You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.....
Posted on 10/17/2002 8:17:24 AM PDT by FlaFreedom
18 new voting machines go missing in Broward
By Buddy Nevins and Scott Wyman Staff Writers Posted October 17 2002
The Broward County elections office is missing 18 new touch-screen voting machines worth $3,000 each because of poor record-keeping before the flawed Sept. 10 primary, the new elections chief said on Wednesday.
"We don't know where they are. I don't think anyone does at this point," said Joseph Cotter, who was hired to fix the problems highlighted by the chaotic primary.
The missing machines were not used in the election. They were part of Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant's outreach program and presumably were used to educate voters on how to cast ballots on the ATM-like devices.
But Oliphant had no system to track the machines, Cotter said.
"This is very serious," Cotter said. "This is $54,000 in taxpayers' money that we can't find. ... No records, or very inadequate records, were apparently maintained of who took the machines from the warehouse and where they were going."
County commissioners, already reeling from the elections office's budget deficit and the missteps surrounding the primary, were disturbed to hear about the latest problem. They paid $17.2 million for the machinery last winter to replace the old punch-card ballots and said they would hold Oliphant accountable for the lost equipment.
"Every day there is another surprise," Commissioner Kristin Jacobs said. "I just look forward for this election to be over so we can regroup and start fresh. This is absolutely numbing by now. It's unbelievable that there were no systems in place to track where the machines were."
Cotter predicted the machines would be found "in somebody's trunk or someplace's closet."
The touch-screen machines were handled more loosely than the booths used for the old punch-card ballots. Cotter said he could not remember losing one of the booths in the two decades he worked for Oliphant's predecessor, Jane Carroll.
The machines will be tracked more carefully in the Nov. 5 general election, Cotter said. County workers will pick them up immediately after polls close and deliver them to the election warehouse.
Officials for the county and Election Systems & Software, the machines' manufacturer, said the machines would be of little value to anyone who finds them.
Each machine consists mainly of the touch screen and three small hard drives used to store votes. Most of the technology involved is kept on separate hand-held activation devices.
Because their value is largely limited to voting, Cotter thinks the machines have been misplaced.
"This simply appears to be adequate asset controls not being in place," he said.
Officials doubt the lost machines will have any effect on the November election. The county bought 5,040 machines. In addition, ES&S loaned 250 more for training and will have another 320 on standby on Election Day.
Cotter ordered an inventory of the machines, using their bar codes, shortly after he was hired.
The inventory released on Wednesday found that Oliphant's office kept spotty records of what events the consultants visited or how many machines they used. Cotter said he has assigned a staff member to identify the places where outreach programs took place and contact them to see if the machines are there.
Oliphant's office faced criticism even before the audit for its nonchalant treatment of the machines. Four days before the election, a maitre d' driving to work found three of them lying in the middle of Prospect Road.
Dozens of machines were left at polling places -- in clubhouses, churches, schools and community halls -- long after the election. Oliphant's staffers said they weren't concerned even as people were calling the office to ask why the equipment was still around two weeks after the election.
The last machines left at polling places were recovered in late September. Five were discovered at a fire station at Oakland Park Boulevard and the Intracoastal.
As for machines used for voter outreach, two were left at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel until the paper informed the elections office three weeks ago.
The outreach program, paid for in part by a $603,429 state grant, also has been controversial. Oliphant has been criticized for using it to give thousands of dollars in public money to her political allies.
Outside consultants, many of them friends of Oliphant, were hired to demonstrate the machines to civic clubs and condominium groups, and at fairs and other public events.
Commissioners said they want the elections office to pay for the missing machines or find some other way to recoup the cost through insurance claims.
"It's very sloppy management," Commissioner Suzanne Gunzburger said. "This is taxpayer dollars being wasted, and I'm just appalled."
Buddy Nevins can be reached at bnevins@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4571.
Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
The stain has never been on Florida. It's been on the democrats. It will show up wherever there is enough light to see. Any state that can't see it is still in the dark.
Amen and BUMP.
If the rats are taking it so goddamned seriously why isn't the demented Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne and the rest of his yahoos arresting people?.
I guarantee that this type of flagrant fraud is going to suceed unless people start getting locked up.
If the situation was reversed, rat prosecutors and law enforcement would have people in handcuffs in a New York minute.
If the GOP isn't willing to fight the rats on their own terms they deserve to lose.
Most of the replies to this thread presume that the "missing" machines would have to be tampered with and then returned to the ballot places in order to inject bogus votes into the election.
As a programmer, here's what I'd do...
1. Get my hands on one or more stolen machines.
2. Play with them as long as necessary to figure out exactly how they work, what safeguards they contain, and more importantly do *not* contain, and how the software in the machines is updated (no computerized piece of equipment these days is entirely *hardwired*, they all have ways to insert a floppy disk or whatever containing bug fixes, upgrades, adjustments for new data requirements, etc.)
3. *Then*, I'd just write a software "upgrade" for that model of machine (and test it well on my stolen machine) which could modify the behavior of *any* such voting machine in order to make it favor my candidate.
4. Now all I'd have to do is sneak the upgrade into one or more of the machines which are *not* stolen, and presumed "pristine" -- or *all* of them, if the election board is stupid enough to hook these machines up to phone lines for "automatic updates" or "automatic vote reporting".
"Hey, Harry, the manufacturer has a last-minute update for all the machines in this precinct, could you load it for me?"
Done right, the modified software would even self-destruct after the dirty deed had been done, and restore itself to be identical to the manufacturer's actual most recent release, at which point the machines would test as "untampered" no matter how closely they were inspected.
You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.....
I couldn't possibly think of another value voting machines might have to someone. Was there a reporter on this story?
Taken from the DNC playbook, don't vote just once, vote 10 times. Bush/Cheney 2004
The machines will turn up after they've been, er...repaired.
First the machines and now 57,000 absentee ballots...
Thank God I escaped Broward County for Texas.
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