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This is not about a dishonest paranoid company covering up their rigged machines. The problem comes from the top. Look to your electoral system and who controls it, because you don't!

http://votescam.com/

Note also that the machines were used after a closed door meeting of the county clerk's supervisors..

Furthermore, it is emerging that the version of Windows CE used by Diebold is both heavily customized and full of dynamically loaded libraries. As a result, there are strong grounds for the conclusion that the operating system is not unmodified commercial off the shelf software (COTS), and that with this extensive use of dynamic linkage, we cannot even tell if the system being run on a particular voting machine resembles the system that was disclosed in the configuration documents submitted with this system when it went through the FEC/NASED approval process. http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.h tml

Diebold and other ATM vendors say they're "hardening" the installations of Windows they ship with their ATMs by disabling unnecessary services and ports and removing files that support peripherals http://www.computerworld.com/networkingtopics/netw orking/story/0,10801,89119,00.html

Diebold patched the Windows CE operating system in Georgia:"Williams does acknowledge, however, that a month and a half before the November election, he worked with Diebold to apply a patch to the Windows CE operating system. The voting machines run on version 3.0 of Windows CE, he said, and they patched it to correct problems they were having with the system" http://www.votescam.com/Patchelections.php More about how we beat Diebold and the fight for Verified Voting in North Carolina here at http://www.ncvoter.net/
And much thanks owed to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for representing us in this case. http://www.eff.org/

The numbers on the counters are manually recorded, then manually transferred to a central registrar. That's two places with human intervention, and opportunity for error or, more remotely, fraud

There are at least four witnesses to the counting: the deputy returning officer and the poll clerk, who are nominated by the two leading parties, and at least two from the public (who are usually, but not necessarily, agents of two different candidates)

All the totals get printed in the newspapers so the witnesses can check their own poll and anyone can check the sums

Your system does nothing like that. Even where the ballots are counted by hand, all the numbers disappear into Voter News Service, which then reports what it wants. (I don't know what's replaced VNS. I understand it was dissolved after it so badly botched the con in 2000. It was a pretty secret society and its successor can be expected to be even more so.)

People want to know sooner than the morning paper

The results don't take effect for months; why the fuck the indecent hurry?

BTW all I get out of the forum anchor is "cyclic link". I guess konqi users are locked out >:(

Sorry to burst your bubble, but right-wing conspiracy theorists were there long before the left wing commies. See votefraud.org and votescam.com for examples. I don't know whether there's really a conspiracy like they believe, but they've been trying to make people aware of these issues since 1992 (votescam) and 1996 (votefraud).

*Very informative* articles by Votescam.com
http://votescam.com/chap1.html (1 of 5 chapters)

Technological excerpts:
"Nothing was said in the press about the secretly programmed computer chips inside the "Shouptronic" Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines in Manchester, the state's largest city.

These 200-pound systems were so easily tampered with that the integrity of the results they gave -- and George Bush was the beneficiary of their tallies -- will forever be in doubt. Consider these points:

1. The "Shouptronic" was purchased directly from a company whose owner, Ransom Shoup, had been twice convicted of vote fraud in Philadelphia.

2. It bristled with telephone lines that made it possible for instructions from the outside to be telephoned into the machine without anyone's dear knowledge.

3. It completely lacked an "audit trail," an independent record that could be checked in case the machine "broke down" or its results were challenged.

4. Roy G. Saltman, of the federal Institute for Computer Sciences and Technology, called the Shouptronic "much more risky" than any other computerized tabulation system because "You are fundamentally required to accept the logical operation of the machine, there is no way to do an independent check."

A year later, in June of 1989, Robert J. Naegele, who had investigated all computerized voting systems for New York State, warned: "The DRE (which the Shouptronic was) is still at least a year and possibly two away from what I would consider a marketable product. The hardware problems are relatively minor, but the software problems are conceptual and really major".

A source close to Gov. Sununu insists that Sununu knew from his perspective as a politician, and his expertise as a computer engineer, that the Shouptronic was prime for tampering."

Are you certain that the recount went to Bush ?

Really ?

Are you sure that people stop counting votes when the lead exceeds the number of votes tallied ? Since these mechanical and electronic vote counting machines count them automatically, do the electoral workers just turn them off after they've hit a certain number of votes? Or maybe they just get their numbers reported back to them from the media and don't even keep the ballots at all ?

How much do you really know about the voting process in the US, and how much is just your blind trust ?

Question everything (Yes, even this).

Are you certain that the recount went to Bush ?

Really ?

Are you sure that people stop counting votes when the lead exceeds the number of votes tallied ? Since these mechanical and electronic vote counting machines count them automatically, do the electoral workers just turn them off after they've hit a certain number of votes? Or maybe they just get their numbers reported back to them from the media and don't even keep the ballots at all ?

How much do you really know about the voting process in the US, and how much is just your blind trust ?

Question everything (Yes, even this).

You can't have a discussion about voting machines without bring up the book Votescam. It's a story where 2 brothers discover vote tampering in Florida about three decades before the 2000 election. Check it out at VOTESCAM. Several chapters of the book are online.

--I'm in georgia and I disagree with you 100%. The vote went FAST, it didn't go WELL. You, me, NO ONE in this state except a small handful of private parties knows how the real vote went. And said private parties have some verifiable ties to some partisan orgs. Early on in the morning there started to be a flurry of voting screwups reported,where the tally you mentioned DIDN'T jibe, in fact where a vote cast for candidate A went to B, something that seems outside the odds of probability given the simple nature of the code involved to register a hit someplace, I mean c'mon! there should have been ZERO mistakes. this is not an indicator of tested code that works as advertised, it's not super computer massive variable crunching we are talking about. This was reported even on drudge,I left at 1 pm to go vote, got back a little after 2 or so, and it was POOFED within that time and was minimalised and barely talked about during the evening, then the story disappeared. It was dismissed. And we had the first mass reversal in the governorship since the civil war, and this is to be taken as a coincidence? And there was a lot of pre and post polling that didn't jibe as well with the 'results". I'm neither a D nor an R,so I don't got a dog in this fight, but I just slap don't believe it. And I'll repeat, you do NOT know the vote went well, whether it was accurate, or whether or not it was rigged anyplace. There's no way to look in an empty ballot box in the morning to see it isn't pre stuffed (traditionally the first person in line in a precinct, I have done this myself). There's no way to look at the full box and see what the count is beyond believing what they say the count is, or to be more accurate, what it spits out at you.

When I did my complaint, they shuffled me off on the phone to some private voice on the phone who wouldn't even identify where he was to me. He wasn't even a governmental employee by his own admission. They refused to let me even talk to anyone who was a state of georgia official, I got the classic help desk with no answers shuffle. I said flat out it was closed source, no way to verify it, there was a high probability of fraud and certainly the potential for abuse, and the guy got indignant, but he KNEW I was stating the truth.

We HAD paper ballots, they WORKED perfectly ok and were not hard to figure out, and no "hanging chads" possible, it was fill in the bubble next to the vote. Any call for a recount can be done by any citizen at the end of the voting day following normal procedures in front of witnesses, regular old eyeballs still work. The ballot boxes were paid for, like 100 years ago or something, there was NO NEED to spend millions of dollars on this OTHER than to use smoke and mirrors razzle dazzle to fake out the rubes with the "new and improved computerised voting" "Look how easy it is! The computer does all the work!" The talking laquer heads on the boob toob were having near orgasms over it, another red flag for me, whenever the controlled press is "for" something I smell a rat,because a rat has always shown up in the past when they acted like shills and not newspeople. Phooie. they sold these scam voting machines the same way they sold over hyped stocks during the bubble, they shilled them. I saw the "public information" ads, I still got my flyer they sent to voters touting how cool it would be. double phooie.

Color me suspicious as hell, as far as I am concerned the vote got hijacked in an extremely sophisticated manner and hardly no one gives a squat about it. Georgia was their test state to see if they could get away with it in an entire state, they did, now it will go nationwide.

Don't take this as a personal flame, but I just had to disagree strongly here. When I look around and see what else is going on, aww %^&*T! It's a duck, it looks like a duck it walks like a duck it's quacking like a duck it's a dang fascist junta takeover. This "vote" scam just fits in with all the other bush-wa that's going on.

This is my second reply in the thread, but I am gonna drop this link again anyway, I think the subject is important enough.:

Votescam

Right on and I got an even better idea-recognize that computerised voting is the LAMEST idea that has happened lately. All it has done is automate the ballot box stuffing potential, and made it near impossible to verify any actual count. Voting is IMPORTANT, it shouldn't be EASY, it's not supposed to be like ordering a book from amazon, it's the most important thing a citizen does besides sit on a jury and you are supposed to think about it, take it serious, and go do it. Yes, you should go stand in line,and mark your paper ballot. I filed a protest at my precinct this last election over this, it was our first "computerised voting". It was dismal, the precinct officer was completely clueless, was not even able to understand the concept of it getting programmed (and stuffed) in advance,with no way to verify it. She kept telling me, "no, it's flawless, if there's a dispute, we just rerun the tabulations!"

homer sez DOH!

I got my "voted" sticker, it has a little iconized computer pointing at itself, with the caption "I voted!". THAT'S RIGHT, the $%^**ing COMPUTER voted, I got no way to tell if I voted.

Background to some important information for USians:

votescam, the stealing of america

One stipulation: That the new system use more flexible and current programming languages--Java and the Extensible Markup Language-- rather than OS 390 to gather, compute and deliver data to the media outlets.

That sounds great. People who have no idea how to accomplish the goal telling the people tasked with doing it, how it should be done. I can't believe it failed. They should have laid out what they wanted to acheive and left the rest up to the designers on how to meet those goals...

Also, some interesting older information on the VNS can be found a the Votescam website. Although they seem to have a few extreme views, along with some wild conspiracy theories..

Flamebait?

What, you think I'm making this stuff up?

Here:

Election Systems and Software

and an article about them

Who is Voter News Service?

Votescam

Is this all a bunch of conspiracy theory nonsense? Maybe. But then who IS counting the votes?

Show me.

Flamebait?

What, you think I'm making this stuff up?

Here:

Election Systems and Software

and an article about them

Who is Voter News Service?

Votescam

Is this all a bunch of conspiracy theory nonsense? Maybe. But then who IS counting the votes?

Show me.

Flamebait?

What, you think I'm making this stuff up?

Here:

Election Systems and Software

and an article about them

Who is Voter News Service?

Votescam

Is this all a bunch of conspiracy theory nonsense? Maybe. But then who IS counting the votes?

Show me.

Did you know that the manufacturer of a popular brand of voting computers is owned by a man convicted twice of vote fraud?

Check it out at VoteScam.

The Colliers also address the issue of "computer malfunction" within the Voter News Service...

Here is a book called Vote Scam which purports that between the manufacturers of voting equipment and VNS (Voter News Service), just about any election can be rigged. Interestingly, the author points out that all of the voting tabulation equipment is run on proprietary hardware with proprietary software which no one will offer up for public peer review. Does anyone here honestly think that closed source software running inside our voting booths is appropriate given how critical this equipment is to the foundation of our democracy? I don't know if the allegations made in the book are true, but I definately believe we need to lobby congress to pass a law MANDATING that all voting systems be completely transparent and run with open hardware and software in a manner which allows for public peer review. Yup, that means Free Software/Open Source voting booths.

Here's why electronic voting is a bad idea. Quite frankly, I prefer a paper ballot trail that can be audited by hand, either scantron or punchcards even if it means I have to drive to a polling place for a half hour once every 365 days. It's more of a bother to get my hair cut than to vote.

I've been trying to listen to several different sources regarding this particular problem in Palm Beach county and at least two things have jumped out at me.

First, it is true that several voters asked to recast their votes once they had realized that they had voted for the wrong person. Interestingly enough, none of the people I heard interviewed actually told the interviewer *why* they realized that their vote was miscast. i'd be interested in hearing that. But, regardless, the ones I heard interviewed who were refused another ballot asked for their ballot after their ballot had been turned in and placed in the sealed ballot box . That's important. had they asked before the ballot had been officially turned in, it's an easy matter to get another ballot and tear up the old one. It's impossible and illegal to get that ballot back after it's been "sealed".

Second, the questionable ballot design just didn't arise out of thin air. This ballot had to be reviewed and approved by representatives from both the Republican and Democratic parties, as well as the Attorney General. Additionally, a sample of the ballot was published in the area newspapers prior to the election. So, it wasn't a surprise and was a public matter. Those who weren't paying close enough attention also must not have been paying attention to the sample ballot either. Neither must the representatives from the two major parties have been paying much attention, for they had to approve the ballots. Obviously, it wasn't that much a matter of concern. the close election seems only to have magnified this issue.

I don't see any legal way that a re-vote can be called. I've reveiwed the law, as much as I can find, and "Oops!" isn't a valid legal reason to throw out an election and have another one. This was the voters fault, pure and simple, and shame on them for not paying close attention and making doubly and triply sure their ballot was correct before handing it away.

But, in the "ain't is a coincidence" department. Recent posts on /. regarding this election have mentioned a book called "Votescam" and its accompanying website Votescam . It strikes me as oddly coincidental that the outright frauds that were enumerated in very good detail in that book happened to occur in Florida. I'm not saying that there's a correlation, but it does seem mighty coincidental.

Buchanan got some of the votes intended for Gore and that might be enough to swing it. Seems kind of suspicious considering who runs that state...

First CNN shows GWB in an hotel room talking about Florida not decided yet, about 10 minutes later the networks changes Florida status back to "too close to call"... about an hour later I see in FOX a reporter from Austin talking about some "computer problem" in Florida. Gore was about 500.000 ahead but when the computer came back Bush is ahead for about 500.000 ... at that minute, I don't know why I started remembering what I readed one day before in the votescam website ...

I kept watching the networks for some time and I think anchor's faces said it all and they were too tired to hide it...

... I think I am going to buy that votescam book

---

Interestingly enough, Dade county is the subject of this book and has a long history of vote fixing...

"... Mike McCune allleges that "About 90% of the national elections use use a device called the 'Shouptronic' to count the votes. The Shouptronic is a closed system that isn't open for inspection. Several groups argue that it has been used to fix the vote in elections. This is a good argument to use an open system for election counting." He points to this wacky but intriguing book by the equally wacky but intriguing Collier family. I'm convinced."

Again, did anybody read this?

The two Colliers wrote a book about vote manipulation by proprietary computerized voting machines in Florida, and particularily in south Florida, and particularily Miami/Dade county, in the '70s and later.

Right as I'm typing this, NPR is interviewing someone in south Florida who's saying that "...the votes that are missing [his exact words] are in south Florida, and in Miami/Dade, which would be expected to be heavily Democratic..."

This is too f*cking weird.

Check out the link to the book -- you can read the first four chapters online...

t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®

"... Mike McCune allleges that "About 90% of the national elections use use a device called the 'Shouptronic' to count the votes. The Shouptronic is a closed system that isn't open for inspection. Several groups argue that it has been used to fix the vote in elections. This is a good argument to use an open system for election counting." He points to this wacky but intriguing book by the equally wacky but intriguing Collier family. I'm convinced."

Again, did anybody read this?

The two Colliers wrote a book about vote manipulation by proprietary computerized voting machines in Florida, and particularily in south Florida, and particularily Miami/Dade county, in the '70s and later.

Right as I'm typing this, NPR is interviewing someone in south Florida who's saying that "...the votes that are missing [his exact words] are in south Florida, and in Miami/Dade, which would be expected to be heavily Democratic..."

This is too f*cking weird.

Check out the link to the book -- you can read the first four chapters online...

t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®

Actually, the outcome is determined by the media conglomerates who report the outcome. Votescam has the details.

but then again, politicians have never made anything like that all that easy.

as it has been said:

"Neve apply a Star Trek Solution to a Babylon 5 Problem"
(Seen on a bulletin board in Fermi Lab)