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.
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.
Think there might be an agenda there on the part of the reporter?
If the software has already been written, they should pony up with it. Let's see it!!!!!
The Supervisors of Elections do not "program" the voting machines. They configure the machines within the constraints of the operating systems source code.
One way to change the vote totals would be as follows: The programmer builds in hidden routines during development of the source code that would allow manipulation of vote totals at a later time. These hidden routines could be in the form of multiple code fragments located in many different areas of the program. These fragments would not be documented thus making it very difficult for other programmers to understand the function of those fragments even if they had access to the source code.
Since the source code would not be available to the end users the Supervisors of Elections would never even see the code much less understand its true function. The hidden code would be constructed in such a way as to allow the manipulation of vote totals for any candidate in any location on the ballot. This would be necessary because many States require the positions of candidates to rotate on the ballot between precincts. In other words in some precincts candidate A is position 1 and in other precincts candidate B is in position 1 and A is in 2.
Remember the programmer is writing generic code that will be used for many different elections in different States thus he has to provide for manipulating the totals for any position on the ballot.
After the code is distributed to the end users the programmer can manipulate the vote totals in the following manner.
The programmer (or his flunkies) obtain fake voter registration in all precincts where they want to manipulate the votes. When he votes he marks the ballot in a way that no one would normally use.
For example he could mark every position on the ballot, for all candidates, except for the candidate that he wants to support, lets use candidate B for our example. The voting machine correctly rejects the ballot as being marked incorrectly and alerts the voter that he needs to recheck his ballot. This is normal operation for the machine but the hidden code has now been activated. The hidden code could tell the voting machine to shift 10% of candidate A's votes on that machine over to candidate B.
Now the person manipulating the vote totals completes his ballot in the normal correct method and moves on to the next precinct and his next fraudulent identity.
If the voting machine does not produce a paper ballot there is no way to detect the fraud.
Touch screen voting machines that do not produce a paper trail are an open invitation to fraud. If they haven't already been used to steal votes they certainly will be before long.
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