High-Tech Voting System Is Banned in California

NY Times ^ | May 1, 2004 | JOHN SCHWARTZ

[neverdem]

California has banned the use of more than 14,000 electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc. in the November election because of security and reliability concerns, Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, announced yesterday. He also declared 28,000 other touch-screen voting machines in the state conditionally "decertified" until steps are taken to upgrade their security.

Mr. Shelley said that he was recommending that the state's attorney general look into possible civil and criminal charges against Diebold because of what he called "fraudulent actions by Diebold."

In an interview, Mr. Shelley said that "their performance, their behavior, is despicable," and that "if that's the kind of deceitful behavior they're going to engage in, they can't do business in California."

The move is the first decertification of touch-screen voting machines, which have appeared by the tens of thousands across the nation as states scramble to upgrade their election technology.

Opponents of the high-tech systems argue that the systems are less secure than what they replace, making it possible for the electoral process to be hacked.

Without a paper trail, created at the time of the voting, to show the votes, they argue, electoral flaws or fraud could go undetected and recounts could be impossible.

In a statement, Diebold's director of marketing for election systems, Mark G. Radke, said, "We have confidence in our technology and its benefits, and we look forward to helping administer successful elections in California and elsewhere in the country in November." The statement also said that the company "disputes the secretary of state's accusations."

Mr. Shelley's decision comes after more than a week of furor in California over glitches that plagued the Super Tuesday primary elections in March in several counties.

Mr. Shelley has said Diebold's missteps "jeopardized the outcome" of the primary, in part because thousands of San Diego voters were turned away from polling places when Diebold equipment malfunctioned.

At public hearings about the voting problems, Robert J. Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems, said in the company's defense, "We're not idiots, though we may act from time to time as not the smartest."

A report issued by Mr. Shelley's office on April 20 accused the company of breaking state election law by installing uncertified software on machines in four counties. It said that Diebold installed systems that were not tested at the federal level or certified at the state level, and that Diebold lied to state officials about the machines.

It is those machines, known as the AccuVote TSX, that have been banned from use in November.

The four counties that currently use the TSX machines, San Diego, San Joaquin, Solano and Kern, would switch to an older technology, known as optical ballot scanning, in which voters mark ballots by hand and the ballots are then fed into a reader.

Mr. Shelley followed the advice of a state advisory committee that recommended that the 10 counties that use touch-screen machines, should be able to use them in November as long as they also provide paper ballots for voters who are wary of the electronic ballot.

The committee, known as the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel, also recommended that no new touch-screen voting machines be used in the November election unless they include a paper verification process.

If the counties do not provide the paper ballot alternative and meet more than 20 other conditions for upgrading security and reliability of the machines, those touch-screen systems will also be banned in the November election.

"I came real close — real close — to decertifying the machines outright in those 10 counties," Mr. Shelley said. But he explained that he made the decertification conditional because the machines had strong support from advocates for the disabled.

He said that the goal was to "balance trying to make this election work in those 10 counties with improving voter confidence."

Mr. Shelley had to make his announcement yesterday to meet a deadline requiring that changes to election procedures be made six months before an election. He has called for all electronic voting machines in the state to produce a paper receipt that can be viewed by voters to verify their choices by 2006; he said he was exploring ways to speed up that process.

Opposition to high-tech voting systems has been building, with a number of groups having formed around the issue.

A voters group in Maryland, the Campaign for Verifiable Voting, filed suit against the Maryland Board of Elections last week to block the use of the state's 16,000 touch-screen machines until paper-based verification systems that display each vote can be added to them.

Federal lawmakers, including Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, have called for voter-verified paper trails as well.

"Once again, California is setting an excellent example for the rest of the country," said David L. Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University and founder of a group, VerifiedVoting.org, that is pushing for paper backup for electronic voting systems.

"Diebold earned this," he said.

Michael Wertheimer, a former official of the National Security Agency who tested Diebold machines at the request of the State of Maryland and found that the election systems could be easily hacked, said that the harsh action by the State of California was appropriate and that the problems with the machines could be addressed.

"They're absolutely fixable problems," said Mr. Wertheimer, but "the time for mea culpas are behind for all of these companies. They have to get out front and say, `We are going to make these systems secure.' "

[Hank Rearden]

Well, of course you need a paper receipt to be dropped into a recount bin after voting - that's the first damn thing that occurred to me upon hearing of this scheme years ago.

Corrupt dumbasses. I'm referring to Big Stupid Government, of course.

[TheLion]

"Why is there no call for requiring Voter Id at the polls?"

I thought we were....lol. Voter ID would put the Democrats out of business!

[Kuksool]

I meant the media. Also ever notice it is only RAT voters who claim to experience voting irregularities?

[TheLion]

If you want to check a rat voter it is immediately called "voter intimidation" or "voter supression". The media won't help because they want to get Democrats elected. 90% of them...is about right.

Maybe Fox would air something on this. Would make a great special...."Vote Fraud in America"....how Democrats steal their seats!

[Kuksool]

[Maybe Fox would air something on this. Would make a great special...."Vote Fraud in America"....]

Ditto on that. Mary Landrieu and Loretta Sanchez should be the hosts of the special. LOL!

[TheLion]

When we get our vote fraud thread up and running, we will have to get people to E-mail Fox and all the players there to do this!

The fact that our most basic freedom....the right to vote, is so abused and full of fraud, is beyond belief.

[Principessa_libertas]

lol! Technology is NOT evil, I am no 'hacker', but I understand computerized systems well enough to know that they ARE insecure. if they want the electronic devices I am willing to wait for ones that include the irreplaceable paper copy.

[Joe Brower]

I am currently in contact with one of the main people trying to expose this fraud, Jim March. Here is his reply to this article:

=====================

Joe, they banned only ONE of their three systems in California. They have optical scan, still in place here and all over the country, the original touchscreens (TS) used in one major California county (Alameda, pop. 1.6mil), all of Georgia, many other places and the new "touchscreen 2" (TSx) sold to four California counties. The latter was banned and those four counties are howling.

One reason Diebold was "punished" in late April was that a Diebold temporary tech from prior to the March 2nd primaries name of James Dunn came forward and contradicted Diebold's testimony before the SecState's voting systems panel. It was myself and Bev Harris that found him; I took his declaration by dictation.

I'm in this up to my neck, dude :).

Anyways. The problem exists all OVER the country. Hell, it was an attempted hack on a Diebold optical scan system in Volusia County FL in 2000 that made Al Gore rescind his concession speech on election night and threw us into a month of chaos. Somebody took a precinct memory card (PCMCIA), duplicated it in a standard laptop, hacked the copy so that it would add 4,000 votes for Bush and 16,022 "negative votes" for Al Gore.

Swear to God. So this utterly incompetent fraud attempt gets caught out on election night, Gore hears of it, naturally goes "what the f**k?" and the rest is history.

That particular fraud may have been incompetent, and hence caught, but they still didn't catch who tried it. There was also pro-Gore fraud going on too, it was a total mess in FL like everybody knows.

IF we can break them completely in California, they'll lose too much credibility and get scrapped nationwide.

=====================

[backhoe]

-The Vote Fraud Archives--

[neverdem]

Somebody took a precinct memory card (PCMCIA),

That abbreviation looks weird. Why isn't it a PMC?

duplicated it in a standard laptop, hacked the copy so that it would add 4,000 votes for Bush and 16,022 "negative votes" for Al Gore.

That's an awkward way to phrase it. Why not say subtract so many votes from Gore.

I say to hell with the Australian ballot. Citizens should be on record with their votes, just as their legislators should. Tallying the total votes should be just as public.

[Joe Brower]

PCMCIA is an acronym for "Personal Computer Memory Card International Association". Nowadays they're more commonly called PC Cards.

I've also heard that it also secretly stands for "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms". $;-)

As for being on the record with my vote, I have no problem with that. Say it loud, say it proud!

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[neverdem]

PCMCIA is an acronym for "Personal Computer Memory Card International Association".

Sounds like something made up by the Socialist Internationale.

There's another way these clowns steal elections. People diagnosed with Alzheimer's and other dementias are voting in nursing homes with the help of folks in local 1199, Service Employees International Union.

[Saundra Duffy]

Kevin Shelley is in trouble himself for campaign fraud. Sometimes I just can't stand California!!!!!!!!!!!

[neverdem]

Sometimes I just can't stand California!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes I just can't stand New York. Unfortunately, I was born in northern Manhattan on the Hudson to a family of working class dems. Before I joined the Army I had to listen to my sister say, "better red than dead". Although she now lives in the people's republic of New Jersey, she doesn't spout that nonsense anymore.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

People diagnosed with Alzheimer's and other dementias are voting in nursing homes with the help of folks in local 1199, Service Employees International Union.

Then there are those outside of the nursing homes.

[Grampa Dave]

Kevin Shelley is up to his eyeteeth in vile stuff that he did while running for office.

Norms Revenge has documented a lot of smelly stuff oozing from Smelly Shelley.

Are the rat internal polls showing a defeat for Kerry in California, so the rats do this to ensure that we don't vote?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=any;o=score;s=Kevin%20Shelley%20

[NormsRevenge]

Thanks GrampaDave..

If anyone wants to review some of the stuff on SoS Shmelley

use keyword ... shmelleygate

Nothing but corrupt , abusive folks seem to dominate the 'Rats in California's upper echelon of political and "popular" 'leaders'.

I stopped posting stuff for the last few days due to the RNC. But there is still stuff working its way thru the media about his sorryness, the SoS.

He'll be gone before November if we are lucky.

[NormsRevenge]

But it worked so well for the people of Venezuela. ;-)

[Grampa Dave]

Scmelley tried to delay the ballots to get rid of Davis until we screamed.

I have a terrible feeling that this is his last shot at us as non rat voters. If those machines aren't fixed nor used, I doubt if we can have the old punch ballots and machines back in place by then.