BBV report: Diebold poised to destroy another piece of the voting system

FROM BEV: Everything I have done so far, I consider to be "Phase 1." I am now on Phase 2, investigating the money trail. I've taken off on a 90-day road trip, and I may show up near you. The current "Phase 2" investigation's sole funding is donations. The questions I am investigating are these: HOW DID WE GET INTO THIS SITUATION? WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MESS? WHO'S GETTING PAID?

If you are a concerned citizen and have tips or documents, please email with "TIPS" in the subject line, along with your contact info. Not all the columns I write are on the money trail. This one isnt, but contains information I unearthed during my current investigation. Here's today's column:

Thursday May 20, 2004

(I told you so) — Diebold planning to eliminate more physical evidence: They plan to get rid of the sign-in poll book.

By Bev Harris, with the assistence of Ohio Voting activists

I've been saying now for over a year that this is coming, and here it is in print: From the transcript of the May 3 2004 Cuyahoga County (Cleveland, Oh) Board of Elections "Question and Answer" session with Diebold:

As usual, not a single technical person or programmer answered any questions for Diebold. Testifying in this meeting, representing Diebold:

- Mickey Martin (a Diebold sales rep who has advocated selling flawed systems and fixing them later -- link, http://www.blackboxvoting.org/htdocs/dcforum/DCForumID39/60.html - , and who sold the city of Portsmouth, Virginia a system that later proved impossible to bring up to state requirements -- link, http://www.blackboxvoting.org/htdocs/dcforum/DCForumID39/43.html). Martin has also been selling Diebold systems to Toledo (Lucas County, OH), encouraging the County to purchase a system that needs to be retrofitted. Maybe they can get a bargain — perhaps Ohio can become the toxic waste dump for touch screens rejected by California.

- Mark Radke a marketing person for Diebold. I recently had a run-in with Radke on the Diane Rehm show (audio link here: http://www.wamu.org/dr/2004/drarc_040322.html#wednesday), when he claimed, knowing it was false, that the NAACP has endorsed paperless touch-screen voting.

- Marvin Singleton, featured at some length in memos written by Jones Day, Diebold's law firm. Why Singleton is allowed to testify at all is a mystery. He is not employed by Diebold. He is not even employed by Diebold's PR firm. He is employed as a "damage control" expert, and he works for the Dallas branch of Austin-based Public Strategies Inc. Any government official who depends on testimony by a "damage control expert" employed as a consultant risks getting Grade-A egg on the face.

Here is how Mickey Martin explained why Diebold switched to the new (uncertified and patched at the last minute) card encoders, which failed in California on March 2: The new device, he says, is designed to eventually get rid of the poll book.

"We had a problem with a peripheral device. It was a brand-new peripheral device. It will be one of the standard products on the market in the future. Is it there today? Obviously not, but it will be and it will save counties, such as Cuyahoga, hundreds of thousands of dollars because you can do away with your paper poll books which cost the county a lot of money to produce. A lot of time and effort will go away. It will automatically let you update your voter registration system to that everything is seamless. "

Mark Radke confirms Diebold's plans to do away with the physical poll book audit trail:

"Why did they go with the PCM-500 instead of a standard card reader, these are very progressive contracts. The PCM-500 is a touch screen unit. I know it's -- what it's going to evolve into is an electronic poll book."

Getting rid of paper records means getting rid of auditability. What are audits? Quite simply, they are the checks and balances that help to prove that votes were counted correctly. I'll say it again: Vote counting is just bookkeeping. You have to show your work. You must be able to prove how you came up with your numbers, and you must use INDEPENDENT sources of evidence to do so.

A paper ballot, verified by the voter, provides one independent audit record. The physical poll book, where voters sign in when they come to vote, provides another important independent audit record.

Just as you balance your checkbook, state laws require elections workers to balance the number of voters who signed in to the poll book with the number of votes that show up in the machines. Indeed, with touch screen machines, it is this poll book audit that has proven many of the miscounts mentioned in Chapter 2 (link to online chapter: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-2.pdf) of Black Box Voting.

You see, the problem isn't only with electronic voting machines — We are rushing to computerize the process from start to finish, and this will produce an opaque voting system with so many attack points we'll never be able to control it at all. Here's what's coming, if we don't block it:

- Electronic voter registration (already mandated by HAVA). The companies who are providing it: Diebold, Election Systems & Software, defense contractors like Northrup Grumman...

- Electronic sign in at the polling place, eliminating human-verified physical evidence of how many people voted.

- Electronic casting of the vote

- Centralized electronic tallying of the votes, using central tabulators at the county courthouse. (This is already in place).

- Computer-aided redistricting

Now, let me give you a clearer picture: The genius of democracy is that real people run the system, out in the open, in a transparent manner. This is somewhat messy, but also quite stable, when done properly.

Now look at what is planned:

- Invisible voter registration: At times, people in Chicago have been so enthused about voting that the dead rose from their graves to cast votes. Now let's take a hard look at electronic voter registration: We'll soon be able to register whole cemeteries, or hack in and invent voters altogether.

- Invisible poll book sign in: Digital ghost voters will have a heck of a time getting past Mildred the poll worker, who insists on signing each voter into a physical paper poll book. But now we want to do away with Mildred, and use the nifty smart card device. Yes, we digitally register voters, then provide each with a smart card so they can sign in invisibly. This has advantages, but, like the voting system software that has become so controversial, will be impossible for regular people to examine. The software is a proprietary trade secret, made by companies that lie, employ embezzlers, and do political fund raising for their buddies -- like Diebold.

- Invisible vote casting: When you use the poke-a-hole method (punch cards) or the fill-in-the-bubble method (optical scan), at least you get to SEE your vote as you cast it. On paperless touch screens, of course, you see only a screen. You'll never see how your vote was recorded at all, because that happens inside, using computer commands no one is allowed to examine (except for certifiers who have repeatedly given passing grades to flawed and illegal software). You are supposed to trust this invisible system, controlled by a handful of people whose names you do not know.

- Invisible vote tallying: After the votes are cast - whether on punch cards, optical scans, or touch screens, they go to a central tabulation computer which adds them up. You can't examine the software program that does this -- it's proprietary. You can't watch the votes add up, you can only see numbers appear on a screen that you are told are correct. And lately (and we hope to CHANGE THIS with our Clean Up Crew this fall) you can't even observe the room where they do the central tabulation, to see if anyone unauthorized is in there dinking around during the vote-counting.

- Invisible redistricting procedures: Well now if you can invisibly register (and create) voters, invisibly sign them in to vote, invisibly cast votes, and tally the invisible votes on yet another invisible system, unscrupulous people with access can also control redistricting by manipulating the data.

Do we really want to dress the Statue of Liberty in the Emperor's New Clothes? We are spending a kingly sum on converting our open democracy into something entirely invisible, owned by a handful of corporations.

...with Diebold in Florida. Can anything be done to stop this?

Great summary. This and media ownership are the largest issues of our time.

What can Joe Public do about it? I write my reps blah blah blah...

?

when I recently met with legislators in California:

Demonstrations? Nah, unless you can guarantee press, particularly TV.

Writing your legislator? Yes. It helps, especially when you don't used canned letters or automated programs.

Calling your legislators? Also good.

If you have information that is damaging, get it in a formal declaration and take it personally to the state capital and to the county office.

I have been showing up at many procurement meetings. You can pretty readily identify people who are on the voter's side, people who aren't, and some people who appear to have been bought off. Send me the names of that last group.

Send me tips, too.

Go visitin' -- meet people who work inside elections divisions, and especially, people who no longer work there. Sure, they have an axe to grind, but they'll tell you where the dirt is.

Become a member of the Clean Up Crew -- email me, my contact info is at my web site. We'll watchdog and report this thing and I will not be a bit surprised if the fall election ends up in court.

Bev

:thumbsup:

The GOP has a lock down on National Media so as to expose enough to say they showed it but not to cause a scene with the voters actually getting upset.

It is rather interesting to watch the corporate takeover of America - Reagan's killing the fairness doctrine is doing its job.

"unscrupulous people with access can also control redistricting by manipulating the data" - sounds like Tom Delay in Texas!

But of course he had the blessing of our right wing Courts (the Reagan/Bush folks that just do law - and their personal feelings do not affect their decisions - someone needs to talk to Kerry about this).

God, I love our media.

:toast:

:-)

to publish what I unearth in Phase 2. I lined that up during the last couple weeks. Keep slapping the media when they fail to report, and keep feeding reporters -- it's working. Thanks to Ohio activists, at least three more media outlets in Ohio have begun reporting with some tough-minded work. Ohio already had two (Julie Carr-Smyth, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Erika D. Smith, Akron Beacon Journal).

And the winds are shifting. I have had two meetings with Ohio African American ministers, and have another meeting with a powerful African American group tonight. They are on board, folks. Labor unions are coming on board, too.

I find it interesting that three hours after I met with some very influential African American leaders, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell sent a curious memo to the counties. He had been pushing touch screens hard. This memo, sent 5:30 p.m. Tuesday this week; suggested to counties that they consider buying optical scan machines, and listed a whole bunch of problem areas with the touch screens, and stated a bunch of hoops he had decided to insist that touch screen makers jump through.

I'm not sure what changed his tune. There are events under the radar in California this week that could have influenced him too. A group called caseohio.org (Citizen Alliance for Secure Elections), led by a lawyer named Susan Truitt, are fundraising in preparation for lawsuits over the touch screens, and that adds pressure. Susan is really, really focused and dynamic. And Ohio state senator Teresa Fedor did heroic work -- she pushed a bill through the Ohio legislature to rescind all contracts for touch screens, forcing counties to have to meet to reaffirm if they want them.

I attended one of these reaffirm meetings in New Philadelphia (Tuscarawas County) and they decided to rescind their contract with Diebold.

Sequoia has now bowed out of Ohio. Hart Intercivic also cannot meet Blackwell's directives, and will not deploy touch screens this fall. ES&S is looking iffy, and counties are telling Diebold that if it doesn't come through with a bunch of stuff by June 30, it can hit the road with its touch screens too.

I agree that the media is not as unbiased on this as they should be, and they generally do not do their homework and can't ask the tough follow up questions. But more are coming on board every day. Keep hammering, it's building.

Bev

Stuffing ballot boxes was such a pain. Filling in ballots in the back room was tedious and time-consuming.

Computerized voting did away with the need for that. However, if a candidate were to lose in a landslide (bush in 2004?), it gets kind of difficult to sell a massive fiction.

Either the fraudsters have to have huge numbers of uncounted ballots or they have make many long-time, solidly-partisan precincts mysteriously switch to the other party.

So, do away with the poll book and the fraudsters can create tens of thousands of ghost voters with a few lines of code and generate a win for their guy.

And the media will then do their part by proclaiming a huge turnout for the "winner."

On edit minor format change and one adjective added.

Stuffing ballot boxes was never "a pain", it's a time-honored tradition. So is losing ballot boxes, or "accidentally" damaging their contents. The best part is you don't even have to be a computer programmer to do it... unlike, say, hacking a touchscreen voting terminal. ;)

If you think widespread electoral fraud is a touchscreen voting problem, you're deluded. Bev herself points out (but glosses over) the number of dead people who regularly vote in Chicago -- if the much-touted "human verification" is what's going to save the system, then how did those dead people vote in the first place?

Of course Diebold is evil, etc. Just saying. Don't forget to send Bev some money.

:tinfoilhat: JC :tinfoilhat:

Is why you don't get tombstoned? You are clearly only here for one purpose. You only post on BBV threads. Say hi to Freida for me.

other side.

There's no way in the world someone unfunded is going to be able to fight this battle against such well-funded, profit-motivated, politically-connected opposition.

Even if Bev were ONLY doing this for money and fame, it'd still be worth the money.

there has to be a wealthy liberal/progressive individual out there somewhere who would be willing to fund your work, or even fund a task force of workers to blitz this issue as quickly as possible (given that the election is fast approaching) . . .

have you considered putting out feelers through your network to people like George Soros, David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, Ted Turner, etc.? . . . if people like this could be made aware of your work and its urgency, one or more might be willing to fund the project . . . it would just be pocket change for any of them . . . just a thought; hope it's helpful . . .

in any event, thanks for your all you're doing . . . it's some of the most important work being done anywhere in this country right now . . .

from the "just trust us" folks!

:grr:

from The Question W Revue - opening 7/12 in NYC!

To the tune of ""Blame It On The Bossa Nova"")

JUST DEMAND A PAPER BALLOT
AT YOUR VOTING PLACE.
JUST DEMAND A PAPER BALLOT,
VERIFY THE RACE!
UNTIL THE SHADY SOFTWARE’S CERTIFIED,
HOW WILL WE KNOW THE COUNT IS BONA-FIDE?
JUST DEMAND A PAPER BALLOT
AND JOIN THE FIGHT!

JUST DEMAND A PAPER BALLOT
NOT A PAPER TRAIL.
JUST DEMAND A PAPER BALLOT,
OR THEY’LL TIP THE SCALE.
WHEN PURGING VOTER ROLLS IS NOT ENOUGH,
ELECTRONICALLY THEY WILL GET TOUGH.
SO DEMAND A PAPER BALLOT
AND DON’T SHUT UP!

Parody Lyric Copyright 2004 by Jeff Matson
All Rights Reserved.

for unflagging diligence in coming up with ways to make cheating easier. :eyes:

You know the paper sign-in book has been a thorn in their sides.

When I vote (in Alabama on paper ballot read by optical scanner), I get in line according to the first letter of my last name. I tell Mildred my name, show her my ID, and she looks me up on a big paper printout. She confirms my address, checks to be sure I'm not on the list twice, and then marks through my name with a red pen. In a general election where there is a Republican and Democratic ballot, she asks me which ballot I want. I tell her Democratic, and she has me sign my full name on the Democratic poll book. Then she pulls off a ballot (they're numbered sequentially and gummed so none can be slipped out or added in) and gives it to me, and I go vote.

At the end of the day, the number of votes cast must equal the number of signatures on the poll books and also the number of ballots used. Even after getting rid of the paper ballot, Diebold must still be sure the final vote totals balance with those poll records. They can't just add a bunch of votes to one candidate, because Mildred the poll worker would know something was wrong if she had 200 people vote one day and the total for her precinct suddenly was 250. But if Diebold gets rid of Mildred, and her paper printout of registered voters, and her paper poll sign-in book, and lets the computer determine that those numbers balanced, then they can make the vote totals anything they want them to be.

Here's what I forsee if this happens:

Lots of people in Democratic precincts being told, "Sorry, the computer says you've already voted today."

Lots of people in Democratic districts being told, "Sorry, you're not in the computer as a registered voter."

And even for those lucky enough to overcome those hurdles, we'll never really know if our vote counted, and even if it did, whether someone was able to come in and add a couple hundred votes here or there to change the outcome of the election.

Thanks for all this excellent work. A couple of nitpicky issues, however, before I head out the door:

You claim "the software is a proprietary trade secret, made by companies that lie, employ embezzlers, and do political fund raising for their buddies -- like Diebold."

1. Diebold doesn't actually lie any more than your web site does.
2. Diebold employs embezzlers? Name one.
3. Diebold has apparently gotten out of the political fundraising business.


You also claim "you'll never see how your vote was recorded at all, because that happens inside, using computer commands no one is allowed to examine (except for certifiers who have repeatedly given passing grades to flawed and illegal software)."

1. That's utter nonsense. Lots of people are allowed to examine the software, including the certifiers. SAIC and RABA, for example -- both at Maryland's request. CompuWare, for another -- at Ohio's request, and Ohio isn't even a client. The special auditor for the state of California, for another example. Florida's state certification board, for yet another. It would be more accurate to state that "your average idiot off the street is not allowed to examine it" -- all evidence points to the fact that Diebold cheerfully hands it over for clients and their duly-appointed agents to examine all the time.
2. Your contention that the software is "illegal" is laughable. You need a judge to make that evaluation, and every time you try to make that case in court you get laughed out of it. Case in point: last week's debacle in Washington state. When there's an actual judicial finding that the software is somehow illegal feel free to make that claim. Until then, stop misstating the truth.

Have a great day!

:tinfoilhat: JC :tinfoilhat"

Name one embezzler that was employed by Diebold: Jeffrey Dean, on the payroll until April 2002.

Diebold out of the fund raising business: Well, Timken and O'Dell already have achieved "Pioneer" status, giving over $100k, and O'Dell was having fund raisers at his house ($600k, for Dick Cheney) as recently as 10 months ago. He visited Bush at his Crawford ranch in August to discuss how to get him reelected. He runs the Diebold company. (These nits tend to fester when picked, don't they?)

And as for the people looking at the software -- when the company continually patches its software, no one examined it from any certifier.

Glad you deemed this post important enough to panic and jump in.

Bev

does seem to always show up in a panic.

Don't let it hit ya....

1. To Wally O'Dell's house
2. To Agent Mike's office
3. To visit and compare notes with Marvin Singleton

Wally O'Dell's house

On the way he will call agent Mike.

aong with voter turnout for the first time in decades..." :eyes:

God help us.

last week and a caller asked him about Diebold and BBV and he said he was not familiar with that issue. Wow, if the Congress isn't aware of the issue how will anything ever get done about it in Washington?

Remember media training point #1: Stay on message.

If it ain't in their selected message, they say "I haven't heard about that."

The whole situation is backwards from the beginning. Need to identify what is needed and then see who can produce it.

Instead, vendors, aided and abetted by The Election Center and its relatinship to NASED, NASS, and IACREOT, "educate" the officials, then tell the officials what their choices will be.

Diebold just let the cat out of the bag on poll books. A recent look into another EMS (Election Management System) shows that a common path for information to create ballots is:

EMS (data)
Voting system (to create the ballot)
Vendor (to program the smart card)
Uncertified smart card reader at the polls

Whatever the intent or justification, there is often a connection between the EMS (voter registration) and the ballot process. May be benign, may be not- buy why have the vulnerability?