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http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00211 .htm

"DELAND, Fla., Nov. 11 - Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters."

- Washington Post Sunday , November 12, 2000 ; Page A22

Yes. Something very strange happened in Volusia County on election night November 2000, the night that first Gore won Florida, then Bush, and then as everybody can so well remember there was a tie.

Something strange indeed. But what exactly? In the above report ( click for full version), written days after the election, hotshot Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank goes on to attribute the strange 16,022 negative vote tally from Volusia's precinct 216 to an apparently innocent cause.

".... faulty 'memory cards' in the machines caused the 16,000-vote disappearance on election night. The glitch was soon fixed," he wrote.

But thanks to recent investigations into Black Box Voting by Washington State writer Bev Harris we now know this explanation is not correct. In fact it is not even in the ballpark.

According to recently discovered internal Diebold Election Systems memos, Global Election Systems' (which was later purchased by Diebold) own technical staff were also stumped by the events in Volusia County/

In Chapter 11 of her new book "Black Box Voting In the 21st Century" released early today in .PDF format at Blackboxvoting.com and here at Scoop Ms Harris observes.

"If you strip away the partisan rancor over the 2000 election, you are left with the undeniable fact that a presidential candidate conceded the election to his opponent based on [results from] a second card that mysteriously appears, subtracts 16,022 votes, then just as mysteriously disappears."

Working in parallel with Ms Harris Scoop has also been inquiring into the events on election night in Volusia county. Much of the material that follows is similar to that which appears in Chapter 11 of her book.

The starting point in this shocking discovery about election 2000 came in a series of internal Diebold ES technical support memos.

The following is an abbreviated version of the exchange concerning the peculiar events in Volusia county. For the purposes of research the exchange is included in full as an Appendix to this report (APPENDIX TWO). The discussion took place in early 2001 as an audit was underway in Volusia county into the events.

**********

(NOTE: The names below each extract link to the full text of the emails in the appendices below.)

I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb".

Lana Hires - Volusia County Florida - January 17, 2001 8:07 AM

My understanding is that the card was not corrupt after (or before) upload. They fixed the problem by clearing the precinct and re-uploading the same card. So neither of these explainations washes. That's not to say I have any idea what actually happened, its just not either of those...

The problem is its going to be very hard to collect enough data to really know what happened. The card isn't corrupt so we can't post-mortem it (its not mort).

Ken Clark - Diebold ES R&D Manager - Ja

Starvation in the US. There are reasons other than global scarcity, and civil war.

Keep telling yourself that.

And 70% of the people in this country STILL think that Saddam played some part in 9/11. What was your point again?

In 2002 Diebold accquired Global Election Systems.

* = CEO is Bob Urosevich, who founded ES&S.

http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html#discl osure

Sequoia uses the same hardware.

Sequoia Voting Systems Inc.
Ownership: Eighty-five percent De La Rue, 15 percent Jefferson Smurfit Group; Smurfs are in the process of selling to Madison Dearborn Partners of Chicago.

* = Sequoia bought Business Records Corporation's optical scan vote tabulation business as part of a 1997 Dept. of Justice anti-trust action with ES&S ? under a licensing agreement, both companies used the same equipment and software.

OK, I goofed with respect to Sequoia. I think my confusion was based on Diebold/Sequoia using the same hardware. My apologies to anybody at either the McCarthy Group companies or Sequoia who find their public association embarrassing.

With respect to the shared hardware, I recommend to Sequoia that they hire some reasonably honest second or third year EE and CS students to design and build some voting machines whose accuracy might be considered believable. Recording and counting votes honestly is NOT rocket science.

They might find it profitable to go Open Source; as they might be able to both differentiate their product and charge premium prices for a product whose honesty and accuracy nobody argues about, assuming that there is a market for honest voting machines and vote tabulation equipment.

yeah, right

The NZ independant news site scoop.co.nz has them here.

Speaking of fascist minds, huh?

Bush is the single most fascist person in charge of a government in the world at this moment, you should know. He was second in running before Sadam was ousted. Not to point out a pebble in one's eye, when you have a log in your own:

Fascism:
1. often Fascism
1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
2. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.

Fascist: an adherent of fascism or other right-wing authoritarian views

This is the president who is a member of a group of secular fundamentalist hypocrite idiots who wish for nothing more than to take our freedoms, and to suppresses those who do not share their views. Exhibit A: Anti-Terrorism Acts that are overly broad and apply to non-terrorists.

Bush, and his cabinet ignored CIA intelligence that indicated Iraq was not in possession of nuclear or other material, was not seeking any, and was not in the process of disseminating what they didn't have to terrorists. Exhibit B: Here, Here, Here, and everywhere else, damnit. If only you would pull your head out of your ass, you could see it; however, I wouldn't expect that from a Bush apologist.

Nobody agreed that he was in material breech. NOBODY. We still haven't found one indicator of anything related to WMDs of any kind, and I sincerely doubt we ever will. The funny thing is the even the Great United States violates tons and tons of UN resolutions, and is in the top ten violators--right behind Morocco (#3), Turkey (#2), and Israel (#1)--yet we haven't attacked any of these other countries, or stopped violating UN resolutions, ourselves.

I'm not Saddams biggest fan (no fan of him at all, in fact), but you'll have to admit this all looks like the US is a real asshole of a big-brother giving the rest of the world noogies, dutch rubs, titty-twisters, purple-nurples, etc. and only getting rewarded for their actions--if you stick your head up and pay attention to what's going on. I'm glad that Saddam is gone, and that his sons are dead. They were a menace to the people of Iraq, however, all indicators say they were not a direct threat to the people of the United States.

Now, the republicans want to pass laws that make the 10 commandments, and pledge saying mandatory in schools. They hold that the US was created with christian morals, and religion in mind, when in fact, it was not, and when anyone tries to show them the truth, they do the equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and yell "I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALALA!!!" If this sort of behavior is not belligerent nationalism, I don't know what is. And, as Bushie says, if you're not against it, you're for it. If he allows these sorts of laws pass, chalk another one up. He's almost completed every criteria to be a fascist by definition. All he needs to do is convince Congress to eliminate the term limits, and give him all the power, and he will qualify across the board.

Furthermore, I state that you, yourself are a fascist, and therefore your ideas are full of shit. "frogs and krauts", indeed. belligerent nationalism and racism. Check.

It's no wonder the rest of the world won't take Americans seriously, with people like you running about--flapping their gums.

define "elected"...
how to rig an election in the United States

So, here is once case where a Microsoft database is essential for crooked governments

Internal Memos: Diebold Doing End-Runs Around Certification

Here is a link to the memos thaty actually works

It seems to me that it's irrelevent whether the machines run operating systems by Microsoft, IBM, or Uncle Tom Cobley.

It seems to me that it's irrelevent that the software has security flaws.

These issues are distractions. There's a very good probability on the evidence that I can see that these issues just divert your attention from the probability that the systems are working as their makers intend - to deliver election results in favour of the party they, the makers, support.

I mean, let's face it, if you were going to set out to rig election in this electronic age, how would you do it? You'd take control of the vote collecting and counting process. That's what Diebold have effectively done. This is an issue at the very heart of democracy itself: quis custodiet ipsos voting machines?

How to hack an election 1.12: Diebold tries to silence incriminating evidence : Diebold, maker of proven-to-be hackable voting systems, plays global whack-a-mole, in effort to scare ISP's into taking down websites with incriminating material. They used the DCMA to shut down BlackBoxVoting.org.

But the incriminating data just keeps popping back up on the Net, and Gun-and-Voting rights activist Jim March calls the bluff and challenges Diebold "Diebold: You are cordially invited to bite me. Bring it on. Make my day.. March has created a legal strategy/toolkit for voting rights activists who want to fight Diebold, a company which has knowingly - for 10 years - sold security-compromised voting technology, and whose CEO, an aggressive Republican fundraiser, has said he is he is committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year. In internal memos published by Scoop, Diebold's officials admit that their voting records database is (and has been for a long time) hackable ( [anyone can] access the GEMS Access database and alter the Audit log without entering a password ) but that this isn't necessarily a problem because It has a lot to do with perception. Of course everyone knows perception is reality. For background to this story, see my summary of Mefi posts on the Voting Fraud story, from this thread. Diebold's funky voting systems are in the process of being Certified, in Maryland and elsewhere, by SAIC, a company convicted of major frauds within the last decade and which has extensive ties to the Bush Administration, the CIA, and which proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients., and owns Network Solutions, Inc. SAIC has not, it seems, noticed the GEMS database story (see main link). If Diebold systems win certification, we can expect an awful lot of This sort of thing.

Computer security expert Dr. Rebecca Mercuri has some pointed analysis on the subject.

You can join the effort to demand truly secure voting systems at VerifiedVoting.Org

How to hack an election 1.12: Diebold tries to silence incriminating evidence : Diebold, maker of proven-to-be hackable voting systems, plays global whack-a-mole, in effort to scare ISP's into taking down websites with incriminating material. They used the DCMA to shut down BlackBoxVoting.org.

But the incriminating data just keeps popping back up on the Net, and Gun-and-Voting rights activist Jim March calls the bluff and challenges Diebold "Diebold: You are cordially invited to bite me. Bring it on. Make my day.. March has created a legal strategy/toolkit for voting rights activists who want to fight Diebold, a company which has knowingly - for 10 years - sold security-compromised voting technology, and whose CEO, an aggressive Republican fundraiser, has said he is he is committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year. In internal memos published by Scoop, Diebold's officials admit that their voting records database is (and has been for a long time) hackable ( [anyone can] access the GEMS Access database and alter the Audit log without entering a password ) but that this isn't necessarily a problem because It has a lot to do with perception. Of course everyone knows perception is reality. For background to this story, see my summary of Mefi posts on the Voting Fraud story, from this thread. Diebold's funky voting systems are in the process of being Certified, in Maryland and elsewhere, by SAIC, a company convicted of major frauds within the last decade and which has extensive ties to the Bush Administration, the CIA, and which proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients., and owns Network Solutions, Inc. SAIC has not, it seems, noticed the GEMS database story (see main link). If Diebold systems win certification, we can expect an awful lot of This sort of thing.

Computer security expert Dr. Rebecca Mercuri has some pointed analysis on the subject.

You can join the effort to demand truly secure voting systems at VerifiedVoting.Org

How to hack an election 1.12: Diebold tries to silence incriminating evidence : Diebold, maker of proven-to-be hackable voting systems, plays global whack-a-mole, in effort to scare ISP's into taking down websites with incriminating material. They used the DCMA to shut down BlackBoxVoting.org.

But the incriminating data just keeps popping back up on the Net, and Gun-and-Voting rights activist Jim March calls the bluff and challenges Diebold "Diebold: You are cordially invited to bite me. Bring it on. Make my day.. March has created a legal strategy/toolkit for voting rights activists who want to fight Diebold, a company which has knowingly - for 10 years - sold security-compromised voting technology, and whose CEO, an aggressive Republican fundraiser, has said he is he is committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year. In internal memos published by Scoop, Diebold's officials admit that their voting records database is (and has been for a long time) hackable ( [anyone can] access the GEMS Access database and alter the Audit log without entering a password ) but that this isn't necessarily a problem because It has a lot to do with perception. Of course everyone knows perception is reality. For background to this story, see my summary of Mefi posts on the Voting Fraud story, from this thread. Diebold's funky voting systems are in the process of being Certified, in Maryland and elsewhere, by SAIC, a company convicted of major frauds within the last decade and which has extensive ties to the Bush Administration, the CIA, and which proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients., and owns Network Solutions, Inc. SAIC has not, it seems, noticed the GEMS database story (see main link). If Diebold systems win certification, we can expect an awful lot of This sort of thing.

Computer security expert Dr. Rebecca Mercuri has some pointed analysis on the subject.

You can join the effort to demand truly secure voting systems at VerifiedVoting.Org

"in August, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, is a major fundraiser for President Bush. In a letter to fellow Republicans, O'Dell said that he was "COMMITTED TO HELPING OHIO DELIVER ITS ELECTORAL VOTES TO THE PRESIDENT NEXT YEAR."

The internal memos from Diebold (they get referred to from Salon) show a shockingly cavalier chief engineer 'managing' the security concerns of various clients, steadily resisting the idea of even password protecting the .mdb file (.mdb file!?!) so that just anyone couldn't overwrite audit logs. Nothing overtly political in those memos, though, thank God.

Still -- how does it affect the credibility of any (new, or old) voting system for the people overseeing it to be acknowledged partisans? Imagine a Florida 2000 in which there were no physical records, and in which the systems that counted votes were frighteningly insecure and had been programmed by a company headed by a partisan figure. We already had more than enough partisan elements there -- the brother who happens to be governor, the Supreme Court justice who has a wife on Bush's transition team, the different standards for counting absentee ballots in different counties, and so on.

The thing about those memos is, they really show the states to be one more relatively uninformed client of an IT company. They'll buy the FUD of the Diebold person as long as he sounds assured enough, you know? Even when it comes to something as obvious as "I double-clicked the file of votes and it opened with no password, is that bad?" Which is all the more reason to be sure you're dealing with someone who has no conflict of interest, right?

One of the news agencies that is all over this is scoop although I don't know if you could call scoop mass media. It basically a one-man show based out of a garden shed in Wellington, New Zealand

Please take a look at this and this and then write your congress creatures and tell them to support HR 2239.

They have the employee handbook for the Company here

these people think so.

In several races with electronic voting machines, there were noticeable differences between pre-election polls and the actual election results. In Georgia, both Roy Barnes and Max Cleland led their opponents until the actual election.

Other Dieboldalical results (from a source found via Google) are here.

Chuck Hagel's opponent wanted a hand-recount, but by the terms of the signed contract, it was illegal for government election workers to review the votes.

Short form: what you describe happened, and you didn't even notice. (Final tinfoil hat moment - did we mention that there was a file named "rob-georgia" containing patches not tested by the state on the Diebold FTP site?)

In several races with electronic voting machines, there were noticeable differences between pre-election polls and the actual election results. In Georgia, both Roy Barnes and Max Cleland led their opponents until the actual election.

Other Dieboldalical results (from a source found via Google) are here.

Chuck Hagel's opponent wanted a hand-recount, but by the terms of the signed contract, it was illegal for government election workers to review the votes.

Short form: what you describe happened, and you didn't even notice. (Final tinfoil hat moment - did we mention that there was a file named "rob-georgia" containing patches not tested by the state on the Diebold FTP site?)

http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup

According to this piece (which seems to be all over the placethe logging, auditing and general security of the software is incredibly suspicious.

Well, it's not a matter of blaming it on Republicans, but on a group of very far-right types who not only are trying to hijack the Republican party, but are trying to silence people (like Bev Harris) who report on this.

Reason Magazine, by no means a liberal nor hysterical magazine, seems to have no compunctions about identifying this as a problem with roots in the right.

Everyone should take a look at Black Box Voting which details many of the issues with these proprietary voting machines and the inherent security and privacy risks. Not to mention the lack of accountability in the process.

For months the Diebold FTP sites which distribute updates to the GEMS voting software were open to anonymous access. This software has been downloaded and reviewed by Bev Harris. Also here. If you can find the space and bandwidth, plese mirror these files for further analysis.

Everyone should take a look at Black Box Voting which details many of the issues with these proprietary voting machines and the inherent security and privacy risks. Not to mention the lack of accountability in the process.

For months the Diebold FTP sites which distribute updates to the GEMS voting software were open to anonymous access. This software has been downloaded and reviewed by Bev Harris. Also here. If you can find the space and bandwidth, plese mirror these files for further analysis.

make certain that people have tangible ballots, that can be checked after.

make certain that the tangible vote is turned into an electronic vote in a way that is visible to the actual individual voter

( here we have ballot-cards that people "X", and put into slip-covers, and then hand them to the volunteers for sliding into the electronic counters .. it wouldn't cost much to change the counter so that it
a) had an only-narrowly-visible
( "polarizer", as-in polarizing the direction it can be seen-from, security-screen over the display ) display of the votes just cast, so that any tampered "counter" machine would have-to display what just got cast, but record differently, which makes it trickier, or if it malfunctioned, this could be reported by the person who just had their vote sabotaged
b) was made of discrete components ( including battery-backup, and redundancy ), and had clear sides ( slot where the vote-card was sucked through would be opaque, storage-pile of cast vote-cards was opaque, electronics was clear, no microprocessors, no program-code, all hardwired ), so that "different looking ones" would get flagged by anyone who noticed 'em, and so that no software trickery would be doable in them ( chip IDs visible, if any chips )
c) was able to correctly scan vote-cards no matter how they were entered, top-up, rotated, whatever

make certain that the names are visibly associated with the party of the candidate, for people who cannot remember names

make certain that the names are randomized so that no-one gets the 9% boost of having their name first on all the ballots ( .. article I saw somewheres in the last few days, re, I think, Bush and some place in California )

make certain that test-ballots are run-through at intervals ( not fixed intervals, I want cheat-logic jammed ), and this done with the "polarizer" screens removed, for all to see whether it worked correctly or not, have one test-ballot for each candidate on the ballot, per machine, so as to not swing things one way or another

make certain that all software that does have to be run be open-source so it can be trusted by the population being controlled by the results of the election ( example of already used "leverageware" .. engineered to prevent integrity from contaminating the voting "results" is Here. PLEASE Read!! )

make certain that no machine the system is dependent on can be infested by millions of worms, viruses, adware, sleazeware, etc. have: it all ( that needs an OS ) run on OpenBSD.

many eyes, "bugs" eradicated must be permanently in its design, not a bandaid slapped atop the system's surface somewheres, to look good...

having the counting done by volunteers, rather than by auto-counters, means more chance for fatigue or politics to interfere, and I trust the statistic that the vast majority of incidents in things like airplanes, trains, etc. is due to Human Error, so I'd prefer having a system that anyone who wanted to check the design of, could, and have it be As Simple As Possible, But No Simpler, and engineered to eradicate the significantest distorter...
... just a preference, if it's Germany, probably people'd be civil enough to have volunteers counting 'em work, but The Referendum, that happened awhile back here in Canada, had many places ignoring any ballots that didn't give the vote that the counters wanted ( gangs are gangs, no matter whether they're underground, organized-crime, corporate, or official: action speaks true ), and no I'm not getting into which side stomped-out the others' ballots, or if it was done by both sides, I'd prefer to see actual evidence before getting into that shoving-match+idiocy.
... from what I saw of the Florida ballot-stuff, I'd not trust ANYONE on the North American continent to count ballots correct

I have followed your advice and stuck a set of links to the real oil at the top of the page on my Scoop blog/magazine/whatever.

...You have a point though.. and I am under instructions to improve the design and look of this page. In my defence it is the FLAGRANT USE OF CAPITALS when they are inapropriate that is SYMPTOMATIC of the geocities brigade... not the use of capitals per se. In our case we use capitals, small capitals, to denote outside links and stories... I think that stylistically this is not bad. And before you start pushing the P button too hard. The fact is that unless websites like ours had given this story a run - you would not have been discussing this here and now. In fact you would still be paying millions of dollars to these space cowboys to provide you with crap software that probably hasn't been counting your votes correctly. Many of the holes in the software we have found are old... possibly more than a decade old... it is not just the DRE's that have problems. And for those seeking a quick link to the real oil it is here.. Bev Harris: Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines Bev Harris: Electronic Voting Machines Blasted by Scientists, Hacked by Author Bev Harris's Latest - Diebold Rebuttals Don't Stand Up & Sludge Report #154 - Bigger Than Watergate!

...You have a point though.. and I am under instructions to improve the design and look of this page. In my defence it is the FLAGRANT USE OF CAPITALS when they are inapropriate that is SYMPTOMATIC of the geocities brigade... not the use of capitals per se. In our case we use capitals, small capitals, to denote outside links and stories... I think that stylistically this is not bad. And before you start pushing the P button too hard. The fact is that unless websites like ours had given this story a run - you would not have been discussing this here and now. In fact you would still be paying millions of dollars to these space cowboys to provide you with crap software that probably hasn't been counting your votes correctly. Many of the holes in the software we have found are old... possibly more than a decade old... it is not just the DRE's that have problems. And for those seeking a quick link to the real oil it is here.. Bev Harris: Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines Bev Harris: Electronic Voting Machines Blasted by Scientists, Hacked by Author Bev Harris's Latest - Diebold Rebuttals Don't Stand Up & Sludge Report #154 - Bigger Than Watergate!

...You have a point though.. and I am under instructions to improve the design and look of this page. In my defence it is the FLAGRANT USE OF CAPITALS when they are inapropriate that is SYMPTOMATIC of the geocities brigade... not the use of capitals per se. In our case we use capitals, small capitals, to denote outside links and stories... I think that stylistically this is not bad. And before you start pushing the P button too hard. The fact is that unless websites like ours had given this story a run - you would not have been discussing this here and now. In fact you would still be paying millions of dollars to these space cowboys to provide you with crap software that probably hasn't been counting your votes correctly. Many of the holes in the software we have found are old... possibly more than a decade old... it is not just the DRE's that have problems. And for those seeking a quick link to the real oil it is here.. Bev Harris: Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines Bev Harris: Electronic Voting Machines Blasted by Scientists, Hacked by Author Bev Harris's Latest - Diebold Rebuttals Don't Stand Up & Sludge Report #154 - Bigger Than Watergate!

...You have a point though.. and I am under instructions to improve the design and look of this page. In my defence it is the FLAGRANT USE OF CAPITALS when they are inapropriate that is SYMPTOMATIC of the geocities brigade... not the use of capitals per se. In our case we use capitals, small capitals, to denote outside links and stories... I think that stylistically this is not bad. And before you start pushing the P button too hard. The fact is that unless websites like ours had given this story a run - you would not have been discussing this here and now. In fact you would still be paying millions of dollars to these space cowboys to provide you with crap software that probably hasn't been counting your votes correctly. Many of the holes in the software we have found are old... possibly more than a decade old... it is not just the DRE's that have problems. And for those seeking a quick link to the real oil it is here.. Bev Harris: Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines Bev Harris: Electronic Voting Machines Blasted by Scientists, Hacked by Author Bev Harris's Latest - Diebold Rebuttals Don't Stand Up & Sludge Report #154 - Bigger Than Watergate!

...You have a point though.. and I am under instructions to improve the design and look of this page. In my defence it is the FLAGRANT USE OF CAPITALS when they are inapropriate that is SYMPTOMATIC of the geocities brigade... not the use of capitals per se. In our case we use capitals, small capitals, to denote outside links and stories... I think that stylistically this is not bad. And before you start pushing the P button too hard. The fact is that unless websites like ours had given this story a run - you would not have been discussing this here and now. In fact you would still be paying millions of dollars to these space cowboys to provide you with crap software that probably hasn't been counting your votes correctly. Many of the holes in the software we have found are old... possibly more than a decade old... it is not just the DRE's that have problems. And for those seeking a quick link to the real oil it is here.. Bev Harris: Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines Bev Harris: Electronic Voting Machines Blasted by Scientists, Hacked by Author Bev Harris's Latest - Diebold Rebuttals Don't Stand Up & Sludge Report #154 - Bigger Than Watergate!

This particular bit of secret source is of course no longer particularly secret. See... A Very American Coup... Here at Scoop where we broke this story we are seeking to get the word out about this page which will carry our ongoing work on the subject. Please have a squizz. And if you look carefully you will find the link to where the secret source remains online and downloadable... Finally... online media buffs Check out our appeal to the online independent media related to this story.

This particular bit of secret source is of course no longer particularly secret. See... A Very American Coup... Here at Scoop where we broke this story we are seeking to get the word out about this page which will carry our ongoing work on the subject. Please have a squizz. And if you look carefully you will find the link to where the secret source remains online and downloadable... Finally... online media buffs Check out our appeal to the online independent media related to this story.

Black Box Voting

The source code for the software used in one voting machine was discovered on the Internet, on an unprotected FTP site belonging to Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems Inc. The software, when compiled and run in tests, showed that it appears to be the code used in the company's AccuVote-TS touch-screen terminals.

This software has been analyzed in detail at Truthout.org: How to Rig an Election in the United States. I think your stomach will start turning just a couple paragraphs in. No, let me start it turning for you: the backend database for this state-of-the-art touch-screen votiong machine is Microsoft Access. But that's only part of the story. Wait until you read about the hidden tables. More details here: How We Discovered The Backdoor. The actual code from the FTP site is here: Original Data.

I don't know about you, but I became a little nauseous reading this.... It's quite the yee-opener.

Some more on "problematic" election results:
Florida Ballots Project

Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

NY TImes: Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say

The most stomach churning thing of all, I think, is the Christian Right connection to Deibold and ES&S.

If you find this stuff credible, spread the word around.

THE REAL SCOOP ON DIEBOLD

Other links:

A VERY AMERICAN COUP
Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
How the system integrity problem was discovered.
The Greatest Cover-Up Of All: Vote Fraud In America

THE REAL SCOOP ON DIEBOLD

Other links:

A VERY AMERICAN COUP
Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
How the system integrity problem was discovered.
The Greatest Cover-Up Of All: Vote Fraud In America

THE REAL SCOOP ON DIEBOLD

Other links:

A VERY AMERICAN COUP
Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
How the system integrity problem was discovered.
The Greatest Cover-Up Of All: Vote Fraud In America

The problem with this "theoretical problem" is that once it happens in most peoples reality (read: awareness), it will be too late.

It may have already happened

This mean that people could come up with back door or understand certain keypresses to activate easter egg and other undesirable outcomes..

It is highly unlikely that an "easter egg" will be hidden in an open source voting system. It would be too easy for the coder to be caught. Having the source code available for review and testing increases the likelyhood that security flaws, whether resulting from coding errors, improper algorythms, or intentional backdoors, will be found and corrected before the election systems are used.

The more popular something is, the more it will be hacked.

This is no argument at all. The closed source voting systems used in the United States in recent elections are based on Microsoft Windows, and have likely been used to alter election results. It seems that you are right about this, it would be better to use "unpopular" Open Source software than popular closed source software in election machinery.

And does having source code in front of our eye really tell us that the voting system is legitimate?

No, not necessarily, but I'd trust a system that can be examined before I'd trust a system that cannot.

Do most of one billions people in India know to read source code or understand how it work?

For Open Source to protect the voting system, it is unecessary for all (or even most) of the voters to understand the source code. It is only necessary that a number persons from all sides of the political spectrum be able to understand the source. Transparency in a voting system will prevent any one interest group from being able to alter the results as no one interest group will be able to control (or identify) all of the potential auditors.

Again I think not, so open source is not too useful for checking legitimacy unless you are technical and understand to read source codes...

Only a moron (or a tool) would make the argument that if a single individual person does not understand the source code, then the source code is not legitimate.

To the best of my knowledge, Bev Harris was the first journalist to get involved, and she brought the story to scoop. See http://www.blackboxvoting.com

Scoop's been involved in this one since about January, but weren't the first to get hold of the files.

Scoop's got a feature page linking to all the updates on the story at href="http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usa coup

It bothers me the way the 'mainstream' media are ignoring the political ramifications of this discovery, and have painted it as simply a case of poor software design. These voting machines have been produced by companies run by hard right politicians, and look like they are probably designed for the purpose of manipulating votes. Combined with the well documented oddities in the past two election results, it appears that they have been rather successful to date. Bush's government has provided massive funding for the purchase of these voting machines by the states, and has removed legal requirements for any sort of paper trail. Unless this is taken seriously, american democracy is dead.

Another bunch of guys who cobbled together a report on Diebold's laughable voting machines is available here, complete with plenty of screen shots.

Schwab

This is the same software that was actually used in the 2002 Georgia elections.

With suggestions, post Florida 2000, to further expand the roll of electronic voting in the next presidential election, this could be an issue of some concern. You can download the source code ('borrowed' from an ftp server left accidentally open by Diebold) and decide for yourself.

That does seem like an oddball requirement.
There was an earlier /. article where
this site: was mentioned. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

???

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065 .htm

This is your worst nightmare come true!

I am afraid that sentiments like yours mask a great deal of indiferrence and intellectual laziness by the pretense of a realistic and 'no-nonsense' attitude.

It is a far-cry from the blanket assertion:

Can any online voting system be hacked? Yes.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/
Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines

It is irresponsible, derelict and probably mendacious of anyone advocating the adoption of newer vote collection technologies not to insist on addressing these specific allegations and their evidence. Any proposal which is advanced without a specific redress of these concerns should be considered suspect in motive. Ignorance of the basic issue - and its gravity - is not a possibility.

I am afraid that sentiments like yours mask a great deal of indiferrence and intellectual laziness by the pretense of a realistic and 'no-nonsense' attitude.

It is a far-cry from the blanket assertion:

Can any online voting system be hacked? Yes.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/
Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program
Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines

It is irresponsible, derelict and probably mendacious of anyone advocating the adoption of newer vote collection technologies not to insist on addressing these specific allegations and their evidence. Any proposal which is advanced without a specific redress of these concerns should be considered suspect in motive. Ignorance of the basic issue - and its gravity - is not a possibility.

Also look at This story and the related pages at The Scoop. The most widely deployed system in the US is based on MS Access (!?!), with NO controls for cryptographic storage, trasport, data integrity and/or non-repudiation.

Baaaa, Baaaa! Computers Better! Paper Worse! It's mere superstition by the Sheep-people.