AP picks up Sancho story today ! This is MSM reporting, guys! Don't faint.

Published Friday, March 3, 2006
State orders security safeguards for voting machines

By BILL KACZOR
Associated Press Writer
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.

The state has recommended on Friday that elections officials across Florida enhance security safeguards for all voting systems after tests in California and Tallahassee exposed weaknesses.

Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho called the technical advisory a vindication of his findings last year that some Diebold optical-scan voting machines can be hacked by election office insiders to change results.

"In other words, you could steal the election and no one would ever know," Sancho said.

<snip>

Sancho said the California testing verified his earlier results, which had been disputed by the Division of Elections and Diebold. Sancho contends he has been ostracized by the voting machine industry as a result of his dispute with Diebold.

For the rest:
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060303/APN/603031138

My wife and I are talking about a story on lets say Monday,Tuesday and finally it breaks on the TV Thursday, Friday. Talk about a delayed reaction. The * Katrina tapes for instance.

the story. :)

Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Sue Cobb threaten to take control of Leon County elections.

"You could steal the election and no one would ever know," Leon County
(FL) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho says.

Sancho arranged for an independent study by Black Box Voting with
security experts Harri Hursti and Dr. Herbert Thompson, discovering
critical security flaws in the Diebold voting system. These flaws were
confirmed in a study ordered by the California Secretary of state.
Today the state of Florida issued a security alert bulletin to all
Supervisors of Elections based on these findings.

And today, Sancho received a letter from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and
Sec. State Sue Cobb, threatening action by the state of Florida to
take over Leon County elections, ousting him from his job.

Ion Sancho is one of the most highly respected elections officials in
the nation. He stood up to the state of Florida, refusing to cooperate
with purging voters who are not felons from the voters list, working
from lists provided by the state of Florida erroneously claiming they
were felons.
Felon Disenfranchisement: Purging the Minority Vote

It is Sancho who was chosen to lead the Florida hand count in the
contentious 2000 Bush v. Gore race. The U.S. Supreme Court nixed the
hand count.
Scarcely begun, recounts halted in 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling

And it is Sancho who has provided the most convincing evidence of the
utter failure of both the federal testing labs and Florida's state
voting machine testing. Neither the federal labs caught the defects
which are referred to in the Hursti Reports "the mother of all
security holes" and "an unlockable revolving door."

Diebold knew

Yet after the findings in Leon County were published in May 2005,
Diebold responded by attacking and smearing the messenger (Ion
Sancho), denying the problem instead of fixing the system.
Diebold letters to officials

Instead of warning other elections officials so they could improve
security by taking countermeasures, Diebold sent hundreds of letters
to elections officials throughout the U.S. smearing Sancho for being
"irresponsible" and denying that the flaws exist.

Diebold's denials didn't work in Pennsylvania. The state of
Pennsylvania, after independent testing by Carnegie-Mellon computer
scientist Michael Shamos, refused to certify the system.
Pennsylvania declines some Diebold...

The state of California commissioned its own independent study
(Berkeley Report), which confirmed the results from Leon County:
quote:"Harri Hursti's attack does work: Mr. Hursti's attack on the
AV-OS is definitely real. He was indeed able to change the election
results by doing nothing more than modifying the contents of a memory
card. He needed no passwords, no cryptographic keys, and no access to
any other part of the voting system, including the GEMS election
management server."

...

"Memory card attacks are a real threat: We determined that anyone who
has access to a memory card of the AV-OS, and can tamper it (i.e.
modify its contents), and can have the modified cards used in a voting
machine during election, can indeed modify the election results from
that machine in a number of ways. The fact that the the results are
incorrect cannot be detected except by a recount of the original paper
ballots."

...

"Successful attacks can only be detected by examining the paper
ballots: There would be no way to know that any of these attacks
occurred; the canvass procedure would not detect any anomalies, and
would just produce incorrect results. The only way to detect and
correct the problem would be by recount of the original paper ballots,
e.g. during the 1 percent manual recount."

Diebold issued written statements to the Arizona Secretary of State
and to elections officials throughout America claiming that passwords
were needed, and also that the vulnerabilities did not exist.

Meanwhile, Ion Sancho has been blackballed by the vendors.

Three vendors make it impossible to buy

Diebold punished Leon County elections chief Ion Sancho by breaching
its contract, refusing to provide upgrades that Leon County had
already paid for. Without the upgrades, Leon County could not stay
HAVA compliant.

When Sancho went to Election Systems & Software (ES&S) for a
replacement system, ES&S led him on for weeks, then on the eve of the
Florida deadline, refused to sell to him.

Sancho went to the only remaining authorized vendor, Sequoia Voting
Systems (a system that revealed over 100,000 errors in its voting
system computer logs during the 2004 presidential election), but
Sequoia stalled the talks and failed to provide Sancho with an offer.

The companies seem to be tag-teaming with the state of Florida, which
has given Sancho just a few weeks to purchase a system. If all three
companies stall just long enough, they can effectively oust Sancho.

The state of Florida knew

In July 2005, Black Box Voting sent a certified copy of the Hursti
Report to then-Florida secretary of state Glenda Hood and to
then-Florida voting system chief, Paul Craft. In addition, Paul Craft
received a letter from world-renowned M.I.T. security expert Ronald
Rivest warning that the Hursti findings were a serious concern.

Yet the state of Florida did no additional study or testing. Glenda
Hood and Paul Craft resigned suddenly in November 2005, with Sue Cobb
and David Drury taking over -- but no studies of the critical security
flaw identified in Leon County were ordered by either the former or
the current secretary of state, nor were any studies done by either
voting system examiner.

The problem was first reported by Black Box Voting in May 2005, with
formal reports going out by certified mail in July 2005. After no
action by Florida officials, a full fledged demonstration of hacking
the election in Leon County took place on Dec. 13, 2005

At this time, Gov. Jeb Bush promised to look into the problem, but
commissioned no studies and did nothing to decertify the system after
its flaws were confirmed in other states.

Volunteers ready and willing to hand count Leon County; Florida says
it's against the law

When news of Leon County's blackballing spread across the nation,
volunteers from as far away as New Hampshire and Texas began plans to
step in and hand-count the next two Leon County elections.

Jeb Bush isn't having any part of that: No hand counts can take place
in Florida. It's the law.

The state of Florida has not only continued to demand officials to
purchases unauditable paperless touch-screens, but actually
accelerated the schedule. Whereas most states require HAVA-compliant
systems by the first federal election in 2006, Florida moved the
compliance date up to January 2006.

Florida has declined to certify the AutoMark, a device that enables
election supervisors to comply with a Help America Vote Act (HAVA)
mandate for the disabled, forcing county officials to use only
paperless touch-screen machines for disabled voters.

Florida missing a key protection for county election officials

Privatization of public necessities into the hands of for-profit
companies does not work unless certain safeguards are in place. In
Florida, voting system suppliers must be authorized by the state. The
state has approved only three suppliers.

There are other industries which are limited to a few suppliers --
power companies, telecommunications providers, cable networks.
However, in order to become authorized suppliers these vendors MUST
agree to sell to willing buyers.

In other words, "You can only buy from this limited pool of vendors,
but they, in turn, MUST sell to you."

The business model doesn't work if you don't force the limited
supplier pool to sell to willing buyers. Florida's failure to properly
structure the elections business model has created an impossible
situation in Leon County.

Requiring vendors to sell to willing buyers is a KEY SAFEGUARD in
cases where the government limits the supplier pool for a public
necessity.

- The state of Florida failed in its duty to ensure secure voting
systems. It's testing failed to spot critical security flaws.

- The state of Florida failed to enact a provision requiring voting
system supplier to sell to willing buyers, while at the same time,
limiting the pool of suppliers to just three vendors who can refuse
service at will.

- Diebold Election Systems failed to warn its customers of known
security problems, denied the problems, and punished the county
elections official who discovered the problem by refusing to perform
on its paid-in-advance contract.

According to the Associated Press, Sancho plans to fight!

"We will be talking to our lawyers over the weekend," Sancho said.
"Somebody is going to pay for it."

State orders security safeguards for voting machines

PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED, MUST INCLUDE LINK TO
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Steven P. :kick:

:grr:

Thank goodness for this last line:
"According to the Associate Press, Sancho plans to fight!"

:patriot:
God bless him.

when he was secretary of state and replaced him with McPherson, who is making it obvious where he stands with Diebold.

60 minutes has to do the story here. this cannot be under the radar any longer. america is totally receptive to this now and if we dont get this out there, 2006 midterms will seal our fate.

:kick:

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002261.htm

="Are the two major scandals of out time -- computerized vote theft and Abramovian wheeling-dealing -- linked? You bet! If you haven't read Brad Friedman's blockbuster investigation, do it now. And finally then, it has recently been revealed that Diebold itself was also paying Abramoff's firm Greenberg Traurig directly for work in June of 2004 which has yet to be fully detailed or explained in any way.

A payment stub and pre-check-register revealing a $12,500 payment for the month, made from Diebold to Greenberg Traurig was discovered in a dumpster at Diebold's McKinney, TX facility in July of that year by electronic voting watchdog group BlackBoxVoting.org.

Perhaps that payment was part of the $275,000 we mentioned previously, as reportedly paid to Diebold. There's much, much more; the Bob Ney connection is absolutely damning. One of the ironies of this scandal is that Indian tribes were forced to fork over a chunk of their gambling profits to Godfather Jack. Evidence suggests that some of that dough may have funded vote-rigging -- while other evidence suggests that in the American southwest, Indians were the primary victims of vicious Republican election tactics.

I'd love to know what the folks in those tribes think about that particular situation...Also on the vote fraud front: A "free market" think tank called the Pacific Research Insitute has issued a statement calling paper trails a "policy blunder": The new law "may force California to relive the mistakes of America's punch-card voting past," the group said, and will make voting "increasingly difficult and negate the original virtues of e-voting: speed, cost-savings and efficiency.''

"We're moving in the wrong direction," said Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies for the institute. "The whole point of e-voting is to move away from paper." The "mistakes" of our "punch card past"? How can those "mistakes" possibly be worse than the nightmare of an unverified vote? In election after election after election, the Republicans magically do better than the polling would indicate. We're not kids. We know what's going on.

The whole "think tank" system has turned into a racket. If you have a college degree and you're too lazy to get a real job -- and you don't mind prostituting your brainpower -- send your resume to a think tank. They just may offer you a cozy gig as an in-house propagandist."

:nuke: :dem: :dem: :dem: :dem: :dem:
:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

out there, but I'm afraid to get my hopes up. Anyone know if Clint Curtis has decided to run for office? If so, that could boost public awareness of election fraud.

know that stories like this are important.

Would you consider writing a post on the subject of clicking through for traffic analysis, and why it's important? I don't think many people on DU are hip to this and its importance.

:hi:

about. DUing polls is one thing but clicking through makes DU a rolling band of Nielsen Families. Will work on it later today.

The more people hitting the site for a story about election reform, the more the publisher knows he can attract eyeballs with such stories.

It'll also help them sell ads.

gets tracked and would appear if we were a significant percentage of the referring domain. It would be an IP address though I believe and would need to do a lookup.

Because page views, unique visitors and stickiness, all of which determine ad rates and revenue affect the bottom line the web sites of CNN & MSNBC outearn Fox's.

http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_07/b3971033.htm

How Fox Was Outfoxed

In December, MSNBC and CNN routed Fox News. Of course, MSNBC and CNN had spent recent months fiercely tussling for the top slot, but in December MSNBC nosed ahead to finish first. The Fox News Channel limped to a distant third-place finish, its audience roughly one-third the size of its competitors'.

Did we say we were talking about TV ratings? We are not. All these data reflect U.S. traffic at the channels' Web sites, as tallied by Nielsen//NetRating. They also reflect a complete inversion of how the cable networks perform on their home medium. (MSNBC's daily TV audience sometimes fits comfortably inside two large college football stadiums.) Could this signify that Fox News' style is less translatable to the unbridled Web than that of its straighter competitors?

snip

IN A PREVIOUS MEDIA ERA this would be the narrative's end, but we're not in that era. The day when the Web overtakes traditional media -- when a medium's online fare generates more revenue than its original format -- is years off, but big players may be glimpsing its outline in the distance. This, along with the pasting CNN continues to take from partisans on the left and right, is probably why its executives were practically giddy when told about this column. It's true that CNN.com's traffic slipped below that of MSNBC.com for several months last year, but another stat bolsters CNN's online strength. People spend more time, on average, at CNN.com than at either FoxNews.com or MSNBC.com. (Time spent on a Web site, unfortunately called "stickiness," is another key data point that media buyers weigh when making advertising decisions.)

snip


FoxNews.com's growth last year suggests untapped potential, but CNN.com's audience and stickiness signify some things as well. News may be commoditizing online, but those in the top tier still outdo their flashier competitors. (Compare the traffic of nytimes.com to other newspaper sites.) In news, the serious still counts for something. And for all the thinking that Web mojo is driven by sharp, partisan commentary, well, it hasn't yet helped FoxNews.com close the gap with CNN.com. Passions may run hot on the Web, but evidently there's still a place for medium cool.

I say the real reason is Faux fans can't read.

Somebody said that if you click a link, the site can tell where you were last.

They recommended opening a new browser to avoid that.

When you administer a web site you can configure status reports that give you a list of the top referring sites. You could theoretically set up a log that tracks the IP address, computer name, OS, browser, entry page and exit page used by everyone who visits your site, but if you get a lot of traffic, those logs will become huge in short order. It all depends on how much storage you have on the server and how much you want to devote to keeping such detailed logs.

Here's a sample of what a typical report looks like. This is the report for March 1 - 4 for my wife's art web site.

Top 7 of 25 Total Referrers # Hits Referrer
1 313 45.49% - (Direct Request)
2 2 0.29% http://search.msn.com/results.aspx
3 1 0.15% http://eastbay.backpage.com/buyselltrade/classifieds/ViewAd
4 1 0.15% http://sanjose.backpage.com/buyselltrade/classifieds/ViewAd
5 1 0.15% http://search.msn.de/spresults.aspx
6 1 0.15% http://www.google.com/search
7 1 0.15% www.seventwentyfour.com/

Top 15 of 23 Total User Agents # Hits User Agent
1 190 27.62% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; FunWe
2 130 18.90% msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
3 83 12.06% Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.co
4 79 11.48% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 9.0; Windows NT 5.0; .
5 48 6.98% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;)
6 36 5.23% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; MSN 9
7 27 3.92% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gec
8 24 3.49% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
9 13 1.89% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; QXW0339h)
10 11 1.60% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)
11 10 1.45% LinkWalker
12 8 1.16% Yahoo-MMCrawler/3.x (mms dash mmcrawler dash support at yahoo
13 7 1.02% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET
14 4 0.58% Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/
15 2 0.29% MJ12bot/v1.0.7 (http://majestic12.co.uk/bot.php?+)

Steven P. :kick:

nationally, against Diebold. We could allege fraud (the discovery process could yield a lot of great info), design defect of the voting machines, negligence, breach of contract (depending on the terms of the contracts with the various municipalities), etc.

It may be challenging enough to find one person with 'standing' much less argue that everyone does. Only takes on DAvid to take on Goliath. If there are some other David's out there, I wouldn't necessarily want to foreclose his or her rights to sue by making them part of a class, where everybody's rights within that class are adjudicated in an thumbs up-or-down basis in a single case.

Better to have a swarm of mosquitoes, eh?

similarily harmed?

case would work, but I haven't read about them doing anything about this.

http://www.stpetetimes.com/2006/03/04/State/Voting_machine_securi.shtml

By Associated Press
Published March 4, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


TALLAHASSEE - The state recommended on Friday that elections officials across Florida enhance security safeguards for all voting systems after tests in California and Tallahassee exposed weaknesses.

Pennsylvania and New York and California is fighting the SoS over Diebold. So I say let them sue. It will bring more attention to election fraud and expose the repug owners for the corrupt partners they are.