FReepers Against Voter Fraud

Since I am renewing this thread a little sooner than planned, I am leaving the original body of the thread in place and just making additions of references at this time. I think it is important to keep the statement of purpose and how we came to it at the forefront for now. Later on, as more people become aware of the thread and how it is set up, I will probably change it some and just give a link back to the original.

"The right of citizens to vote and have their vote count is the cornerstone of our democracy - the necessary precondition of government of the people, by the people and for the people. Enforcing the laws that guarantee voting rights and punish voting fraud is the duty of the Department of Justice. More than mere law enforcement, our responsibility to protect the access to and integrity of elections is the responsibility of upholding freedom itself.

America is a nation whose founding documents and most inspired words uphold the ideal of democratic self-government as a model for the world. The opening phrases of the Declaration of Independence declare that governmental power, if it is to be just, must be derived from the consent of the governed. The Constitution begins, purposefully and deliberately, with these three words: "We the people . . ."

America has failed too often to uphold the right of every citizen's vote, once cast, to be counted fairly and equally. Votes have been bought, voters intimidated and ballot boxes stuffed. The polling process has been disrupted or not completed. Voters have been duped into signing absentee ballots believing they were applications for public relief. And the residents of cemeteries have infamously shown up at the polls on election day.

Today, it is more important than ever before that we embrace the privilege that makes us unique among the peoples, nations and societies of human history. Our way of life is not a given, and our freedom is not an accident. Liberty is a rare gift for which millions have worked and suffered and sacrificed and died. It now falls to us to guard this gift from those who would destroy it. It falls to us, the free, to ensure that the cornerstone of our freedom - government of the people, by the people, and for the people - does not perish from the earth."

It has been quite a month and overall a victorious one for Republicans. The new year looms bright on the horizon with the promise of much needed changes taking place now that we have the majority in both the House and Senate and with the opportunity to finally have some conservative judges seated who will uphold the Constitution rather than legislating the socialist agenda of the Democrats from the bench and Tiny Tommy Daschle and his obstructionist thugs have been spanked soundly and sent to their rooms.

While we had several days of delirious gloating, drunk on the thrill of a hard earned and well-deserved victory, we know all too well that the election and the events leading up to it were not without incident and once again the deck was stacked against us as the Democrats tried every trick in the book in yet another shameless effort at stealing an election. With the blatant disregard for the law so characteristic of them when it obstructs their designs, they managed to get a liberal kangaroo court to uphold the replacement of Torricelli on the ballot in New Jersey beyond the legal deadline for doing so for no other reason than having determined that the scandal and corruption surrounding Torricelli rendered him incapable of winning. In Minnesota, prior to Paul Wellstone's ill-fated final flight, a plan was uncovered that had Democrats busing in students from out of state to take advantage of Minnesota's same day voter registration to vote illegally for Paul Wellstone. Even as this was being revealed, the campaign was underway to push a similar same day registration legislation in Colorado and California, thereby opening new avenues for illegal voting in those states. In South Dakota Democrat operatives (sorry, I cannot bring myself to use the word "Democratic") paid a field worker in excess of $12,000 over a period of 3 months to register native Americans on the reservations. It was later discovered that many registration cards that had been turned in by that worker had been written in the same handwriting. Among the newly registered was at least one who was known to be recently deceased. This and other irreglarities that were uncovered in South Dakota has led to 1 out of 10 ballots there being under investigation. Fish need water, plants need sunshine, an addict needs a fix and Democrats need power and these three cases are just samples of the extent to which they will go to get it.

The idea for this thread was born following the Arkansas Hog Wild FReepers' discovery of organized intimidation tactics on the part of Democrat and NAACP operatives in Jefferson County, Arkansas as relayed by FReeper, stop_the_rats, a Republican poll watcher who gained undesired and unfair national notoriety during early voting, and by a Republican campaign worker who "infiltrated" the Clinton led, pre-election campaign "event" there. The original story was posted as part of the after-FReep report with more detail added in a post-election update. The story generated such outrage that the thread turned into a FReeper brainstorm as we labored over how we might counteract the dishonest methods employed by the Democrats to hijack elections. The effort yielded an abundance of references and it was generally agreed that voter fraud is, or at least should be, of great concern to all of us. There is a strong probability that the South Dakota election was stolen and in Arkansas the fraud machine was spinning out of control and may well have cost Tim Hutchinson his senate seat as well, despite the shadow cast over him in the wake of his divorce and remarriage. Chances are that we'll never know. Thankfully neither of these races ended up being the tie-breaker that would determine the balance of power in the Senate, but either could have been and had that been the case, you can bet it would have gotten really ugly and may have produced an entirely different result.

Even as the Democrats are still licking their wounds and wondering what on Earth happened on November 5, they are already scrambling and scheming and conniving as to ways to prevent our intercepting their next power grab in 2004. This is revealed in their ongoing efforts to block any attempt to validate a voter's legitimacy whether it be by requiring a legal form of ID at the polls, the repeal of motor voter legislation, cracking down on absentee balloting and early voting, doing away with same day registration or by the presence of poll watchers at polling places. In every case they play the race card crying "black voter intimidation" when in reality they are simply thrashing against the net that could trap those guilty of voting illegally thereby inhibiting travel on their familiar roads of voter fraud. Thankfully, Republicans were more diligent this year and undoubtedly made an impact. More questionable ballots were challenged, more questions raised, more accountability called for and more light shed on irregularities. Until recently, prosecution for voter fraud has been virtually unheard of, but that is starting to change. There have been hundreds of stories published over the past several weeks relating to voting irregularities and credible allegations of fraud. Some have led to criminal charges being filed and still others have led to investigations which are ongoing. While it is unlikely that all election fraud can be stopped, it is much harder for it operate under a spotlight, which is exactly why we must each do our part to make sure that the spotlight stays on those "shadowy" recesses where voting machines mysteriously vanish, ballot boxes are obscured from view and the demons of electoral darkness run amok.

It was suggested that the opening remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft be used as the basis of our mission statement for this thread. In these precarious times when we are at war and we are threatened daily by terrorism, our liberty has become more precious than ever and we must be vigilant to protect it not only from foreign invaders, but also from those who would erode it from within by compromising the integrity of our elections. In order to succeed in a battle it is essential to know the enemy and attack at his greatest point of vulnerability. Included here is a list of links, which while by no means exhaustive, can serve to enlighten the electorate. Many of these stories are from Arkansas only because this was the springboard for this thread and we look forward to other FReepers adding stories from their own areas as well as any based in personal experience. The original thread also produced a wealth of resources as we discussed who we should contact if we became aware of voting irregularities or suspected fraud. Again the list of links is far from comprehensive and additions are welcome. Of course the whole point of this exercise is to get more conservative voters involved in changing the laws to close loopholes which make it easy to cheat, to promote the enforcement of existing election laws and to take part in the election process at the local level all with the goal of intercepting future fraud campaigns. In other words our goal is to STOP THE RATS FROM HIJACKING THE ELECTION PROCESS AND TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!

Many thanks to all the wonderful FReepers who contributed their time, energy and ideas to produce the foundation for this thread:

On thread 2, I also want to thank Saundra Duffy, Mia T and mlmr for their alerting us to a couple more hot spots and also providing some additional information. Thank you to diotima, ffrancone, and Nick Danger for their efforts to move this campaign beyond Free Republic and disseminate information for public consumption. Updates on this effort will be posted regularly as well. Geist Krieger, has provided a very interesting and in depth analysis of methods of voting and their impact on our elections. If anybody has a means of storing a document for public access, please let me know and I will FReepmail it to you so that a link can be posted. It is quite long.

KNOW THY ENEMY! If you're like me, you once had a naive trust in the integrity of our elections in America. All that changed for me though, with the election debacle of 2000 when it became readily apparent that Al Gore was trying to steal the presidency and his operatives were so desperate that they were doing it right in the face of the American people. I was absolutely furious but I believed that now that people could see the Clinton/Gore political machination for the shameless assault on America that it was, they would wake up and demand accountability from those responsible. I really wasn't prepared for seeing how many people would continue to perpetrate the lies the Democrats told even in the face of that fiasco and how many would continue to buy into them. Even after that I believed that surely, now that it was out in the open, something would be done to fix it before the next election. I also was not prepared to discover the extent to which voter fraud had woven its way into our political system like a burrowing parasite with expanding tentacles entwining themselves around the arteries of freedom. The sense of betrayal I have felt has been disheartening, to say the least, but it gave rise to the outrage that made me determined to try to do something about it. If you read even a few of these links, it will change forever the way you look at future elections and will hopefully encourage you to be part of the solution.

If any of these links become outdated many of these articles are posted in their entirity on the original FReep thread. If you let me know via FReepmail, I will make editorial adjustments accordingly before renewing the thread.

In order to effect changes it is important to have channels through which we can make our voice heard. One reason the Democrats get away with as much as they do is because they make a lot of noise. It is time WE make some noise of our own. There are a number of individuals, organizations and media sources who support our Constitution and seek to protect the integrity of our elections. Here are a few of them. Rather than clutter the body of this thread with a long list of email addresses, I will post the websites. Most of these have contacts and email addresses on them. While I have not listed any here, it is important to keep in mind that just because a source is on the opposing side doesn't mean that they can't still be used to our advantage. Consider this parable of Jesus.

Election laws and practices vary widely from state to state, and therein lies part of the problem. In order to address the issues we need first to know what the law, as it currently exists is and work within it and where applicable work to see that it is enforced. Second, you will come to discover that many of the opportunities for fraud are born from flaws in the laws themselves, in which case we need to work on getting those laws changed. Below is a very brief list of some election laws and guidelines which we have referenced recently. I am sure this section will grow considerably as others add their contributions.

What can FReepers do? For starters we can identify states that will have key races in the 2004 election. Is your state one of them? Are there known problem precincts in YOUR county? Let's start getting important information about the race, the candidates, the electoral history of the state, the laws in that state and how open they may leave the process to tampering, history of voter fraud in the state, conservative media outlets there, and whatever else you can think of that might be relevant to equip the electorate to head off problems in advance.

Democrats LIE! Their biggest and most effective lie is that Republicans are deliberately trying to prevent blacks and/or other minorities from voting. In effect, they're calling us racists. The truth is that it is them who seem to consider blacks and other minorities so inferior and ignorant and lacking in initiative that they are incapable of voting without the benefit of THEIR (the Democrats') "guidance" and "protection". They squeal "intimidation" at every opportunity and intimidation certainly comes into play. The real question is "who is doing the intimidating?" Their greatest fear is that blacks will recognize how badly they've been duped and insulted by these people and leave the party in droves. That can work in our favor if we work with it. Black conservatives have perhaps the greatest responsibility for telling other black voters the truth about the Democrat party, although it is certainly something we should all work on. Independent thought is the enemy of the Democrats.

Talk about election fraud. Bring it up whenever an opportunity presents itself. Keep a notebook at all times and if someone tells you anything pointing to vote fraud, get more details. Write down such things as county, precinct, candidates in the race, name of the witness and whatever else you can think of. If it seems credible, report it to someone, then follow it up and find out what, if anything, was done with the information.

Have your elected officials, city attorneys, election officers and judges in your email address book, your regular address book and on speed dial. When you become aware of a credible allegation of voter fraud, get busy and push for them to prosecute offenders very publicly and to the FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW! If a few people are seen to be doing time for their electoral indiscretions, observers may be less willing to follow suit.

Rally others and spend election day in parking areas of and near problem polling places at ready with notebook and camera. A favorite technique of Democrats is to load up buses full of paid voters and haul them from precinct to precinct to cast multiple votes. Getting license numbers of these buses and observing them closely could yield enough evidence to prove fraud. Note or photograph anything "out of the ordinary".

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." (Josef Stalin)

Take part in the process. Here is a list of suggestions that stop_the_rats posted on another thread:

1. Plan to take election day off in 2004.
2. Be a poll worker. You get paid for this.
3. Be a poll watcher. Call your local Republican headquarters or the campaign office of one of your Republican candidates and volunteer to be a poll watcher.
4. Count absentee ballots. You get paid for this also.
5. Be a poll closer. It's a long day. Some people who can't poll watch because of work, could agree to come after work for 2 hours and close the polls to give poll watchers a break. Get final counts and make sure no "late" voters turn up.
6. Take lunches to poll workers and poll watchers.
7. Man the headquarters so if problems arise, poll workers or watchers have a place to call for help. Have a list of numbers: local election officals, state officals.
8. Find a person who will agree to "be in charge"of all the rules poll watchers and poll workers need to follow. Each state has rules and in some cases, state election representatives will come to your city and give a presentation.
9. Encourage others to get involved.
10. Smile; we have them worried!

Some might want to take it a step furthur, if that is an option in your area, and be an election judge. Or you may have specific talents and training that you could donate to the cause, such as legal assistance and advice.

Finally; ask questions. FReepers have an uncanny ability to ask the right questions in most any situation AND to find answers and we have an inexhaustable resource right here on Free Republic. Here are just a few questions to start with.

"How do we work to get cooperation between poll watchers and workers and clarify expectations on all sides BEFORE an election?"

"How can you prove fraud? What is legal in a given state (photos, tape recording, witness statements, compiling a list of names, video taping) and how can these techniques be implemented in a non-obtrusive way?"

How limiting is jurisdiction on working in some capacity at the polls? This may vary from state to state. For example, during the training for counting absentee ballots in Pulaski County, Arkansas, I was told that to be a poll worker or to count ballots, you had to be a resident of the county in which you served, but that a poll watcher could be from anywhere as long as he or she was authorized by the candidate or party. This could be very useful to pursue. In the 2002 election, in spite of all the Rat hype, there was still a shortage of Republican poll watchers in a number of "problem" locations. There were also quite a few FReepers who expressed a desire to do something, but there were no particular problems in their own areas. If we can, in fact, be poll watchers anywhere, that may have great potential for wider coverage of historically fraud prone precincts in future elections.

"If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

FReepers; your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get out there and STOP THE RATS!

As information has been posted, I have been keeping track of counties that have a history of voting "irregularities" and/or blatant fraud or in which there is legal action currently pending. From that information I have generated a county "watch list". This is not only to alert those seeking to combat the voter fraud travesty, but also to put those responsible for it on notice that the game is up and the heat is on. This list will no doubt grow as more cases come to light, and by all means, if you know of such concerns in your local areas, alert this thread and have the offending county "hot listed". It is the contributions of FReepers that will make this effort work!

Broward County

Duvall County

Lake County

Miami-Dade County

Orange County

Osceola County

Palm Beach County

Seminole County

Volusia County

Bennett County

Codington County

Dewey County

Minnehaha County

Pennington County

Shannon County

Ziebach County

The following states have been pinged, which means if your state's flag isn't flying, then FReepers in your state have not yet been alerted! The flags are posted in the order the states were pinged. It would be nice to have a representative FReeper from each state, particularly those states that are "fraud zones". If anyone would be willing to represent your state on this thread on a regular basis, please let me know and I will begin a list of FReeper contacts for each state.

Florida looks at new ways to vote

By Maya Bell | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted January 18, 2003

ELECTION OPTIONS

The Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections recommends a study of:
Regional voting sites
The current precinct structure
Mail balloting and early voting

State elections officers say it might be time to get rid of a basic building block of American democracy: the neighborhood precinct.

The Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections is urging the Legislature to study voting by mail or at regional voting centers, eliminating the need for thousands of poll workers and polling places.

Supervisors say they have little choice, as new state and federal requirements will significantly increase both the costs and challenges associated with conducting elections.

"We recognize it as a direction we may have to go in, and that's why the study needs to occur now," said Ion Sancho, the supervisor in Leon County who made the proposal at the association's winter conference in Citrus County this month. "There are tremendous changes coming, and we have to be ready."

Among the most worrisome changes, supervisors say, are mandates in two new laws, the federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, and a state law known by its Senate bill number, 1350. Phased in during the next three years, the legislation could require counties to spend millions on new voting machines while rendering hundreds, if not thousands, of Florida's polling places obsolete.

The laws will require every precinct to be accessible to voters with disabilities. By 2006, all precincts must, for example, have paved parking lots and doors and thresholds of a specific width and height. But many older facilities, particularly churches, do not meet those requirements. The most popular polling places in Florida, churches, are exempt from the federal Americans With Disabilities Act.

Machine for disabled

Every precinct also will have to have at least one voting machine for blind or other disabled voters. That means the 49 Florida counties now using paper ballots read by optical scanners must add at least one touch-screen machine with an audio component to every precinct. Sancho estimates the cost of that requirement to Leon alone will exceed $400,000.

"Should polling places be accessible to the handicapped? You betcha!" said Pasco County Supervisor Kurt Browning, chair of the association's legislative committee. "But in my opinion, it's absurd to have to provide for something you don't need in every single precinct. And who pays for it? We do."

HAVA, which Congress passed after Miami-Dade and Broward failed to open dozens of polls on time for the Sept. 10 primary, is supposed to provide money to the states, more than $170 million for Florida alone. But because most of the funds are already earmarked and it's up to a new Congress to actually allocate, supervisors fear the counties won't see much of it.

Push alternatives

With that and other challenges in mind, they voted unanimously to ask legislators to begin exploring alternatives that some states already employ to varying degrees. They have yet to discuss their ideas with outgoing Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood, but she's certain to hear of them after assuming office as Florida's first appointed secretary of state Feb. 26.

One is voting by mail, an option The Center for Voting and Democracy hails for increasing voter participation while reducing costs and challenges for elections officials.

Many states, including Florida, already allow mail balloting but often for limited purposes. Florida permits it only for deciding issues, not picking candidates. Oregon stands alone in using mail balloting for every election.

"We don't have polling places anymore," said Nancy Ferry, an elections-compliance specialist in Oregon. "We get our ballots about two weeks before the election, so it's plenty of time to think about the issues and vote without pressure or having to run to the polls. We love it."

So does Orange County Supervisor Bill Cowles, who in 1997 conducted what was then the largest mail-ballot election in Florida, when Orange County voters turned down a penny sales-tax increase. Orange County officials are considering using mail balloting again, if they ask voters to pass a half-penny tax for transportation.

"You don't have to hire poll workers. You don't have to deliver voting equipment. You don't have to set up a phone network to communicate," Cowles said. "Lots of logical headaches are cut down."

Elections experts cite some drawbacks, too, including the increased chances for fraud and the high costs of printing and postage. While tabulating machines in Oregon kick out mail ballots bearing signatures that don't match those on registration cards, there's no way to guarantee the legitimacy of each vote.

"Mail balloting has worked well in Oregon, and it's worked well in Washington state. Both claim they've had no or very low incidences of fraud. But the truth of the matter is we don't know because no one investigates this," said Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center in Houston, a nonprofit organization that aids elections administrators.

Money losses

Browning, the Pasco supervisor, notes another significant drawback in Florida: The counties that, like his own, were required to replace punch-card voting machines with more-advanced technology after the disputed 2000 presidential election won't be eager to mothball that expensive equipment.

After the cliffhanger that sent George W. Bush to the White House by just 537 votes, Pasco spent $4.5 million replacing its punch-card machines with touch screens. In South Florida, the site of numerous problems, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties spent more than $54 million doing the same.

But Browning said touch screens are ideal for setting up 10, 20 or 30 "super-precincts" or regional voting centers in each county, much as Texas does, because they can be programmed on the spot to display the right ballot for any voter who walks up.

Since 1988, voters in the Lone Star State have had the choice of casting ballots on Election Day at their neighborhood precinct or during a two-week window before an election at any of a number of centralized locations, such as grocery stores, malls or hotels.

The majority of Texans still choose the former, but the percentage of those opting for early voting increases every year, said Shannon Cantrell, spokeswoman for the secretary of state in Texas.

Florida enthusiastic

Noting that Floridians have shown similar enthusiasm for early voting -- tens of thousands cast ballots in the weeks before this past November's election -- Sancho envisions a day when Florida's old precinct system is abolished. Perhaps it would be replaced with a hybrid of mail balloting and regional voting centers that open for one, two or even three weeks before an election.

Reducing costs

The Leon supervisor said the combination would reduce costs while resolving the ever-increasing challenge of finding enough polling places and workers to pull off glitch-free elections. While agreeing such changes are "the wave of the future," Citrus County Supervisor Susan Gill said the state that has been at the center of election turmoil for the past two years likely will proceed with caution.

"We're not barreling in saying, 'Do this; do this.' We're saying, 'How about looking at this?' " Gill said. "You'll still have people who want to do what they feel is that totally American thing -- and that is go to the polls on Election Day.

"http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-asecelect18011803jan18,0,3010179.story?coll=orl-news-headlines

California:

Council member required to resign
Calimesa official admits voter fraud
By ALAN SCHNEPF, Staff Writer

Calimesa Councilman Jon Taylor pleaded guilty Friday to a misdemeanor count of voter fraud and will have to step down from the City Council as part of a plea bargain, said City Manager Harry Jensen.

Taylor, 61, had faced four felony Election Code offenses related to allegations that he fraudulently voted and ran for office as a Calimesa resident when he lived in Yucaipa.

The plea bargain calls for three years of probation during which Taylor cannot hold or run for public office.

Taylor's listing in an October 2000 Yucaipa phone book gives his address as being on Sidana Road, a Yucaipa address a few blocks north of the Calimesa-Yucaipa border. He was first elected to the Calisa council in 1996.

Taylor, however, contended he had an established residency in Calimesa in an upstairs apartment in the Crown Village shopping center, which he owns.

He also had a Calimesa address through an apartment by the Calimesa Country Club he leased for $1 per year. He used that address to vote in 2001, according to testimony from Riverside County elections officials.

Taylor testified that he never physically lived in the apartment, according to court documents.

The apartment normally rents for $550. Country club employees testified before a grand jury that they did not know why the apartment was leased for such a low price.

"You'll have to ask my boss about that,' said Bill Bracy, the club's general manager.

Bracy's boss is country club owner Art Braswell, who also owns Pharaoh's Lost Kingdom theme park in Redlands and several other businesses.

Jensen said the Calimesa council will now decide how it wants to replace Taylor, although it can function as a four-member body if it chooses to do so.

A special election could be held but would be expensive, Jensen said.

The council may also choose to appoint someone to serve out the rest of Taylor's term.

"It's a good thing for the city that this is over,' Jensen said. "It's a bad thing for Jon Taylor. He was a pretty good councilman and he's a pretty good person. He exercised some judgment that in retrospect wasn't correct.'

Jensen said Taylor will be ordered to pay $5,000 in fines at his sentencing, scheduled for Feb.18.

The city will receive $3,000 of that money because it is considered the victim in the case, Jensen said.

The matter cost the city money because it had to pay its contracted city attorney to handle civil litigation it filed against Taylor over questions about his residency.

That matter will be dropped because Taylor is leaving the council.

The state will receive $1,000 of the fine. The other $1,000 will go to Riverside County.

When Taylor filed for re-election in 2000, he listed a Fourth Street address in Calimesa. He also listed that address for voting in the November 2000 election.

But a woman interested in buying the house testified that it was empty and full of cobwebs when she toured it in November 2000.

http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208~12588~1119540,00.html

High-Tech Voting Raises Questions

Anyone who ever has used a computer has had this sinking feeling: Will that frozen screen reboot? Can those pages made indecipherable by the word processor be recovered? Can those mangled documents be pulled out of the printer? Everyone understands one simple truism: Computer programs do not always operate the way they should.

But what if the computer in question is the one that a citizen just entrusted with his precious vote? Will that vote be counted, or will it disappear into cyberspace? After the fiasco of the butterfly ballots in Florida in 2000, many jurisdictions rushed to install computer-based voting systems. Brian Hancock, an election-research specialist for the Federal Election Commission (FEC) tells Insight that 12.2 percent of registered voters in the United States in 2000 used touch-screen-type terminals, which store each voter's choices in a memory cartridge, diskette or smart card, then tally those choices with those of all voters in the jurisdiction. This so-called "direct-recording-electronic"(DRE) device, like a mechanical lever system, uses no paper ballot and virtually has no hard-copy audit trail.

So what if the machine fails? What if the code is faulty? What if someone with access to the machine tampers with the code? What if the code displays one action on the screen but tallies something else? What if a politician whose name appears on the ballot screen owns the company that writes the code? These are real questions that already have arisen, and they may become more important as the nation moves quickly to universal use of computer-based systems.

Hancock says that in the 2002 midterm elections the state of Georgia went entirely to a DRE system, and Maryland used DRE technology for elections in its largest counties. There will be more. On Oct. 29, President George W. Bush signed into law the Help America Vote Act, which provides funds to help state governments upgrade older voting machines. Rebecca Mercuri, an assistant professor of computer science at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, tells Insight that during the next decade U.S. and Canadian officials will spend $2 billion to $4 billion to upgrade electronic voting systems. But she is convinced these officials are spending those billions of taxpayer dollars on new technology that very few of them fully understand.

What those officials do understand, she says, is that they are buying something that is audited internally and not open to public scrutiny -- because the jurisdictions are required to sign trade-secret agreements that preclude the equipment from being opened and the programming codes from being inspected without a court order. "We know that [some of] these machines have lost votes and have come up with zeroes at the end of the day," she tells Insight, noting hundreds of postelection reports of voting computers "locking up, jamming and having to be rebooted. What is going on with these machines we have no way of knowing."

Shortly after the 2000 elections, Mercuri testified before the House Science subcommittee on the Environment, Technology and Standards, telling the congressmen, "Any programmer can write code that displays one thing on a screen, records something else and prints out yet another result."

Computer algorithms make the DRE systems work, explained Dennis Vadura of the California technology firm AccuPoll Holding Corp. The software code implements the election rules and regulations of the jurisdiction where the voting machines will be used. "That is what makes the machine present the correct information to the voter," he says. The code programs such things as candidates' names, referendum choices or the time when polls are to be open or closed. It is those instructions that are being submitted for review.

Vadura supports keeping the codes proprietary. From a business standpoint, he explains, typically the goal of the software company is to keep the code it developed a trade secret. "I don't want my competitor to see it because I might have certain abilities or techniques that we implemented in our code that give us a competitive advantage." But he adds, "You have to balance that [business need] with [the question], 'How can people trust it?'"

Vadura says he understands calls for making the software freely available to the public. But even a publicly owned firm such as AccuPoll would be reluctant openly to relinquish its code, because of profit responsibilities to its stockholders.

Vadura indicated paper-verified ballots are more auditable but still would not eliminate software glitches or the potential for unverified code. "But the approach we took is our tallies are effectively out in the open," he says. "The two numbers have to match, paper versus electronic. If they do, there is no nefarious intent -- by definition." The voter-verifiable paper ballot is a check and balance on the reality that hundreds of lines of computer code for each individual voting machine cannot otherwise be verified without spending an awful lot of money, Vadura says.

Trusting the local election officials may be hard enough for some voters after recent fiascos. "There is no such thing as a perfect election. You've just got too many variables," says R. Doug Lewis, director of the Election Center, a service association for election officials. "There are 6,800 election jurisdictions and roughly 18,000 election officials, 1.4 million poll workers, 200,000 polling places. You are going to end up with some mistakes." But he adds that, because of the 2000 election, all elections are under a microscope, noting that "those in Florida are under an electron microscope."

Lewis appears to confirm Mercuri's allegations. Many jurisdictions program their election software themselves, he says, and even then the accuracy of the code is only as good "as the attention span of the person on the day that they [typed it in]."

According to Lewis, FEC standards are used as the national qualification to ensure that voting systems count and record votes accurately by examining software code and how the code is developed. But, he adds, "We don't get into much evaluating of whether the code is well-written as much as [seeing that] it does what the vendor says it does and does so accurately." Fewer than 20 companies that design election systems can survive the testing and certification process, he says.

Not all critics of paperless voting systems are computer experts. Lewis suggests the main roadblock that keeps technology from spreading more quickly in the election process is elected officials, not election officials. "Elected officials, legislatures, county commissioners hate that sort of thing. They don't necessarily like to change the way they got elected," he says.

Secondly, he says, the general public only now is beginning to wean themselves from a physical piece of paper for a ballot, because there has been a desire to have a hard-copy ballot to go back to in a recount during a close election.

Most election errors are equipment errors, with occasional programming errors due to a programmer setting up a ballot incorrectly or accidentally skipping a candidate, Lewis acknowledges. But errors usually are discovered very quickly, he says, and usually are limited to only one or two precincts instead of being county- or statewide.

The reason for the programming errors, he explains, is that ballot styles within a state can differ with each jurisdiction's grouping of candidates. It depends on how many races actually are listed on a state's ballot. For example, some states have more appointed officers, such as judges, so they won't have as many election contests to list. "Other states have judges, dogcatchers, precinct committeemen, and the ballot gets really long," Lewis says. "You don't just program one ballot into the computer. You program every different ballot style that is necessary for you to have in an election."

Avante International Technology Inc. of Princeton, N.J., has been developing smart-card technology since 1995. It now has a patent pending for its Vote-Trakker system, which the company says is a voter-verifiable election system with real-time paper audit trails. Vote-Trakker was the first DRE touch-screen voting machine used in the state of California that incorporated a real-time, voter-verifiable printed ballot image. It made its debut in Sacramento County for the 2002 midterm election.

But Avante researcher James Minadeo agrees with Mercuri that illicit code and hacking are a threat to computerized voting. "Any system in the world can be hacked at some point," he admits.

In addition to using touch-screen voting, Vote-Trakker prints a record of recorded votes on a paper ballot that is shown under a protective cover so that it cannot be removed from the polling station. One problem with paper ballots is vote selling. Paper verification of the vote of a person allowed to leave the polling place could be manipulated to allow the unscrupulous to exchange contrived paper "proof" for cash.

With Vote-Trakker, the printer retracts the paper ballot after the voter has reviewed it and stores it as a paper backup to the electronic tabulation. Further, each ballot is encoded with a verification number to secure its authenticity, but it is encrypted to ensure voter privacy. The technology also records when a voter intentionally chooses not to vote in a specific political race, Minadeo says.

Despite critics' charges that the certification process is lax, Minadeo says that independent testing authorities (ITAs), which perform line-by-line code reviews, do on occasion turn up unacceptable coding in submitted software. He acknowledges that ITAs don't let everyone look at the codes they inspect, although the source codes are escrowed: "So if there is a suspicion of fraud you can open that source code, and then everyone can examine it under a court order," he says.

However, the courts may require stronger evidence beyond accusations that the machines inaccurately have recorded votes. One complication is that, without the paper backup, proving accusations of irregularities could be difficult.

Voting-system designers have their own security concerns, says Minadeo, including election officials who are very close to the inspection process and suddenly get hired by the other companies. He recounted one recent incident in California, where the official who directed the certifying of voting-system technical packages now is working for the competition. "He has all of your manuals and knows everything about your system because he actually inspected it and tested it and [now] he is working for [our competitors], Minadeo fumes. The former California official now is being investigated by the state, Minadeo says, because other voting-system companies also have complained.

Finally, what happens when a politician on the ballot owns the computer-software system displaying his name? Election Systems & Software (ES&S), according to its Website, is the world's largest and most experienced provider of total election-management systems and "has handled more than 40,000 of the world's most important events -- elections." The company's products were used in the 2000 general election to count more than 100 million ballots. ES&S is a subsidiary of the McCarthy group, a private Omaha merchant banking organization founded in 1986. U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) has come under scrutiny because of his associations with ES&S and McCarthy, in which he still owns shares.

Hagel has been forthcoming and public about his business-interest ties with the election-product manufacturer. According to a fact sheet provided by Hagel's staff, prior to his November 1996 election to the U.S. Senate, he served as president of McCarthy and Co., a private investment-banking firm, and as an interim chairman of American Information Systems Inc. (AIS), an election-software company in which McCarthy and Co. owns an interest. AIS since has been renamed ES&S. Moreover, McCarthy and Co. Chief Executive Officer Michael McCarthy was the treasurer of Hagel's re-election campaign. Hagel is on record as having disclosed that he still holds $1 million to $5 million in McCarthy stock. Despite his full disclosure the connection continues to make the senator a target for dyspeptic critics who claim to see an unethical conflict between being a vote seeker and being part owner of the vote-counting machinery.

The company fact sheet points out that Hagel resigned his brief chairmanship of AIS two weeks before announcing his candidacy for the Senate at the end of March 1995. The following January, he resigned from his position as president of McCarthy and Co. Furthermore, the fact sheet notes that his hometown newspaper also is a substantial investor in ES&S. "Neither Sen. Hagel, McCarthy and Co., nor the Omaha World-Herald has failed to disclose its relationship with AIS or ES&S," it states. "The information is both documented and public."

AccuPoll's vote-verifiable technology is similar to Vote-Trakker, and AccuPoll's final certification is expected within weeks, according to Vadura. But AccuPoll Holding Corp. is one of the few publicly owned companies in the election-systems industry, and therefore is subject to full disclosure, say critics.

Bonnie Cuellar, a proposal manager for ES&S, says electronic-voting systems such as the paperless one sold by ES&S are subjected to examination by ITAs. Once approved they are certified by the National Association of Secretaries of State or the National Association of State Election Directors. ITA testing complies with the FEC's purchasing standards, and ES&S products go through both ITA and state-level testing, Cuellar says.

But even Cuellar admitted that the ITAs cannot test every voting machine and software cartridge. Voting-system manufacturers are only required to bring in a sample of the specific model that will be certified for use in that state, both hardware and software, Cuellar explains. "Obviously, you can't bring in the actual machines because you may have a jurisdiction that purchases, let's say, 1,000 of these," she says. "So you are going to bring in one that is the same as the one you actually would be using."

Nevertheless Mercuri is not impressed with the real-time performance of the Omaha-based firm. "When you look at ES&S in the latest November election, you see disaster all over the country!" she charges.

Another issue is that election personnel are low on the learning curve when it comes to basic security standards and procedures, warns Eva Waskell of the computer-industry association Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Election officials frequently turn to the vendors of voting systems for advice about security or for help in running elections because the states have no in-house technical expertise available. "Furthermore, the election community is not in regular contact with the computer-science community and so is unable to tap into a vast amount of knowledge and skills that could otherwise be used to assist in running elections efficiently," she warned in a briefing paper almost 10 years ago.

http://www.insightmag.com/news/343233.html

New Jersey: Are the Democrats afraid of the "Help America Vote Act"....you can bet the farm, that they are!

January 14, 2003

Federal voting act gets mixed response in county
By THOMAS BARLAS Staff Writer, (609) 272-7201, E-Mail

The federal "Help America Vote Act" is causing debate in New Jersey about whether it lives up to its name.

Officials with some voting organizations worry that its proof-of-identification clause may suppress voter registration.

In Atlantic County, where voter registration is under investigation by a special freeholder committee, Republican and Democratic leaders disagree on the new law's impact.

The only thing for certain is that election officials in all counties are notifying new voters about the changes.

Atlantic and Cumberland counties are sending form letters provided by the state Attorney General's Office to people registering to vote for the first time after Jan. 1.

According to the letter, those people must comply with the "Help America Vote Act" by providing their driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

If those forms of identification aren't available, a copy of a photo identification, utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or government document that shows name and address will suffice.

"If you do not provide this information by the time of the next federal election, which will be the 2004 June primary, you will have to show identification at the polling place," the letter reads.

Largely the result of the controversial 2000 presidential election, the federal act is intended to streamline the voting process by minimizing fraud.

The probe by Atlantic County freeholders was spurred by allegations of voter fraud, primarily in Democratic-controlled Atlantic City and its 2001 mayoral campaign, and concerns about the misuse of absentee and messenger ballots.

Even before that, Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson had criticized the system, contending that people were registering to vote and casting absentee ballots without proof of identity. He and other Atlantic County officials engaged in a running battle with the Attorney General's Office over the interpretation of state voting laws.

Republican Levinson said Monday that he feels vindicated by the letter sent by the Atlantic County Superintendent of Elections Office.

"You can chalk this one up to common sense," he said, adding that all he wanted was for people registering to vote to "simply identify themselves with their proof of addresses and place of residency."

"This was a very simple solution to the problem," he said. "For politicians, this if very comforting."

But Atlantic County Democratic leader Chuck Chiarello, who contends the freeholder probe is driven by politics, says the identification requirement is nothing more than voter suppression. It will make voter registration more difficult in a county already on "the road to making sure the tiniest voices aren't heard," he said.

"This seems like it could hamper the process," Chiarello said. "I'm very concerned that such restrictions would be put on our voting population.

"You're going to affect every household in every town in every community."

Atlantic County Freeholder John Risley, a Republican who chairs the freeholder panel investigating the county voting system, said the probe will continue.

"I do think that the new national voting legislation does go a long way to help in what we're trying to achieve," he said.

Sandra Matsen, president of the League of Women Voters of New Jersey, said the identification requirements are troubling to her organization.

"We believe it just makes it harder for people to vote," she said. "If they are not applied evenly, then you could get discrimination."

On the other hand, Matsen said, the federal act has some good points.

For instance, she said, states will have to keep databases of registered voters to prevent one person from voting in more than one county or municipality.

The act, Matsen said, also tries to ensure that no voter is turned away at the polls.

When a voter's identification or registration is challenged, that voter will be allowed to vote by provisional ballot until the matter is resolved, she said. States must also develop a way for those voters to track their ballot in order to find out if it was counted or rejected, she said.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/atlantic/011403VOTER.html

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