working ones appear in the polling place where the incumbant is favored, and Diebold had certified all the systems as ready for deployment, then we have to ask what Diebold's involvement and interests were.