Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

GOP Urges Investigation of Voting Machine Performance
ABC News ^ | January 10, 2004

Posted on 01/12/2004 4:54:35 PM PST by GregD

Hello. I’m the webmaster of www.verifiedvoting.org.

I’m a Democrat, and you folks presumably will want to flame me on that point alone. But if you would bear with me, perhaps we could avoid that. I need to talk about an issue that affects all of us, and I am not here to pick a fight. I need your help.

VerifiedVoting.org is NOT about conspiracy theory. We are NOT about screaming about “Wally O’Dell delivering the votes to GWB”, but I do have to admit that his remarks were about as ill-conceived as they might have possibly been, and have made it a lot easier to recruit activists to this issue from certain segments of our population. And we certainly are NOT about “one party or the other is trying to rig the machines or steal an election.”

What we ARE about is looking at this situation from a non-partisan, academic, computer-science perspective. Our goal is to see that legislation and procedures are established and enforced to make sure that elections are counted properly; them may the “real” winner prevail, and we can all rest assured that the win was indeed valid and fair.

OK, so let’s frame the situation: we have systems which run proprietary code that nobody gets to look at. At the certification stage there is no organized code review, at the development level there are no standards that have to be met. As such, the certification process appears to be completely lame. When I developed mission-critical applications for a major international retailer, we had team walkthroughs that senior members of the tech staff participated in. Each line of code was inspected, each module carefully discussed. So when you look at the observations of the Johns Hopkins study http://avirubin.com/vote/, along with other studies, it is clear that the Diebold code completely sucked but that it was not rejected by the ITA. (Sure, the code that was reviewed by Rubin was not current at the time of the review, but it was likely “current code” at an earlier point, and the certification process has NOT substantially improved since then.) Why did this get past the ITA? Because they (the ITA) don’t get to see the code – all they do is run some (undisclosed to the public) tests, give it a kiss and tell it “ya look pretty, have a nice day… See ya…” If I presented that crap to a senior manager in my former shop, I’d get canned – plain and simple. Boom, outta there, have a nice life…

So, we have these systems running secret application code that stores our votes, our precious and irreplaceable votes, without so much as an audit trail. Buy gas? Get a receipt. Buy food? Get a receipt. Get cash or make an ATM deposit? Damn right we get a receipt! Our vote is more valuable than any of those things, and do the machines print anything that allows verification of our votes? Nope, sorry – don’t think so… What? And with no audit trail, be that paper or whatever other technology might be is verifiable in the future, there is no means of verifying the results of an election. If the computer malfunctions, we can’t prove it. If a bug creeps in, we won’t know. Can we do a recount? Absolutely not – all we can do is re-print the same totals that were questioned in the first place.

A common arguement that frequently comes up is related to cost. My response is "what is the price of democracy". Also, if the vendors want the business, make them find a way to build that into the product at a reasonable price. They stand to sell tens (hundreds?) of thousands of these at around $5k-6k a pop. And in San Diego, CA one vendor already committed to throw them in for free. So as far as I'm concerned, forget the cost question - it just does not seem to apply.

Is this a partisan issue, from one side or the other? Not the last time I checked, although some would like to frame it that way… VerifiedVoting.org refuses to – it simply is NOT a partisan issue…

Has this caused problems in elections? Yes, for both parties, in recent state elections we have problems in (at least) Maryland, Virginia and (of all places) Broward County Florida...

Broward (just in the past week or so) is a total meltdown. They had a single race in which 7 Republicans were seeking a state legislative seat. 134 votes were not counted by the touchscreen machines. The race was won by 12 votes, well under the .25 percent level for a mandatory recount (state law). But you cannot recount the vote with paperless touchscreen systems. They are not designed for that.

A number of these instances are listed here: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article_text.asp?articleid=997

So that’s the issue – we have these machines running programs that are NOT REQUIRED to achieve the sort of levels of quality control expectations or scrutiny that any corporate mission-critical software application currently demands, the security on the systems appears to be TOTALLY out of control, yet this is how we are supposed to run our democracy. This just is not right!

It gets worse... We have procedures that are not being followed. How do we know? Because people made a big enough stink that California decided to audit Diebold in 17 counties. (In case you don’t know, all hardware / firmware / software needs to be certified at the Federal level, assigned a NASED number, then approved by the State.) So they run an audit and what percentage of the randomly selected systems are in compliance? NONE! ZIP! NADA! Whose fault? Not sure yet, we will start to determine this on January 15 when the VSP meets again – but it looks like Diebold breached the public trust by supplying (or installing) software that was not certified, and the counties allowed the installation of non-compliant code (or installed it and didn’t check to make sure it was good to go.) http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article_text.asp?articleid=978

So what do we do about it? Well, thousands of our fellow Americans have spent the past 6 months (or more) calling Congressmen and asking them to support HR2239. That bill is ok, could be stronger, but it will have to do for now – time is running out. Frankly it would be nice if there was a stronger automatic recount (right now it calls for .5 percent, and that really needs to go up, just to make sure these beasts aren’t hosed.) It would be nice to boost this in conference committee, assuming we get that far, and before the bills become law.

Currently, we’re looking at just under 100 Democrat cosponsors and 3 or 4 Republicans. I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand those numbers. I’m glad we have a few Republicans that have joined in agreeing that a fairly counted election really still is the core of America’s democracy. But we need more, and that’s why I am here. I need your help, and I need it pronto please…

How can you help? Call your Congressmen (ask for their support of HR2239) and Senators (ask for support of S1980 which is a duplicate of HR2239). Help us get organizations to endorse this important legislation. Here are organizations that already stand behind these important bills: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/endorsers_s1980.asp

There are other action items on our site. I beg you – in respect for what our forefathers left for us – please help us get this done and protect the core of our democracy.

Here is what your own people are saying:
-------------------------------------------------------------

Back in August, lelio said
“I'm more scared as Diebold's engineering staff sounds like a bunch of clowns. An MS Access database on Windows 98? Are they asking to be hacked into?” He referred to this story. I completely agree with him.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm

And in http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/973667/posts, Timesink said:
There is little question, though, that we can never totally trust the results of any election conducted via computerized voting, and such machines should not be allowed to be used (and indeed, I give it less than ten years until they start being outlawed state by state as various scandals pop up, real or imagined). For all the mess that Florida 2000 turned out to be, at least we had actual physical ballots to deal with. The optimal solution, of course, would be going back to something along the lines of the old standards: Paper ballots in sealed boxes; monitors from both parties (and anyone else that wants to watch) at every precinct; multiple police officers riding along as ballot boxes are delivered to the county courthouse; all boxes opened and all votes counted in front of cameras from the news media, local government and any public citizens that wished to make their own records ... along with laws requiring proof of identity in order to vote
-------------------------------------------------------------

Whoever lelio and Timesink are, I’m with you 100 percent. How can we TOTALLY trust these systems, simply looking at it from the programming perspective? Programmers make mistakes, and with the current certification procedures, those mistakes will NOT all get caught. You would be amazed if you looked at the modification logs and bug lists for the Diebold stuff. These are NOT simple programs, and complicated programs are prone to error.

The only practical solution is to demand visibility into the programs, a verification procedure that allows each citizen to check their vote, and a robust automatic (random) recount to make certain that there is no program errors, and no fraud (on EITHER side).

Help us get this done – Please! Come to our site, have a look, and write to us if you have comments or questions.

www.verifiedvoting.org


TOPICS: Activism/Chapters; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2000election; diebold; donttrustthisposter; duimposter; electronicvoting; gorewar; harrihursti; marklindeman; militaryvote; touchscreen; verifiedvoting; votefraud
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 201-202 next last
To: GregD
I have always taken the position that I want to see and verify the ballot that goes into the box before I believe my vote has been registered. The 'inkavote' system we've been inflicted with in California makes that harder -- the old punch card was infinitely easier to tell if you'd marked the right number since the number on the ballot form matched the numbers next to the holes. 'inkavote' covers the number, which I really don't like.

With these electronic machines, I don't have a ballot to check over. I have a computer screen that might or might not reflect what my intention was. It doesn't print out a ballot to put into the box; instead it cheerfully assures me that my vote will be counted.

I'm all for machines for making voting easier, but they should print a ballot which is what is counted for the results of the election. Go ahead and use the electronic record for 'instant trends' as soon as the polls close, but until verification of the paper ballots is made, the election should not be considered over.

How many people have had a dispute with the bank over an ATM, especially in the first decade of their use? Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? I'm not interested in our political process being a guinea pig to iron out the bugs.
41 posted on 01/12/2004 6:12:27 PM PST by kingu (Remember: Politicians and members of the press are going to read what you write today.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GregD
Well, short form: As long as there is political power, and the powerhungry, no matter what voting system we use short of a George Orwellian universe- there will always be the element of shenanigans in voting.
Sad, sick, and horrible.
The only real defense is if honest people on both sides shout down and question anything out of the ordinary and irregular, I.e. violating voting law and such.

Unfortunately, I live in NY state, and some of the people I speak to that ID themselves as 'Democrats' state that they "MUST win through ANY means necessary."
I reminded them of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed.
The deplorable philosophy of the end justifying the means and such.

*Sighs*
Just keep your eyes open and keep your conscience clear.
So far, I haven't seen any reason to be 'upset' with you.
You've presented this pretty well. (I will be honest, there have been some that posted here specifically to be jerks. But, such is life.)
Thanks for posting.
Will see you around.
42 posted on 01/12/2004 6:13:35 PM PST by Darksheare
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: conservativecorner
I think you are talking about www.VoteHere.com who was hacked. They are a vendor.

My site is www.VerifiedVoting.org and we are not looking for free anything (other than maybe free printers if these damn vendors want to sell their stinking systems and have them considered adequate by the end-users - we voters.)

43 posted on 01/12/2004 6:17:32 PM PST by GregD
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: GregD
http://www.americanfreepress.net/08_25_03/Concerns_Over/concerns_over.html
44 posted on 01/12/2004 6:28:52 PM PST by Revel
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GregD
BTT
45 posted on 01/12/2004 6:30:36 PM PST by Cacique
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GregD
Personally I think the punch ballots were not so bad in one aspect. If you can't follow instructions or understand English then your vote should not count. People with a legitimate physical handicap should be eligible for help of course.
46 posted on 01/12/2004 6:34:49 PM PST by Revel
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: GregD
Rep. Rush Holt Introduces Legislation to Require All Voting Machines To Produce A Voter-Verified Paper Trail

H.R.2239 Summary and Status

S.1980 Summary and Status


Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (Introduced in House)

HR 2239 IH

108th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 2239

To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy under title III of such Act, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

May 22, 2003

Mr. HOLT introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on House Administration


A BILL

To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy under title III of such Act, and for other purposes.

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

SEC. 2. EXTENSION OF TIME PROVIDED FOR STATES TO REQUEST PAYMENTS UNDER TITLE I.

SEC. 3. REPEAL OF EXEMPTION OF ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION FROM CERTAIN GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING REQUIREMENTS.

SEC. 4. PROMOTING ACCURACY, INTEGRITY, AND SECURITY THROUGH VOTER-VERIFIED PERMANENT RECORD OR HARD COPY.

Commission as meeting the requirements of clauses (i) and (ii).'.

SEC. 5. CHANGE IN DEADLINE FOR COMPLIANCE WITH STANDARDS.

SEC. 6. REQUIREMENT FOR FEDERAL CERTIFICATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL SECURITY OF VOTER REGISTRATION LISTS.

SEC. 7. REQUIREMENT FOR MANDATORY RECOUNTS.

SEC. 8. EFFECTIVE DATE.


47 posted on 01/12/2004 6:37:42 PM PST by lepton
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Darksheare
I took the time to read some of the posters who you may be referring to. I agree, it was not presented well by some who visited in the past. This issue DEMANDS a non-partisan approach, and that is the manner in which we operate VerifiedVoting.org, and we will offer no less.

I took some time to think about how I wished to approach this, as I sincerely wish the support of those that engage in discussion here, and I DID NOT want to come over here and start a fight. If we fight, and don't win this issue together, then corrupt politics wins the day and we citizens lose.

I completely agree with you, and that is why I am here, that honest people must challenge election violations. We have all seen that, and much greater corruption, and I feel it is time that we make all such criminals accountable - and force all members of our government to comply with the laws that they expect us to observe. Nobody is above the law, and it is time that we all make a stand for what is right. I am sick and tired of corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle.

A good example is that case in Broward County that I referenced. I have no dog in that fight. It was a race between 7 Republicans. The win was by 12 votes, 134 votes were lost (plus a few more because the scanned ballot software failed) and now the county is out of legal compliance since they have no way to conduct the legally mandated recount since the touchscreen systems cannot do that.

So I will emphasize once again, because I'm about to spend the rest of the evening doing some other work, that we need your support. If I have presented my case fairly, if you feel there is grounds on this issue by which we can agree, please come help us. We want you.

How to help? There are action items on the front page of VerifiedVoting.org. We need groups to go see your legislators and DEMAND passage of HR2238 and S1980. We already have bipartisan support, and we need a LOT MORE.

We need groups and organizations to endorse the bills. This list needs to grow significantly before Congress returns to session http://www.verifiedvoting.org/endorsers_s1980.asp By growing that list, in a bipartisan manner, our respective leadership will understand that there is universal concensus and demand for passage of the bills.

If you are in Texas, and can talk to DeLay, please do it right away.

If you are in Ohio, and can talk to Ney, bless your heart. He heads the House Administration Committee, and we need to get HR2239 out of there, onto the House floor, and passed into law.

And if you have ideas to help us, please write to our site so we can speak on the telephone and work together. We are simply a group of concerned citizens, mostly of a technical inclination in terms of our careers (geeks), and we need all the help we can muster.

48 posted on 01/12/2004 6:42:03 PM PST by GregD
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: GregD
BTW I do agree with you that Electronic voting without an extreemly good verifyable paper trail is nuts! I think it is the wrong way all together for the most part. There are so many ways to cheat and then have no evidence of the cheating later. We are fools to allow it.

I was thinking that one way to handle this would be to have the votes counted by two diferent software programs running simutaneoulsy. The creators of those softwares being bared by law from talking to one another directly. If at any time the vote counts from each program do not agree then...Investigation time.
49 posted on 01/12/2004 6:42:59 PM PST by Revel
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GregD
Thanks for posting GregD! This is not a question of partisan politics. Everyone wants their vote to count no matter what party. The fact still stands that this system with no "ballot receipt" is a danger for all.

The truth of the matter, without being too partisan, is that voter fraud has been primarily a Democrat Party reality for a very long time. From Daley in Chicago in 1960 to student double-voting and homeless payoffs and Bill Clinton's Voting Card for California immigrants in 2000 to South Dakota Indian reservation registration fraud in 2002 (so many others but I digress.) When voting fraud has come to the fore it is inevitably in primary Democratic voting strong-holds ie. urban areas and is under the auspices of Democrat secretary of states and city and county election supervisors (all contested Florida counties in 2000 were under Democrat control as we know).

That being said I appreciate your candidness and hope that in the spirit of honest competion the end result is indeed a paper trail if the need for a recount ever occurs.

To my fellow Freepers: I didn't read all posts but caught a couple that were proposing Zotting GregD. I think that we should all be able to welcome honest opinion from other views if a basic decorum is observed by all involved. I'm hoping that GregD will stick around, take views he disagrees with in stride while making his own points, some that maybe we need to hear. Any view is palatable when applied through gracefullness. And sometimes preaching to the choir just can be plain boring.
50 posted on 01/12/2004 6:43:22 PM PST by torchthemummy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: GregD
BTW, where your site says "The text of H.R. 2239 and its details are here" the status and summary can be found - but I don't see the texts. You might want to correct that.
51 posted on 01/12/2004 6:44:28 PM PST by lepton
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GregD
"Hello. I’m the webmaster of www.verifiedvoting.org.

I’m a Democrat, and you folks presumably will want to flame me on that point alone...I need your help. "

Call me a cynic Greg, but you appear too sincere, polite, and bright to be a Democrat. Exactly what are you trying to pull?? ;-)

Tell you what -- if you can convince the DU to help "urge an investigation" into absentee-voting on the part of cadavers, corpses, and zombies in all national Democrat-controlled precincts, count me in...

BTW, welcome to FR.

52 posted on 01/12/2004 6:47:10 PM PST by F16Fighter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: GregD
I live in NY, home of the Tammany Hall crew.
*chuckle*
You'd think that a state that had such a history would be loathe to repeat history.
BUT.. Human nature.
(New York has several rumors, legends, and outright stated problems with politics in general. Sometimes I crack jokes about having the state start over from scratch and having regular people sent to Albany for the state legislature and so forth.)

Good luck, and that is true.
We do need to work on this.
It's just keeping it on track.

And so far from what I've seen you've presented this pretty well.
Thanks.

"mostly of a technical inclination in terms of our careers (geeks),"
LOL! Technomages, of a sort.
I'll be going to bed soon.
Again, good luck and good evening.

53 posted on 01/12/2004 6:51:05 PM PST by Darksheare ("The voices in my head think the voices in your head are paranoid")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: goodnesswins
Thank you for explaining the secret of democrat dominance of the polls in certain areas
54 posted on 01/12/2004 6:51:59 PM PST by Kenny Bunk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: goodnesswins
Thank you for explaining the secret of democrat dominance of the polls in certain areas
55 posted on 01/12/2004 6:52:05 PM PST by Kenny Bunk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: goodnesswins
Thank you for explaining the secret of democrat dominance of the polls in certain areas
56 posted on 01/12/2004 6:52:09 PM PST by Kenny Bunk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: goodnesswins
Renton WA - would that be Bev Harris? Yes, I have spoken with her - she runs www.blackboxvoting.org and www.blackboxvoting.com. She has done a great deal of important research, which has helped to reveal the absolute cespool that we call our "elections system".

If you have not visited them lately, their latest revelation was interesting. Turns out a number of ex-cons have been writing our elections software, one of whom was same day we leaned about all the uncertified software in use in CA.

I'm not sure what your impression of her site or her work may be, but we approach this from a TOTALLY non-partisan, non-conspiracy theory perspective. This is about democracy, and fairness. Period...convicted for embezzlement using computers, and was never permitted again to touch a checkbook. But he had 24x7 access to the voting computers. Hmmm... That was on the

57 posted on 01/12/2004 6:55:55 PM PST by GregD
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: F16Fighter; GregD
Yes, Greg, welcome. Since Gore stole at least 5 states due to blatant fraud, are you really sure you are sincerely interested in reforming your party? I mean with whom will you dine after your clean-out? Us?

Why not a less ambitious agenda? How about all dead democrats only voting once? Hey, it would be a start and show some good faith.

58 posted on 01/12/2004 6:57:10 PM PST by Kenny Bunk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: Revel
I'm there man - I totally agree. Listen, if we could go back to punchcard, the guy who originally designed them is in the business still. He developed a new machine that can be produced for around $150 each.

Touchscreen systems are about $5k (or more) each

Hmmm, which to buy? EASY DECISION HUH?

59 posted on 01/12/2004 7:00:15 PM PST by GregD
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: Kenny Bunk; GregD
"Why not a less ambitious agenda? How about all dead democrats only voting once? Hey, it would be a start and show some good faith."

An "amen" outta me...

..And will the votes of the living who serve in the military be counted this time, Greg?

60 posted on 01/12/2004 7:08:08 PM PST by F16Fighter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 201-202 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson