Defend America's Democracy

Started by Adam_Fulford, Feb 28 06 01:10

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Adam_Fulford

There is some kind of technical glitch on Discover Seattle that is stopping me from posting image files.

Adam_Fulford

[FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00"]Witch wrote...[/FONT][/DIV][FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00"]I've already said "something looks wrong here". I have under no illusion that the voting machines are reliable.[/FONT]

 Now, that is something that we agree on!

Find out more about the Fascist attempt to ursurp democracy at:[/DIV][A href="http://www.blackboxvoting.org"][FONT size=4]www.blackboxvoting.org[/FONT][/A][FONT size=4] [/FONT][/DIV][FONT size=4][/FONT] [/DIV][FONT color=#0000ff][SPAN class=body][FONT face=Verdana size=2]"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."[/FONT][/SPAN]
Joseph Stalin[/FONT][/DIV]

TehBorken

Adam_Fulford wrote:
[div style="font-style: italic;"]There is some kind of technical glitch on Discover Seattle that is stopping me from posting image files.[/div]
See this post: [a href="http://discoverseattle.net/forums/index.php/topic,13.0.html"]http://discoverseattle.net/forums/index.php/topic,13.0.html[/a]
The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music.

Adam_Fulford


Marik

you are getting too concerned about this adam

Adam_Fulford

[SPAN class=updatehead][FONT color=#ff0000][FONT face="Arial Narrow"]More Exposés of the Vast Fascist Apparatus's Vile Voting Machines. Extremists have hijacked America's democracy.[/FONT][/FONT][/SPAN][/DIV][SPAN class=updatehead][FONT face=Verdana color=#0000ff size=2][/FONT][/SPAN] [/DIV][SPAN class=updatehead][FONT color=#0000ff][SPAN class=body][FONT face=Verdana size=2]"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."[/FONT][/SPAN][/FONT][/SPAN][/DIV][SPAN class=updatehead][FONT color=#0000ff]~ Joseph Stalin[/FONT][/SPAN][/DIV][SPAN class=updatehead][FONT face=Verdana color=#ff0000][/FONT][/SPAN] [/DIV][SPAN class=updatehead][FONT face=Verdana color=#ff0000][/FONT][/SPAN] [/DIV][SPAN class=updatehead][FONT face=Verdana color=#ff0000]03-18-06: BBV EXCLUSIVE - Diebold TSx touch-screen study (Part I)[/FONT][/SPAN] [/DIV] [/DIV]PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED, MUST LINK TO [A href="http://www.blackboxvoting.org" target=_blank]http://www.blackboxvoting.org[/A]

[!--Text--]Emery County Clerk Bruce Funk has been running elections for 23 years. He was quite content with his optical scan system. The state of Utah thought otherwise: On Dec. 27, Funk took delivery on 40 Diebold TSx touch-screen machines, part of a statewide directive.

"I had concerns about Diebold," says Funk, "but I thought, 'If the state is going to mandate it, then I guess they'll assume responsibility if anything goes wrong.'"

Not so. He soon learned that he will be responsible but the state will decide what election system will count the votes.

[img alt="Bruce Funk" src="http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/19674.jpg"]
(photo: Bruce Funk, Emery County Clerk, with Diebold TSx shipment)

[FONT color=#ff0000]"You're going to hate my guts on Election Day"[/FONT]

Funk's concerns escalated when he heard a particularly unusual statement by Diebold sales rep Dana LaTour.

"Some of you are going to hate my guts on Election Day," she said to the assembly of elections officials. Later, another Diebold representative named Drew was asked what LaTour meant when she said "Some of you are going to hate my guts..."

"We're going to have problems on Election Day, and we're just going to have to work through them," he said.

[FONT color=#ff0000]Failures right out of the gate[/FONT]

Shortly after Funk received his "brand new" TSx machines, Diebold helped him do acceptance testing. Two of the 40 machines promptly failed the test. Diebold arranged to take them away.

The remaining machines showed several defects -- crooked paper feeds that jam, memory card bay doors that wouldn't close, parts getting stuck, coming loose, falling off.

[FONT color=#ff0000]Taking a closer look[/FONT]

Funk thought it might be a good idea to take a closer inventory.

He booted each machine up to check the battery. Some of the machines were marked with little yellow dots, and he got to wondering about that, too. He studied the screen messages, and noticed something very odd.

Most machines had about 25 MB of memory available, but some had only 7 MB of free memory left. One had only 4 MB of available memory. For perspective, the backup election file generated by the Diebold TSx is about 7.9 MB. Now why would brand new voting machines have used-up memory?

[FONT color=#ff0000]Time to get a more in depth evaluation[/FONT]

This prompted Funk to seek an evaluation. He asked Black Box Voting to help him analyze his voting system.

After several consultations, Black Box Voting determined that the nature of the problems in Emery County might be systemic and might be national in scope. Therefore, we arranged for and underwrote the services of Harri Hursti and Security Innovation, Inc.

Neither Funk nor Black Box Voting were prepared for the depth and breadth of the problems discovered. Based on these discoveries we will begin with a series of articles followed by concise, but more formal reports.

[FONT color=#ff0000]Part I[/FONT]

Hursti quickly determined the three most likely causes of the low memory problem:

1. There might be completely different software in the machines with low memory.

2. Some machines might contain different external data

3. Or, some of the machines might have been delivered with natively different amounts of memory available.

Hursti approached issue #2 first. If the used memory was due to external data or archived election files stored on the system, he reasoned, removing any such files would clear the memory. He discovered that some of the machines did contain test election data, and he deleted the extra data. This produced only a small improvement in available memory, however.

As for issue #1, different programs on the machines -- or, the existence of something stored in memory which is hidden, such a find would obviously be disturbing.

Issue #3, the possibility that some machines had different amounts of memory left in their life cycle, is particularly troubling. The technology choice Diebold made -- memory storage consisting of flash memory, which is known to degrade over time -- carries with it a possibility that used machines will be near the end of their memory life cycle. If such machines were delivered to Emery County as "new," this would be like buying a "new" car with 100,000 miles already on it.

The only thing that was known about the cause of this problem was that there were different amounts of memory. The reason remained to be discovered. In the course of evaluating the reason for the low memory, we learned much more about the TSx.

[FONT color=#ff0000]Is there an infra-red port for remote communications?[/FONT]

Hursti also examined the remote communications capabilities of this system. He found no infra-red (IrDA) ports.

"The whole thing here is that it's network aware even when RAS is not running. You're not dialing out and it's network aware. And it's actually configured to use an Ethernet board...It's all the time network aware...Perhaps all you need is this Ethernet cord and a wireless cord inserted and off you go."

"I haven't asked any 'pins' (Personal ID Number). It hasn't been hostile to me at all. It's a very friendly guy."

Hursti made a number of observations about the touch-screen, and connected it to his laptop for further "conversation."

In the interest of brevity, we will return to this issue in a later article in this series.

[FONT color=#ff0000]A "Shocking" discovery[/FONT]

It's common for polling places to have too few outlets for a bank of voting machines. The normal cure is to set up hook the computers up in a daisy-chain configuration, with one plug to the wall, and the rest of the plugs linking voting machines together.

Diebold's output plug falls out readily, exposing live 110 volt wall outlet power on bare wires.

[img alt="Power plug defect" src="http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/19675.jpg"]

This happened on every TSx we tested, and presents a significant safety hazard for poll workers, especially the elderly. According to Hursti, the electrocution might only result in a burned hand, and probably wouldn't be fatal.

This is a design flaw worthy of a general recall for standard consumer and office electronics.

[FONT color=#ff0000]Diebold: Down for the count?[/FONT]

While analyzing the memory storage problem, Hursti discovered a critical security hole in the foundation of the touch-screen. Then he found another in the "lobby," and another on the "first floor." Taken together, these present a potentially catastrophic security hole.

These are not programming errors, but architectural design decisions.

Black Box Voting is turning the "road map" of the most dangerous security findings over to the proper authorities. We won't let anybody sit on this for very long because elections are looming and elections officials need to know what to do now.

A concise and more formal report will be released from Security Innovation, Inc., and this will discuss the procedures for preparing a recovery path for these security holes.

[FONT color=#ff0000]Two things we have learned already:[/FONT]

1. Source code reviews alone are NOT sufficient. Access to fully functional systems MUST accompany source code reviews.

2. Honest election officials and citizens again take the lead in learning the truth about voting machines. We ask for maximum public support for Bruce Funk, who showed courage and commitment to responsible elections. The important and effective work of Utah voting integrity advocates Kathy Dopp ([A href="http://www.uscountvotes.org/" target=_blank]http://www.uscountvotes.org[/A]) and Jocelyn Strait should be applauded by fellow activists. They have played an important role to inspire this study in Utah, which may in turn assist with efforts in many other states.

PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED, MUST LINK TO [A href="http://www.blackboxvoting.org/" target=_blank]http://www.blackboxvoting.org[/A]

Adam_Fulford

California Sued Over Diebold Voting Systems
    Reuters

    Tuesday 21 March 2006

    San Francisco - Some California voters and activist groups sued the state's top election official on Tuesday in an effort to reverse the certification of certain electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc.

    The suit, filed in Superior Court in San Francisco, is the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute about the security of Diebold electronic voting machines, focused on Diebold's TSX touch-screen system.

    A month ago, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson certified Diebold Election System's TSX and Optical Scan products for use in this year's elections after a review of their security. An earlier, slightly modified version of the TSX was used in California's November 2005 special election.

    "[FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00"]In certifying the Diebold machines, the secretary has sidestepped his duty to deny certification to voting systems that violate state and federal standards[/FONT]," Dolores Huerta, a co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America and plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. "Diebold systems have failed in security tests and in communities around the country."

    The lawsuit seeks to block the purchase of the TSX systems and a reversal of the secretary of state's certification.

    Jennifer Kerns, a spokeswoman for McPherson, said her office had not seen the lawsuit, but she said the Diebold systems were safe and reliable.

    "The Diebold systems that we have certified have passed the most stringent requirements really in the nation," she said. "In fact we've actually been criticized about how stringent our process has been."

    Diebold came under file in California after the state's March 2004 primary election for glitches at polling places attributed to its voting systems. Some activists have questioned their vulnerability to hacking and manipulation.

    [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00"]In 2004, Diebold paid $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit alleging it had provided false information about security and certification to obtain payments for its electronic voting equipment in California.
[/FONT]

    Election officials say 21 of California's 58 counties have used Diebold electronic voting systems for recent voting, and at least seven counties are slated to use the new TSX system this year.

Adam_Fulford

 [FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff] [H1 id=_ctl0_articleShow_hlCont][A href="http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Voting+machines+removed+in+Grafton&articleId=37f3b7dd-a9de-4bd8-99d4-f3a60b903754"][FONT size=2]http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Voting+machines+removed+in+Grafton&articleId=37f3b7dd-a9de-4bd8-99d4-f3a60b903754[/FONT][/A][/H1] [H1]Voting machines removed in Grafton[/H1] By CAROL ROBIDOUX
Union Leader Staff
[SPAN class=articleDate][A title="Article index from Thursday, Mar. 16, 2006" href="http://www.unionleader.com/default.aspx?storyDate=2006-03-16"]Thursday, Mar. 16, 2006[/A][/SPAN]

  [DIV id=artInlAd][!-- Begin -  Site: Union Leader Corporation Zone: Article Inline --] [SCRIPT language=DOH!script type=text/XXXXscript] [!--  var keywords='';  var browName = navigator.appName; var SiteID = 1; var ZoneID = 13; var browDateTime = (new Date()).getTime(); if (browName=='Netscape') ( document.write('[s'+'cript lang' + 'uage="jav' + 'ascript" src="http://stats.unionleader.com/ad.aspx?ZoneID=' + ZoneID + '&Task=Get&IFR=False&Browser=NETSCAPE4&PageID=87347' + keywords + '&SiteID=' + SiteID + '&Random=' + browDateTime + '"]'); document.write('[/'+'scr'+'ipt]'); ) if (browName!='Netscape') ( document.write('[s'+'cript lang' + 'uage="jav' + 'ascript" src="http://stats.unionleader.com/ad.aspx?ZoneID=' + ZoneID + '&Task=Get&IFR=False&PageID=87347' + keywords + '&SiteID=' + SiteID + '&Random=' + browDateTime + '"]'); document.write('[/'+'scr'+'ipt]'); ) // --]  [/SCRIPT]  [SCRIPT language=DOH!script src="http://stats.unionleader.com/ad.aspx?ZoneID=13&Task=Get&IFR=False&PageID=87347&SiteID=1&Random=1143007717283"][/SCRIPT]  [SCRIPT language=DOH!Script] var ShockMode = 0; if (navigator.mimeTypes && navigator.mimeTypes["application/x-shockwave-flash"] && navigator.mimeTypes["application/x-shockwave-flash"].enabledPlugin) ( if (navigator.plugins && navigator.plugins["Shockwave Flash"]) ShockMode = 1; ) else if (navigator.userAgent && navigator.userAgent.indexOf("MSIE")]=0  && (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Windows 9")]=0 || navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Windows NT")]=0)) ( document.write('[SCRIPT LANGUAGE=VBScript\] \n'); document.write('on error resume next \n'); document.write('ShockMode = (IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.4"))) '); document.write('[\/SCRIPT\] '); ) if ( ShockMode ) ( document.write('[OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"'); document.write(' code base="http://active.macromedia.com/flash2/cabs/swflash.cab#version=4,0,0,0"'); document.write(' ID=banner WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="200"]'); document.write(' [PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="http://www.unionleader.com/uploads/media-items/bannerads/days_platinum_unionleader.swf?url=http%3a%2f%2fstats.unionleader.com%2fad.aspx%3fTask%3dClick%26ZoneID%3d13%26CampaignID%3d63%26AdvertiserID%3d17%26BannerID%3d65%26SiteID%3d1%26RandomNumber%3d96280"] '); document.write(' [param name="wmode" value="transparent"] '); document.write(' [PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=autohigh] '); document.write('[EMBED SRC="http://www.unionleader.com/uploads/media-items/bannerads/days_platinum_unionleader.swf?url=http%3a%2f%2fstats.unionleader.com%2fad.aspx%3fTask%3dClick%26ZoneID%3d13%26CampaignID%3d63%26AdvertiserID%3d17%26BannerID%3d65%26SiteID%3d1%26RandomNumber%3d96280"'); document.write(' swLiveConnect=FALSE WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="200"'); document.write(' QUALITY=autohigh wmode="transparent"'); document.write(' TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"]'); document.write('[/EMBED]'); document.write('[/OBJECT]'); ) else if (!(navigator.appName && navigator.appName.indexOf("Netscape")]=0 && navigator.appVersion.indexOf("2.")]=0))( document.write('[A HREF="http://stats.unionleader.com/ad.aspx?Task=Click&ZoneID=13&CampaignID=63&AdvertiserID=17&BannerID=65&SiteID=1&RandomNumber=96280" TARGET="_top"][img]" WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="200" BORDER="0"][/A]'); ) [/SCRIPT]  [SCRIPT language=VBScript]  on error resume next  ShockMode = (IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.4"))) [/SCRIPT] [SPAN class=dateline]Grafton – [/SPAN]No matter how you do the math, 193 "yeas" plus 198 "nays" don't add up to 369 votes.

That faulty equation — results of a warrant article vote from Tuesday's election ballot — was the first clue for Grafton town officials that something was wrong.

 As a result, two voting machines used to collect ballots in the annual town and school district meetings are now in the custody of the Attorney General's Office, removed from the town yesterday, said Grafton Selectman Jennie Joyce.

 She suspects the problem falls somewhere between human error and machine malfunction. Once the polls closed and the vote tallies were logged, nobody actually bothered to do the math before calling it a night.

 "At that point nobody does the math — you're so tired, you're just trying to put the place back together and get out of there," Joyce said of the post-election process at the fire house. "It occurred to me after I got home that it didn't add up, after I had time to think about some of the numbers."

 Joyce woke Town Clerk Mary McDow with a phone call at 6:45 a.m. McDow decided the best thing to do was nothing, until the Attorney General's Office was contacted.

 She said the voting machine showed no signs of malfunctions during two pre-election tests — most recently one week prior to the election.

 Deputy Attorney General Orville "Bud" Fitch confirmed the seizure of the machines, but was reluctant last night to characterize the nature of the problem.

 "We are trying to understand what problem exists," Fitch said.

 The voting machines, one used to count town ballots, the other for school district ballots, were removed from the town for safekeeping yesterday "so everything is in one place," while the Attorney General's Office looks into the issue, Fitch said.

 Fitch would say little else about the nature of the complaint and what had occurred after the voting machines were retrieved.

 "We will examine whether there is an issue," he said. "We are trying to better understand the nature of the concerns."

 McDow, who is trained to operate the voting machine, said she learned more after placing a call yesterday to LHS Associates of Methuen, Mass., the company that services the town's Accu-Vote machine.

 "They told me one of the dip switches let go, or the problem had to do with one of the dip switches not being set — that's what LHS told me after I read them the information from the tally sheet," McDow said.

 The toggle switch glitch likely caused some ballots to be counted twice, McDow said.

 "It's really crazy. Now we will just have to wait and find out for sure," she said.

 The margin of error could end up changing the outcome of two important warrant articles, McDow said — one for a new police cruiser and the other for a compactor for the town's recycling center.

 Secretary of State Bill Gardner last night would only confirm that the machines had been seized, something he characterized as a "pretty unusual" occurrence.

 "Not that it's never happened — it happens once in a while. Sometimes it explains itself," Gardner said.

 "We'll take a look at it. Sometimes what were perceived as discrepancies can be explained, and sometimes it can't. Then you try to reconstruct what happened," Gardner said.

 It's too soon to talk about a recount, Gardner said.

 However, Joyce said she is in favor of recounting ballots, both by hand and by machine.

 "It's not be such a bad idea, just to test the accuracy of the machine," Joyce said.

 Board of Selectmen chairman Steve Darrow last night said the turn of events is not so much controversial as it is exciting.

 "I don't think it's a big scandal or anything. Either it was machine error or operator error — we really don't know," Darrow said. "It makes the whole thing more interesting. For such a small town, there's never a dull moment in Grafton."

 An assertion easily confirmed at Grafton Country Store on Route 4 yesterday, where a steady flow of townspeople gathered throughout the day to speculate about what was behind the election machine seizure, said clerk Meagan Small.

 "There were people with all kinds of opinions. A lot of people in town don't believe in the machines. They think that they don't count right. Others feel it was probably somebody's fault," Small said. "No matter what, it was definitely the subject of the day."

 Union Leader correspondent Lorna Colquhoun contributed to this report.

[/DIV][/FONT][/DIV]

Adam_Fulford

 [P class=timestamp]Posted on Wed, Mar. 22, 2006

 [H1]Elections officials threaten legal action against supplier[/H1] [H2]Summit board members angered by lack of cooperation on voting machines[/H2] [H5]By Lisa A. Abraham[/H5] [H6]Beacon Journal staff writer[/H6][!-- begin body-content --] Members of the Summit County Board of Elections are threatening legal action against Election Systems & Software, the company installing the county's new optical-scan voting system, if the company doesn't cooperate more with the county.

 Board members became incensed Tuesday when ES&S officials refused to attend the board's meeting and answer questions about problems the company had with computer memory cards for the optical-scan machines.

 Hundreds of memory cards shipped to the county did not work.

 The company eventually replaced them with good cards, but only after two additional shipments of cards also failed.

 The board voted unanimously to issue subpoenas if necessary to get ES&S officials to their meetings; Democratic board member Russ Pry made the motion.

 A spokeswoman for ES&S of Omaha, Neb., did not return a call seeking comment.

 Board Director Bryan Williams and Deputy Director Marijean Donofrio discussed several new problems they said they are having with ES&S:

 [SPAN class=bullet]• [/SPAN]Difficulty getting information from ES&S about the progress of the voting system's installation.

 Donofrio said that ever since news articles about the problems with the memory cards appeared, ES&S staffers who are installing the system have become uncooperative. She likened getting information updates from them to ``pulling teeth.''

 Donofrio said she was informed by ES&S officials that their on-site project manager would not attend the board's meeting Tuesday ``because he did not have the intelligence to talk about the memory cards.''

 ``It's unacceptable for these people not to be working with you,'' Republican board member Alex Arshinkoff told Williams and Donofrio.

 [SPAN class=bullet]• [/SPAN]Delays in getting copies of the May 2 primary ballots to proofread, which has resulted in the board missing the date on its timeline for ordering ballots from the printer.

 ``They won't give us the opportunity to proofread the ballot,'' Williams said. He explained that the board, working in teams of Democrats and Republicans, routinely triple-checks the rotation of names on the ballots, but ES&S won't provide copies of the ballot to do that.

 Donofrio said in early copies the rotation -- the order in which the candidates' names appear on the ballot -- was incorrect.

 Williams said ES&S' attitude has been that the extra checking ``was not necessary,'' but the problems the board had with the company's performance have proven that it is.

 He said the board hoped to order the ballots on Monday. ``We'll be lucky to have them ordered by the end of the week,'' he said.

 However, that does not mean that ballots will not be printed in time for the May 2 election.

 [SPAN class=bullet]• [/SPAN]ES&S staffers, while training local poll workers, have actually broken three handicapped voting machines when they inserted the memory cards incorrectly.

 Donofrio said she intends to ask the company to replace the broken equipment.

 Arshinkoff accused ES&S of ``doing the job of three men -- Larry, Curly and Moe.''

 ``This is inexcusable. I think ES&S has failed in their capacity as a vendor. If this doesn't work in the May primary, we're going to have to make real hard choices,'' he said.

 Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's office purchased the voting machines for the county.

 Blackwell spokesman James Lee said the state has not yet paid ES&S for the equipment.

 ``ES&S is obligated to fulfill the requirements of its contract and the board is responsible for fulfilling their duties as elections officials, and we are working from the expectation that both will successfully adhere to their obligations,'' Lee said.

 In other action Tuesday:

 The board hired Sarah Skapin, a Democrat, as a community outreach poll-worker recruiter at a salary of $44,504. Skapin is the daughter of Jill Skapin, spokeswoman for Summit County Executive James B. McCarthy.

[!-- end body-content --][!-- begin body-end --]

Adam_Fulford

[A href="http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/news_local/article/0,1897,SAST_4956_4559073,00.html"]http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/news_local/article/0,1897,SAST_4956_4559073,00.html[/A]

  [SPAN class=headline1]Court-at-law recount suspended[/SPAN]  [SPAN class=subhead]Electronic machines not providing all info[/SPAN]  [SPAN class=smalltext]By Paul A. Anrthony[/SPAN]
[SPAN class=smalltext]March 21, 2006[/SPAN]  [SPAN class=bodytext]On orders from the Texas Secretary of State's office, the recount for the Tom Green County Court-at-Law No. 2 race has been suspended midway through its second day.  About 1:30 p.m. today, county Republican Chairman Dennis McKerley stopped the recount after workers found discrepancies of as much as 20 percent between what was counted Monday and what was reported Election Night.
"We're having some trouble with the electronic equipment," McKerley said.

 Apparently, McKerley said, new electronic voting machines provided by vendor Hart InterCivic are not printing ballots for every vote cast on the machines. During recounts, which must be done by hand, the machines are designed to print out separate ballots for every vote.

 A Hart InterCivic representative is expected to arrive Wednesday morning, McKerley said, to determine whether or how to retrieve the remaining printouts.  The problem affects early votes cast in what appears to be every precinct, McKerley said. All of commissioner's Precinct 1 was affected, he said, as were all the randomly selected voting precincts in other parts of the county.  Although sign-in sheets match the counts provided by the machines on Election Night, he said, the number of printouts does not match the sign-in sheets.  More than 3,000 early votes were cast in the race between Assistant County Attorney Julie Hughes, incumbent Judge Penny Roberts and former prosecutor Dan Edwards, meaning the problem likely affects more than 600 votes of the 9,500 cast early and on Election Day.  Just 12 votes separate third-place finisher Edwards from second-place finisher Roberts to see who will face Hughes in the April runoff election. Edwards requested and paid for the recount.

[/SPAN]

Adam_Fulford

The corruption and stupidity of some public elections officials knows no bounds.  The technology exists to make reliable voting machines, as evidenced by reliable gambling machines.

  [SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt"][?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /][o:p][img height=678 alt="How To Steal an Election" src="http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2006/03/16/GR2006031600213.gif" width=624][/o:p][/SPAN]

TehBorken

 Adam_Fulford wrote:
The corruption and stupidity of some public elections officials knows no bounds.  The technology exists to make[strong style="font-style: italic;"] reliable[/b] voting machines, as evidenced by reliable gambling machines.

Yup.And with gambling at least you have a chance.
The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music.

Adam_Fulford

[FONT color=#0000ff]Yes.  Gambling is not rigged.  This was an email to [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00"]bradblog[/FONT]. Very chilling.[/FONT]

[FONT color=#0000ff][/FONT]

[A href="http://www.bradblog.com"][FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00"]www.bradblog.com[/FONT][/A][FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00"] [/FONT]

  [DIV align=center][FONT size=5]DEMOCRACY IS DEAD HERE[/FONT]

   [DIV class=document]From: Jerry Lobdill [EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED]
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 7:23 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: EXCLUSIVE: Hart InterCivic Whistleblower Warned of Texas, Ohio E-Voting 'Fraud' Concerns in 2004!

I am a retired physicist and system engineer who has specified, designed, tested, and evaluated computing systems for the US Navy for 30 years.

I live in Tarrant County and have been involved closely with the campaign of Doreen Geiger for Democratic Party County Chair. The March 7, 2006 election included the general election for this race. I was there on election night when Tarrant County reported periodic results of the election. The numbers of votes reported were so large that they were astonishing. The results were updated at 90 minute intervals six times. The final reported vote count for County Chair was about 44,000.

The next day there were questions from all contested races, and at 4 PM there was a press conference at the Tarrant County Elections Administration. The speakers were Gayle Hamilton, interim Elections Administrator, a vice president from Hart Intercivic, and both the Democratic Party and Republican Party County Chairs. The theme was that the error was "procedural" and not a software error. It was an error in which the running sum of votes for each candidate was erroneously substituted for the incremental count for each of the six periods. The officials emphasized that the error would not change any of the announced winners.

Although the programmer who allegedly made the error was in attendance, he did not speak.

Ms. Hamilton said that because of the error any candidate who wanted a recount would get one at no charge. Ms. Geiger and a candidate for JP, John DeLorme asked for a recount. None of the reporters in attendance apparently knew enough about computer systems to ask technical questions.

After the conference I built a spreadsheet model of the erroneous processing algorithm and showed that it would not be possible to know what changes would occur in the outcomes of the races without reprocessing the original vote counts from each of the 212 polling stations. I sent this result to the Star-Telegram (Anna Tinsley) and to all of Doreen's staff and supporters. The next day the Elections Administration announced that at least one result was changed in a Republican race. This infuriated the Republicans.

On Tuesday, March 14, Gayle Hamilton announced that the Secretary of State had prohibited her from doing any free recounts. Also on Tuesday, Doreen was told that she could not have a promised Access database of precinct by precinct returns for her race until after the vote had been canvassed. And then, instead of getting it free as promised, she'd have to pay $50 for it.

Tonight the Democratic Party of Tarrant County, in violation of the State Rules voted to approve the vote when they didn't have a quorum present. The incumbent County Chair refused to recognize points of order several times during a heated exchange on the issue. The Chair shouted down several people who rose to a point of order, and rammed the vote through. This Chair behaves as if he had some sort of financial interest in electronic voting.

Democracy is dead here.[/DIV]

Adam_Fulford

 [P align=center][FONT color=#0000ff]It's not about Right or Left; it's about Right or Wrong.[/FONT] [P align=center][FONT color=#0000ff]Support the American Folk Heroes fighting the preserve America's Democracy.[/FONT]

 [P align=center]Steve Smith For
Texas Supreme Court, Place 2
[A href="http://www.SmithForSupremeCourt.com"]www.SmithForSupremeCourt.com[/A]


 [P align=center][A href="http://salcostello.blogspot.com/2006/03/major-voting-irregularities-found-our.html"]http://salcostello.blogspot.com/2006/03/major-voting-irregularities-found-our.html[/A]

 [P align=left]FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (March 16, 2006)
CONTACT: David Rogers, Campaign Manager, (512) 923-6188

(Austin)

Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Steve Smith may file an election contest or request for recount, says "serious mistakes were made."

Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Steve Smith announced today that he has taken the next step towards filing an election contest or request for recount in his race for Texas Supreme Court, Place 2. "Serious Mistakes were made in the counting of ballots in Tarrant County. We want one fair, accurate and complete count," Smith said. "To that end, we have filed a Public Information Act request with the Tarrant County Elections Administrator seeking to review public documents relating to the Republican Party primary election in Tarrant County," added David Rogers, Smith's campaign manager.

"Unfortunately, the true result in Tarrant County may never be known," said David Rogers, Campaign Manager for former Justice Smith. Though there were 211 election day voting locations for the 635 precincts, audit tapes reporting the election results in each machine were run in only 103 locations. One hundred and eight (51%) of the voting locations did not have properly run audit tapes.

Initial results in Tarrant County included 27,895 phantom votes. The final statewide margin between Smith and Willett was 5,441 votes. The first "corrected" result reported by Tarrant County was a margin of 7,922 (62%-38%). That margin is larger in terms of raw votes than the margin in Harris County, Dallas County or Bexar County, all of which have substantially larger populations than Tarrant County. The "corrected" results switched the first and second place results in Tarrant County's 342th District Court.

Those numbers for Tarrant County are suspect in part because Tarrant County voted for Smith in the 2004 primary by 11,423 to 10,331 (53%-47%), and Smith only lost Tarrant County in the 2002 by 17,411 to 15, 215 (47%-53%). In 2002 and 2004, the statewide margins were substantially higher (7% and 6%, respectively) than the statewide margin in 2006 (less than 1%). The combined statewide margin between Smith and his primary opponents over three elections is less than 1/40th of one percent (417 votes). (Smith: 841,586; Rodriguez, Green & Willett combined: 842,003.) If Smith's margin in Tarrant County is actually the same as his margin in either 2002 or 2004, he won statewide.

Despite the fact that Tarrant County Interim Elections Administrator Gayle Hamilton has expressed a desire to count the Tarrant County ballots correctly, attorneys for the Tarrant County District Attorney's office and the Secretary of State's office have told Hamilton she may not count the ballots without a court order, an election contest or request for a recount.

"To date, there has not been a correct count of Tarrant County ballots," said Rogers. "There has been an incorrect count and there has been an attempt to correct the errors in that count. What we want - and what we understand the County Elections Administrator and the County Republican Chair want - is a single correct count of the ballots in Tarrant County. We know for certain that mistakes were made, and the acknowledged mistakes changed the Tarrant County result by a number of votes more than double the remaining statewide margin. Former Justice Smith thinks that a single accurate count is a reasonable request."

The Texas Election Code requires that a recount for a statewide office would require that all paper ballots statewide be recounted in addition to the ballots in Tarrant County, and that the expense would be borne by the party requesting the recount.

Additionally, in far west Texas, Winkler County, which went for Smith by margins of 260-92 (74%) and 468-249 (65%) in the 2002 and 2004 elections, went against Smith by an unbelievable 0-273 (100%) margin. Governor Perry received only 83% of the vote in Winkler County, and no other contested candidate topped 80%. The propositions on the ballot topped out at 93%.

Winkler county used machines from Election Systems and Software (ES&S), a company that was severely criticized by county officials in Webb county for programming errors and delays during the primary election, according to reports from the Laredo Morning Times of March 14, 2006. ES&S machines operate in 144 of Texas's 254 counties.

Beyond that, Duval County, made infamous by Lyndon Johnson's 1948 theft of the U.S. Senate election in that county, has reported an astonishing 55% turnout, with allegations of vote farming and vote fraud, as reported in the March 16, 2006 Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

Additionally, Jefferson County vote totals were changed by more than 1,500 for each candidate in a race for Jefferson County Judge when a recount was held on Monday, according to reports from the March 14, 2006 edition of the Beaumont Enterprise. Jefferson County had double-counted some ballots, including 644 Republican ballots. (The Jefferson County margin between Smith and Willett is 325 votes.) Some precincts had reported more votes than voters. Tarrant County double, triple, quadruple, quintuple and sextuple-counted some votes. The Enterprise reported that ES&S would cover the cost for the recount in Jefferson County, estimated at $8,000.

According to a March 16, 2006 report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Tarrant County will charge any candidate who wants a recount. No mention was made of any offer by Hart InterCivic, whose machines were used in Tarrant County, to pick up the cost of a correct count.

Smith won 152 of 254 counties. No Republican primary was held in 18 counties, and the candidates tied in 2 counties. Willett won 82 counties (33%).

Steve Smith is best known as a conservative former Justice of the Texas Supreme Court who was elected in 2002 despite opposition from insurance industry interests. In private practice, Smith was best known as the attorney who filed, litigated and won the Hopwood case that ended racial preferences at Texas universities from 1996 through 2003. Smith served as a Justice on the Texas Supreme Court from Nov. 20 of 2002 until Dec. 31, 2004, and was one of only two Republican justices who did not accept contributions from insurance industry front group Texans for Lawsuit Reform.

 [P align=center]###

 [P align=center]Political Communication paid for by Steve Smith for Texas Supreme Court,
Susan Smith, Treasurer, P.O. Box 926, Austin, Texas 78767


Adam_Fulford

This describes it pretty well:

     

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