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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.
The President announced today that he as complete faith in the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Smartech Corp. and the RNC, which utterly destroys any remaining credibility they may have had left.
The longer this fellow stays in office, the more he resembles Richard M. Nixon, IMHO.
Nixon is not dead. How do I know? Always two there are, a Master and an Apprentice.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Your own submission answers your question.
Nothing "changed" or was "transferred". http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ is a special web site in operation for elections. Otherwise, it points to http://www.sos.state.oh.us/ as it does now. It appears that the State of Ohio contracted with SmartTech for hosting, processing, and dissemination of the election results via the special elections web site, when it is in operation.
That probably won't be a good enough answer for people, though. Regardless, it appears that SmartTech has obvious ties to the Republican Party, and hosts many sites for various Republican political interests. The Secretary of State of Ohio is a partisan political position. This doesn't mean there aren't questions that can be raised or points to be debated.
The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.
Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."
It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.
The Republican Party is dying.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
All in favour of investigating this?
*Half of democrats and no republicans raise their hands*
All opposed?
*No democrats and every republican raise their hands*
No need to investigate then. Nothing to see here, move along!
1. How reliable is the Netcraft data? What would it take to hack Netcraft and make it look like there was a hack of the Ohio SOS?
2. What information do we have that the election.sos.state.oh.us domain was a part of the election procedures during the 2004 election?
3. Was the April 2006 change during a primary election?
Inquiring minds want to know...
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
"Can anyone suggest a good explanations (sic) for this seemingly dubious election-eve transfer?"
Somebody obviously hacked the Netcraft server to make it look like the Republicans were so stupid as to try to steal an election by using their own block of IPs. It also seems amazing that the GOP would wait until the last minute to change the DNS, as it can sometimes take a bit longer than expected for such a transfer to properly propagate. Heck, if they were smart enough to steal an election by changing the DNS, why not spoof the entry to make it look like it pointed to the Democrat Party?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
This doesn't even pass the smell test.
As the Democrats' own statistician, Jasjeet Sekhon, who coauthored their 2004 post-election report said:
Which link is responsible for this: "On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp."
I'm not questioning this necessarily, but with all of the links to evidence I'm confused why there was no link for this one...
Ohio: 64.203.98.137
RNC: 64.203.98.0 - 64.203.98.127
There is no evidence presented that the RNC controlled the Ohio server in question. It fell outside the range.
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.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
this data doesn't mean that the RNC fixed the election, but what it could mean is that by having control over the voting reports to the public, they could infact hold back information or skew results before the votes were finalized and this could prevent a late rush to the polls from democrats fearing defeat.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
Today's Guardian includes this interesting piece entitled "Fascist America, in 10 easy steps". Guess how many steps down the path we are?
For the benefit of those who won't read it, here's the ten points.
And in other news: Jessica Lynch comes out and condemns the Hollywood show they made of the incident she was involved in.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
... will it blend?
Our democracy is in great peril as long as these "win at all costs" idiots are in the game.
Well, what a relief that the democrats would never stoop to grandstanding, using foreign money to fund campaigns, submit thousands of fraudulant voter registrations in key races, retain congressmen caught with $90k of bribe cash in their freezers (and put them on the Homeland Security oversight committee! you can't make stuff like that up!), etc. Do you REALLY think that the other party's habit of doing things like taking election cash from China as donations through a monestary in California DOESN'T count as "win at all costs?" You need a different complaint.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Search for wierd:
Did you mean: weird
Even more interesting is that the search for 'weird' and 'smartech' eventually leads to this interesting blog post which lists "Strange Domains Registered by the RNC"
"After you've got your minority support locked away, you can then begin the attack ads:" (from the blog post)
"...and, of course, to anticipate attacks by grabbing(and squatting on) those domains first:" (from the blog post)
I don't think there is anything especially nefarious about a state agency and the RNC contracting for hosting with the same company. Big deal. They probably both buy stuff from Wal-Mart too. I think somebody with an axe to grind is leaping to a conclusion that simply is not merited by the evidence given here.
If you really want to do something, get a "no consecutive terms on Capitol Hill" law enacted in your own state. Make them come home and live under the laws they passed for the past two to six years while holding an elected office. Eliminate their special pension plans, forcing them to live under the same Social Security and Medicare plan they force everyone else to live under.
Change in the way our government works will not occur until the people wise up and realize they're being strung along with lots of lip service and "feel good" knee-jerk reaction laws.
I have no plans to hold my breath waiting for that change, however.
OCO is Loco
This is horrible to leave out the actual reporting on this and only link to the NetCraft "smoking gun". The mods here really, really suck.
This was first reported on by ePluribus Media back in Nov. 2006
Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again
And again summarized yesterday by Columbus Free Press
The GOP's cyber election hit squad
Personally, anyone found to be a participant in voter fraud should be barred for life from voting.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I expect it to stay civil, this is the internet after all and we can't have people acting a fool on this thing otherwise some busybody will try to legislate some controls into place.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
think of an explanation.
On election day, the people who run the SOS's DNS point election.sos.state.oh.us to a contractor who has contracted to provide "real time" updates from election data, something the SOS's staff is not equipped to do.
That vendor markets hosting services to political and government entities. It unwisely assigns a governmental web site from the very next block of addresses that are given to a political client, and unfortunately that block of addresses has become implicated in a serious scandal. Note the address is not in the RNC owned block (contrary to the article's title).
Now there are a gazillion possible ethical temptations that marketing yourself to political and government entities entails. So contracts let to such companies should be looked at very closely. But this is no smoking gun; or if there is smoke, it is more likely to involve improper contract selection than anything else.
So, it bears looking into, but is nothing to get excited about yet.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
- Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again
- Ohio's election website still sent real-time results to GOP mirror server
Related storiesGrow your own @ePluribUs Media.
Damn it, this is why the republicans are driving this country into the ground!
The Secretary of State's office is NOT a partisan position. The Secretary swears to protect and defend the constitution (or whatever the equivalent is for Ohio state positions), not to protect the elephant. There should be a clear and unambiguous wall between the office holder's official actions and individual partisan actions, and should never, under any circumstances, use official resources for partisan purposes. When it's inevitable (the classic example being the president flying to events during the election season), the office holder is required to provide appropriate compensation for this use. E.g., equivalent first-class airfare for everyone on AF1, IIRC.
With most secretaries of state, I would agree with you that it's probably nothing more than temporary hosting during a period of high use.
But the outgoing Secretary of State, Blackwell (iirc), was extraordinarily partisan in his official acts. He's the reason why Ohio is usually the center of stolen election allegations. Given his amply documented bad behavior in the past, e.g., attempting to have his gubernatoral opponent disqualified on bogus grounds shortly before the election, a rational person would have no choice but to assume the worst and require proof that it truly was an innocent and unbiased decision.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
...to include "Nixon".
Now, move along. Has anyone ever thought it was to handle the extra traffic from people checking on election returns? Or did you actually believe that the web site was processing votes?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I've done stat analysis too. I concur with you that accusations based on statistical about what happened in florida don't seem to be strongly supported. That is to say the statistics are not conclusive. But I've also follwed the ohio reports pretty closely too. Some of the reports are incorrect. But some can't be so easily debunked. The strongest cases indicate that shoddy voting equipment created long lines that detered voters in selected precincts. It's also now certain that the recounts were rigged (they precounted then selected the precincts without problems for the official counts. And there are precints where the votes and voters don't add up. You always expect some of that so one can never really put a finger on if there was too much or too little. All very statistically nebulous. and hence an opportunity to tilt things and hide in the noise.
This is why getting the results early and having the ability to delay posting them enlarges the opportunity for dirty tricks. For example here's a sort of maxwell's deamon way to rig an eleciton completely legally. If you look at the early returns you will see lots of mistakes. Some will go in your favor some will go against you. If you selectively inquire with precinct judges only on the cases where the votes go against you, you can make gains. Indeed both parties routinely do this after the elections so that's not even science fiction. But now suppose your party, and only your party, is magically granted the power to do this on election night itself. Getting totals "fixed" is a lot easier when things are in flux. a simple phone call can say "Hey that can't be right, read those numbers again" will get you an updated total. After the election is done getting changes is much harder. Hence eraly knowledge helps. Running the reporting site would be a windfall.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
ePluribus Media reported this story back in Nov 2006 -- "Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again"
The NetCraft IP funny business was noted, and the election.sos.state.oh.us was updated and checked on from 2005 onwards, that is why you can look at NetCraft today on see a history of it. The list of domains hosted on SMARTech were also added to Robtex by querying a list of servers with a long list and adding to it over the years.
This was posted by some asshat who read the Free Press article The GOP's cyber election hit squad and is trying to take credit.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
- Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again
- Ohio's election website still sent real-time results to GOP mirror server
Related storiesGrow your own @ePluribUs Media.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Gas is 2.87 a gallon nation-wide. It peaked at an average of about $3 per gallon last year and the year before. I'm unable to find good graphs with this previous year's data on them, but it looks like the peak was around $3 in today's dollars; I should remind you that we're not being embargoed, and it's still almost as bad as it was then. The media disbanded the Iraqi army? The media put incompetent partisan hacks in charge of the reconstruction effort? The media decided that torture was a great idea? "Kicking major ass" isn't a foreign policy goal, it's a movie tagline--and it's a stupid euphemism for "killing lots of people". Pretending to be the Golden Horde doesn't work when you're also pretending to be George Marshall. Don't blather on about how you're the armies of goodness and light when you also want to kill kill kill, and those corpses were probably Al Qaeda anyway.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
For every worker who becomes unemployed, I'd bet there are plenty more who move to lower-paying jobs, lose benefits, take pay cuts, and otherwise end up in a worse situation than they started in.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If so, wouldn't that be a violation of the Logan Act that all the conservatives claim (incorrectly) that Pelosi violated?
In fact, it's rather hard to imagine a scenario where the hostages get released minutes after Reagan takes office that doesn't entail a violation of the Logan Act.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If you poke around the records a bit, you'll see that we are talking about the Sec'ty of State's website - there was no internet voting, AFAIK. How absolutely unheard of for a web site to migrate to another provider during periods of increased activity! The SOS website was migrated for the Primary and for the Election, the two days of the year the traffic spikes, and she choose a friendly Web Hosting Company - would this be interesting if she choose 1&1 or another independent hosting service?
And the IP addresses issue, puh-leeze, they have many clients that are not the RNC - simply providing a service to the RNC is not a crime - if it were, then caterers, limo drivers, temp agencies, coffee shops, etc. that serve the RNC throughout the year are RNC flunkies...
Seriously, what is the problem - that the SOS website was on a machine physically near Newt Gingrich's website, the election was obviously stolen...
Ken
Social Security isn't a replacement for your personal 401(k), it's an insurance policy in case you get disabled or old. You can also think of it as a tax we pay so that we don't have old, sick, dying people filling up our sidewalks. (Well, to the extent that we would without it--we'd have six times the number of seniors in poverty that we do now.) You can't opt out of that any more than you can opt out of coverage by your local police and fire departments.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
My family first voted Republican nationally in 1856 for Freemont. They typically voted party line since. Until the last elections. Among the 100 or so family members that stay in touch I don't think that more than 10 votes were cast for Republicans. And those were all local candidates, friends of family.
The Republican party is dead. It is left to the end of the world nut jobs and utterly corrupt. And this "base" is going to drive anyone else away. The party is finished until it hits rock bottom and either dies completely like the wigs or there is a hostile take over by another special interest group.
Personally, I hope for complete death. Then we can finally have a restructuring of this moribund two party system and get something that actually reflects political divisions in the country.
Umm, even if this is true, so what? Let's say the Republican conspiracy controlled the Ohio Secretary of State website. How does this help them steal the Ohio electoral votes? It doesn't change thc actual vote counting. What, was the Secretary of State and his web staff desperately trying to get the "real" vote totals out, only to have the Republicans put fake numbers on the website? These people had no other media access other than their own website? Where are they now?
In 2001, it was $1.42 to the pound. Now it's $2. It's not as bad as Carter, but it's not much better ($.70 for Carter, $.58 for Bush, Clinton was -$.43!). Throw in the fact that currency markets are starting to leave the dollar and switch to Euro or other currency and it doesn't really help Bush all that much.
I'm not trying to troll, but:
Unfortunately, the Sierra Club thinks that this 5% of ANWR is more valuable as a wildlife reserve than a strategic one.
Is a very troubling statement to me. At what point does any amount of environmentalism become valuable, and how do you quantify it? We wouldn't need strategic reserves if we'd spent all the money we spent on this war (420 billion dollars) on renewable resources, incentives for alternative fuels and hybrids (some of which are in place, but we could do better), and (why the fuck not?) EDUCATION.
We'd be almost like a real civilized country. We could expand that education to include stuff like How Not Even The Pope Disagrees With Evolution Anymore, or The Bill of Rights.
In Mexico, you start learning your constitution in 1st grade. Is it middle school in the USA? Or high school?
There has to be a fault in your perspective if you truly support this presidential administration's policies and tactics. They violate basic rules of humanity, dignity, and truth, and do it in my name. After stealing the election.
More proof of which is discussed above. Let's get back on topic.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
The Constitution does not apply to the President (Richard Nixon to David Frost, paraphrased; Alberto Gonzales any number of times) according to the Nixonian Guard that are in power now. It's not like they're hiding their belief. Gonzales just told the Congress to go fuck itself last week, on camera. Rice has issued a statement today saying she has better things to do than respond to a subpoena, and apparently won't bother to show up. Who would have the power to arrest her? Gonzales. Yeah boy. That's what will happen, yes.