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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
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To: DBrow
The server HD will give the same tally exactly every single time, while the cards will vary slightly.

-----------------------

That is the exact point - there is no means to conduct a meaningful recount to check. That is why we are pursuing this.

NOTE: THIS IS NOT AN ENDORSEMENT, JUST WANTED TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING

http://www.vogueelection.com/products_automark.html

This is an interesting approach. You use the computer to configure the election, and to cast the votes. It then prints a ballot, which is then run through a scanner. You still need to inspect scanner code, and the code that combines the precinct totals, but at least there is a paper backup.

81 posted on 01/12/2004 8:58:01 PM PST by GregD
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To: Mark
The greatest threat to military voting is SERVE. When was the last time you heard about an Internet hack. SERVE is Internet-based voting. We oppose that without question - it is not safe and will not be for the forseeable future.
82 posted on 01/12/2004 9:06:02 PM PST by GregD
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To: GregD
Bump for later. This is a critical subject.
83 posted on 01/12/2004 9:18:18 PM PST by LPM1888 (What are the facts? Again and again and again -- what are the facts? - Lazarus Long)
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To: GregD
Broward county just "lost" 132 votes in a speical election where the winner was only 16 votes up.

There is a red flashing button you have to press.

If the button is not flashing you don't know to press it. It would not take much, just pull the bulb in heavy conservative areas and those votes will be irretrivably lost.
84 posted on 01/12/2004 9:24:09 PM PST by longtermmemmory (Vote!)
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To: GregD
Well if you are really honest about fighting voting fraud, you'll fight to clean up your own party. You say both parties engage in vote fraud. While in one way that is true, that is like saying if a Republican gets a speeding ticket and a Democrat has 20 convictions for fraud, theft, extortion, robbery and rape, that 'Both parties have had trouble with the law.' Technically true, but completely misleading, devoid of perspective or context.

Sorry, but AT LEAST 80% of vote fraud cases that I've run across have been Democrat schemes. Systematic corruption, most prevelant in big cities or single-party dominated areas, which are almost always dominated by the Dems.

Don't get me wrong, I hate corruption, no matter what the party. If I were in New Jersey I'd be pretty bummed. But as a whole, vote fraud is the domain of one party, and that party's current leadership seems intent on entrenching more fraud schemes. Which party has fought tooth and nail against cleaning up voter rolls(purging the names of the dead and moved)? Which party has fought tooth and nail against photo id's for voting, or any other measure that reduces the ability to vote using a false name? Which party has fought tooth and nail to give licenses to illegal immigrants, while simultaneously weakening the safeguards that would prevent them from illegally voting? Which party routinely sends its operatives through nursing homes, 'assisting' mentally incompetent residents with their vote?

Which party was Becky Red Earth working for when she was arrested for running a vote fraud scheme on Indian reservations in the critical 2002 South Dakota Senate race, where lo and behold, several reservations had 'counting malfunctions', only delivering there totals after all the other counts were in, and just so happening to put the Dem, who had been trailing in the Senate race, over the top to win by a couple of hundred votes? Which party controls politics in San Francisco, where in 2000 ballot boxes(complete with ballots in them) were found floating in SF Bay? Which party's candidate did college students in Wisconsin vote for, when they bragged that they voted multiple times in the 2000 election(Gore won WI by only 6000 votes)? Which party had an operative busted in Milwaukee for handing out cigarettes and other goodies to the homeless to get them to vote? Which party had a hack judge of the Clay machine issue an order to keep the polls open after hours in heavily Dem areas of St. Louis during the 2000 election(where Ashcroft lost the Senate race by just a few thousand votes), apparently pre-planned because black-oriented radio stations were running ads the day before the ruling saying the polls would be open late? Which party designed the butterfly ballot? Which party ran the election commissions in almost every Florida county that had problems in 2000? Which party dominated the precinct in Houston where an election official was caught on camera climbing into a limo with a ballot box and driving several times around the city's beltway freeway before finally hours later delivering the ballots to the counting headquarters? Which party in 2000 had Richard Daley(you know, of Chicago, legendary for its systematic corruption and vote fraud) in charge of its candidates campaign? Which party screamed over, cried racism, and fought the removal of Miriam Oliphant in Broward County, who botched several elections, and refused to implement reforms?

All of the above are examples of systematic vote fraud schemes, and all employed by Democrats. You do realize that one of the findings coming out of the media recount in Florida was that the group(by far) most likely to have had their vote nullified by overvoting were GOP votes in black precincts run by Democrat election staff. 50 TIMES MORE LIKELY. OBTW, overvoting is an easy way of vote fraud with punch card ballots(which were used in those cases), because you simply grab a stack, punch through them with some type of pin, and bingo, you've invalidated plenty of votes for your opponent. Systematic vote fraud. And which party usually gets a pass from the media when their schemes are exposed?

So perhaps you can understand my extreme skepticism that a) The GOP would engage in systematic vote fraud
b) The GOP would even consider that it could get away with such
c) That the GOP would actually get away with such, given such media bias and scrutiny
d) That there is any problem with electronic voting that will purposefully benefit the GOP


But hey, if there really are problems, lets fix them. I care not a whit what your ideology is, as long as you are honest and don't turn a blind eye towards one side. But when it comes to vote fraud, so far it has been almost completely a one party problem. Clean up the Democrat party. And OBTW, if Howard Dean really is bringing in outsiders to the Iowa caucuses, then he is no outsider, just another Dem con man. If you want real reform in the Democratic party, if you really want to clean it up, look to men of integrity, such as Sam Nunn or Clark Howard(google his name and WSB in Atlanta, from what I hear he is a Dem, but an honest one).
85 posted on 01/12/2004 9:25:04 PM PST by Diddle E. Squat (www.firethebcs.com, www.weneedaplayoff.com, www.firemackbrown.com)
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To: backhoe
I didn't see any of the threads about how Philadelphia and Montgomery County hired a man who had served time in another state to write their computer programs for Ed Rendell.
86 posted on 01/12/2004 9:25:31 PM PST by Eva
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To: kingu
A shame, because he makes some great points, but if you're going to post your own vanity, just post your own vanity, and don't hide it.

------------------------------

OK, I'd like to discuss that. For starters, this is my first post and if I somehow failed to observe site ettiquite I offer my apology.

Now, if I were here to sell something, or otherwise personally benefit, perhaps the condemnation that I was "promoting my website" would be an appropriate concern. If that were the case, I would expect to be nuked.

But the fact is that I came here because we have a National crisis in the works. It is small now, and we can get our arms around it, if I can engage people and get them to help. Do you really want to deal with another botched election, this time perhaps in multiple states? Because that is exactly what is at stake here.

I'm not doing this work for personal benefit (other than my personal prayer for our country.) Indeed, I have abandoned a perfectly successful web development business because I feel this is tremendously urgent, I recognized the need for someone to step forward, and I did it.

There are a bunch of young men and women fighting on behalf of the US in Iraq and other places as we sit here in our comfortable homes. I saw a need to serve the nation, and basically "drafted" myself. Since I never served in the military, this is my opportunity to serve the US in another meaningful way.

I NEED (NO, SKIP THAT) AMERICA NEEDS REPUBLICAN SUPPORT FOR LEGISLATION THAT WILL ALLOW US TO RETAIN CONFIDENCE (HOW ABOUT "REGAIN CONFIDENCE") THAT OUR ELECTIONS ARE FAIRLY COUNTED.

So if you want to pull the thread, have at it. I am trying to express alarm about an urgent issue, and to discuss it in a non-partisan and respectful manner.

Many others, Democrats and Republicans alike, have tried to frame the electronic voting issue as a partisan debate. One fact is that there is an abundance of individual who own (or are elevated members of management) that are Republican campaign contributors. Another fact is that in VA and FL, Republicans were the ones that got hosed as a result of the absence of a paper trail. Did Democrats somehow cause this to happen? Of course not! The freaking systems somehow screwed up, in whatever manner, and because they don't have some sort of a physical backup the intent of the voter could not be verified.

Did I select a news article that would gain your attention? You bet I did. Does that really matter? Probably not, since most of the recent e-voting screwups impacted Republicans, and I need to gain your support for legislation that will benefit us as a democracy, as a nation.

87 posted on 01/12/2004 9:30:38 PM PST by GregD
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To: GregD
134 votes were not counted by the touchscreen machines.

There is no excuse for this. When the voter leaves the machine it should always show one more ballot cast (even if he or she cast a completely blank ballot).

88 posted on 01/12/2004 9:37:33 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck
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To: RaceBannon
Personally, I have called my local legislators and have been interviewed on a few radio programs. But it is not about me making those calls - it is about tens of thousands of us DEMANDING a solution.

We presently have around 6000 volunteers in our database.

To make this problem get solved, we need the issue to be a daily topic of discussion. If you can help get it into newspapers, TV, radio - that is the sort of help we need (besides the obvious acts of speaking to legislators).

There has been overwhelming mis-information given to people who influence these decisions. We need people who see this issue as clearly as many contributors to this thread to communicate this to the masses and help them understand how much a paper-trail solution makes sense.

89 posted on 01/12/2004 9:37:40 PM PST by GregD
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To: antaresequity
I'll let you pursue the consulting opportunity.

As for me, when I get done with this, I'm going fishing.

90 posted on 01/12/2004 9:39:27 PM PST by GregD
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To: JoeFromSidney
A couple points about absentee voting

Read this article: http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

In counties that use Diebold, absentee ballots are frequently counted using Diebold scanners. The same GEMS software which is the source of the controversy (Google: diebold GEMS) which is used for counting the touchscreen votes, and has been revealed to have so many security flaws, is used to count scanned ballots.

Moral of the story 1 - Until we get better control of the overall system, voting by absentee ballots is not the complete solution we wish it to be

Moral of the story 2 - Voting by abssentee in overwhelming numbers could send a message to the elections officials that people demand a reliable, voter-verifiable solution

91 posted on 01/12/2004 9:46:14 PM PST by GregD
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To: Kaslin
Yes, that is my understanding. And I also am told this was a wealthy district, with informed and educated voters, who still failed to operate the machines correctly.

A voter-verifiable solution could involve producing a printed ballot, which must be surrendered before leaving the polling place, eliminate this "undervote" problem, and produce the ability to perform a recount whenever necessary.

A voter-verifiable solution would have allowed Florida to comply with their own laws concerning a mandatory recount in the event of a (less than) .25 percent win.

92 posted on 01/12/2004 9:49:57 PM PST by GregD
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To: GregD
I appreciate the courage it must have taken to approach this site. If a computer system is used, I agree that some hard copy record must be made. Digital theft is too easy if there is no verification.

What makes me the most afraid, and this might offend you, is to see this rush to computer voting coupled with the tactics used by the Democratic Party in the past. Florida in 2000, and many Illinois elections have been suspicious, at the least. Even though punch cards were thought to be the wave of the future, at one time, they became a vehicle for fraud.
93 posted on 01/12/2004 9:51:57 PM PST by Ingtar (Understanding is a three-edged sword : your side, my side, and the truth in between ." -- Kosh)
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To: GregD
The original meaning of "ballot" was NOT "little bit of paper." It was "little ball." The voter was given two balls, one black and one white, and he had to put a ball of a particular color in a box for a yea or nay; the other went into a discard box and the counts of the two had to match up at the end of the voting.

E-votes may be troublesome, but we also need hanging chads like we need a hole in the head. Something where the action is obvious and atomic, like the original "ballote," is needed.
94 posted on 01/12/2004 9:52:46 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck
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To: GregD
You probably missed the follow on discussion with the sidebar moderator, as well as my own take on the issue. I agree with you; this is an issue that transcends party lines, and gets to the heart of the political system. If you can't trust the process of gathering the votes, everything else becomes suspect.

Yes, it's possible to play with the tabulation software that counts the votes - but you have the source material to check at a future time, the votes themselves.

These electronic voting devices that do not print the ballot skip the creation of source material, which means if there is a bug or outright fraud at any point in the process, the entire vote has been corrupted. You can't re-count the votes, verify them at a later date, or anything.
95 posted on 01/12/2004 9:58:34 PM PST by kingu (Remember: Politicians and members of the press are going to read what you write today.)
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To: GregD
Bump for further review
96 posted on 01/12/2004 9:59:55 PM PST by The_Eaglet (http://searchirc.com/search.php?F=exact&T=chan&N=33&I=conservative)
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To: GregD
People too dumb to vote are going to be too dumb to vote come what may. Computer systems won't help.
97 posted on 01/12/2004 10:00:29 PM PST by luvbach1
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To: kingu
Could there be a way of registering the same vote on two or more independent counting machines.
98 posted on 01/12/2004 10:02:42 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck
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To: Sidebar Moderator
Thank you Mod. I want nothing more than friendly and polite discussion of a topic that affects all of us. We have too much at stake on this one.
99 posted on 01/12/2004 10:06:42 PM PST by GregD
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To: HiTech RedNeck
Could there be a way of registering the same vote on two or more independent counting machines.

Sure, if a voter wants to commit fraud, it's not all that difficult. Look at the senate election in North(?) Dakota recently where several people found, when they went to vote, that they were marked down as having received an absentee ballot. When I was a poll monitor recently, I could have easily have voted at each polling place here in California, because we don't require identification.

Actually, as a poll monitor, it would have been supremely easy. I had a list of people registered to vote who do not normally make it out to the polls, and part of the Get out the Vote program was to see if they did vote, and if they didn't, to go put a vote reminder on their door.

I had their name, their address and could easily have voted for at least one or two of them at each polling place. Electronic voting systems aren't built to prevent voter fraud, but to ensure that an accurate tally is made.

My view is that if the machine prints out a ballot, I can see if the machine recorded my votes right, and that ballot should go into a box so that there is source material to examine if the vote is called into question.
100 posted on 01/12/2004 10:28:50 PM PST by kingu (Remember: Politicians and members of the press are going to read what you write today.)
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