Posted on 12/20/2004 8:24:57 PM PST by Uncle Vlad
Republican Congressman Tom Feeney of Oviedo asked a computer programmer in September 2000, prior to that year's contested presidential vote in Florida, to write software that could alter vote totals on touch-screen voting machines, the programmer said.
Former computer programmer Clint Curtis made the claim Monday in sworn testimony to Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee investigating allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 presidential election involving touch-screen voting in Ohio.
In his testimony, Curtis said that Feeney, then a member of the Florida House of Representative, met with Curtis and other employees of Yang Enterprises, an Oviedo software company, and asked if the company could create a program that would allow a user to alter the vote totals while using the touch-screen machine. The program had to be written so that even the human-readable computer code would not show its illicit capabilities, Curtis recalled.
Curtis said he wrote a prototype program for Feeney, and that he believed the program might not only be usable on touch-screen voting machines, which some counties - predominantly in South Florida - now use, but also on optical-scan machines, which most of the state's counties used in the 2004 elections.
Feeney could not be reached for comment.
Michael O'Quinn, an attorney for Yang Enterprises, said Curtis' claims are outrageous and that Feeney never discussed such a program with the company. He said Feeney's only relationship with the company was as its legal counsel. Feeney worked at the law firm with O'Quinn until 2002, when he resigned after being elected to Congress.
"I immediately assumed that he was trying to keep you guys from cheating," Curtis told Democrats at the hearing Monday. Curtis further said that Li Woan Yang, a co-owner of the company, told him that, "We need to hide the fraud in the source code, not reveal the fraud, because it's needed to control the vote in South Florida."
Curtis, who formerly lived in Oviedo, quit the software company in December 2000, after the November 2000 election that preceded Feeney rise to become speaker of the Florida House.
"I left because all of the meetings with Feeney let me know I wasn't in a situation I wanted to be in," he said in an interview with the Chronicle. "He's in there selling contracts, telling us how to bid them, special little formulas being employed, how you get right point structure. They were going to limit how many vendors could apply to government contracts so only connected vendors could get on the approved list."
O'Quinn confirmed that Curtis resigned, but said he told the company he got a job in another state. Curtis ended up working for the Florida Department of Transportation. O'Quinn also disputed the allegation that Feeney helped work on government bids, saying Feeney was careful to avoid such work because of ethics rules. Feeney "played no role whatsoever" in helping Yang secure government contracts, O'Quinn said. The company currently does work for NASA, the state Department of Transportation and other companies.
Yang Enterprises, in a statement released to the public, said Curtis' allegations are "categorically untrue."
Democrats and independent groups are challenging presidential election results in Ohio, and have claimed that irregularities in some precinct results might have been caused by tampering with electronic voting machines.
Curtis said he has been trying to get attention drawn to his claims since shortly after leaving Yang Enterprises, but has had difficulty until this year. After watching a news report about voting machines in Florida being installed at precincts without having their software inspected, he said he redoubled his effort to get public attention.
"People finally care," Curtis told the Chronicle. "Coming forward isn't the problem, it's people caring."
The Democrats are listening, as is a non-partisan government watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group, which began working with Curtis in early December, is working to verify elements of his story.
Curtis says he is also working with the FBI to investigate another claim he has made against Yang, that the company is spying on NASA. In its response, the company said that the man named by Curtis as the recipient of NASA-related information has never worked for the company.
The company also says Curtis' claims are based on a grudge he has with the company. O'Quinn said he's also being motivated by money.
The Justice Through Music Project, a nonprofit organization that engages young people about political issues, has offered $200,000 for proof of election fraud in 2004.
Curtis said he has not pursued that money, which has not been offered to him.
If Feeney had asked him anything at all, it would have been because he didn't trust touch-screen machines in the first place, and wanted to find reasons for OPPOSING them at the state level. Other than that one possibility, it's all hogwash.
Nope.
I think Curtis is an incompetent figuring on streching 15 minutes of fame into a jackpot.
If you have access to the source code it wouldn't be that hard to do.
All that has to be done is to ask this guy to produce the software either on media or the printed out source code. :-)
As a programmer and someone who has put together teams of developers to work on larger-scale projects, you would not tell the programmers why they were creating this program. You would tell the programmer that you need to balance an equation on an inventory system that weights certain criteria differently in order to help the company maintain certain levels of inventory.
So, we need a system that will increase the amount of a purchase order by 1 for each 8 that are ordered. They will need to write this program into our existing secure software and it must be adjustable for management, but secure from others attempts to hack. Then you ask, can you do it?
You give them the source code and they go to work. Then you have to get the new source code into the system unnoticed and then test it. It obviously will not work perfectly the first time, or even the second time. So you would probably have three runs on the system. Then you have to disseminate the code changes throughout the system and install the correct update parameters to ensure that votes are increased by different margins within each county so that you do not over poll the population.
It would be a conspiracy of enormous proportions across many fields of expertise. In other words, impossible to conceal. I liken it to trying to rig he playoffs of professional baseball. Not impossible, but you would have to have all of the players in the bag. And dumb luck could sink the whole thing. Not worth it, even if Hitler was running with a D behind his name.
While it might not be that hard to write the software, how are you going to get it into voting machines that are maintained, operated, programmed, and kept by Democrats in Democrat voting districts?????????
If the software has already been written, they should pony up with it. Let's see it!!!!!
The DU moonbats are well - you know, its no longer trying to overturn this election... its setting up an impeachment case against the President. As for the allegations, they strike me as ridiculous. If the VRWC was involved in altering the vote totals in Floriduh, its a well kept secret! Actually this overlooks the fact the election canvassing boards in Democratic counties were run by Democrats. They recounted and recounted the votes for Algore and despite their best efforts, he still couldn't win! The sore losers just don't want to face up to the fact they lost and its time to move on. I don't really understand all this Bush hatred - its getting these people nowhere.
Trolling DU looking for nuts - A new guilty pleasure.
Great fodder for DU and Maxine Waters.
A prom programmer. But I do not know what type of system they are using.
A good one would require a computer, like a lap top and a interface program, or a specially made device.
But one can read and reprogram any EPROM based system, just like a car computer with a homemade device or even store bought in some cases.
The thing that stops this sort of treachery is the preop test prior to use. These tests are designed to find failures in the logic. Usually a ladder logic type of program. Bugs should be easy to find.
Well, they sure don't need much of a push to go over the edge.
I have to admit it's my new vice. SOmeone posted a link here and I clicked on it, and it was everything I imagined it to be. I am critical of some postings here but holy cow, what a bunch of eggbrains! (scrambled)
Good point. The people running this "investigation" have so little technical expertise, they probably think television works because there are little people inside of it.
Wasn't it Sheila Jackson Lee, for example, who asked the NASA people if the Mars space probe was going to land on Mars near the place where the Apollo 11 astronauts landed in 1969?
Soros and his ilk would like nothing better than to see us in the situation the Ukraine is in. In Washington State, we are.
Why is he a former computer programmer?
Feeney could not be reached for comment.
Did the paper even try?
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