Netcraft Shows Smartech Running Ohio Election Servers

goombah99 writes "Netcraft is showing that an event happened in the Ohio 2004 election that is difficult to explain. The Secretary of State's website, which handles election reporting, normally is directed to an Ohio-based IP address hosted by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp. According to the American Registry on Internet Numbers, Smartech's block of IP addresses 64.203.96.0 – 64.203.111.255 encompasses the entire range of addresses owned by the Republican National Committee. Smartech hosted the recently notorious gbw43.com domain used from the White House in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act, from which thousands of White House emails vanished." Update: 04/25 01:24 GMT by KD : ePluribus Media published a piece called Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again on election eve 2006, when a similar DNS switch to Smartech occurred. They have been investigating the larger story of IT on Capitol Hill and elsewhere for two years.

Comments

Netcraft confirms it!

[Nimey]

The Republican Party is dying.

Jeremy Allison said it best

[Gothmolly]

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

Since the Internet is a series of tubes, either 1) anyone involved has no idea how it works, but got a free iPod for switching hosting facilities, or 2) its a plan by the geeks to throw the election, which, frankly, is better than the politicians throwing it.