Suspect Code Used in State Votes

[Barad Simith]

by Kim Zetter (Wired News)
Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:00 a.m. ET

http://news.lycos.com/news/story.asp?section=MyLycos&storyId=797139

An investigation by California's secretary of state has revealed that Diebold Election Systems placed uncertified software on electronic voting machines in a California county.

Voters in Alameda County, a densely populated region in the San Francisco Bay Area that includes the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, used a Diebold touch-screen-voting system utilizing uncertified software in Tuesday's election and in last month's gubernatorial recall election.

...

Before a state can use a voting system, the software and hardware must be audited by an independent testing authority that examines the code according to certification standards set by the Federal Election Commission.

Once the independent authority certifies the system, states can then test and certify the systems for their polling places.

California election law requires voting companies to notify state officials when they make changes to software after certification has been completed. Secretary of state spokesman Stone said Diebold did not do this when it applied a "software upgrade" to systems in Alameda County.

...

Kim Alexander, founder and president of the California Voter Foundation, said, "Voting companies and election officials who have embraced electronic voting say that certification procedures and testing are adequate to protect the integrity of the voting systems. But for a vendor to be accused of placing unauthorized software into a voting system undermines one of the prime arguments they have been making for the past year and brings into question the integrity of the entire voting system."

[Noordam]

1. I wonder how many Dems votes Wilson lost over this

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

[ForestsBeatBushes]

3. Wilson?

[haele]

21. Swartznegger is Pete Wilson v.II

Wilson is his primary advisor, Wilson's people litter his staff, and almost every policy the Gropenator claims comes from Wilson.

Basically, Ah-nold is the puppet through which Pete Wilson managed to sneak a third term of office in.

Haele

[mrdmk]

22. haele is correct

The weather word in California is Petey is back. :smoke:

[Toucano]

2. We knew Alameda County had something going wrong.

The results took way too long to come in.

I say "DO OVER!"

[ForestsBeatBushes]

4. Diebold strikes again - what?

Did I move to Floriduh and not notice?

DO OVER, right on!

[Evanstondem]

11. Nice graphic

But I wonder how many Bush supporters view PBS/NPR. Is that 50% of 2 people?

[Eloriel]

5. kick

I love that quote by Kim Alexander

Eloriel

[hunter]

20. Yes, any code can be placed in a "patch."

As Diebold's Ken Clark allegedly wrote:

"... so we'll slip the changes into GEMS 1.17.21 and declare this a bug, rather than a new feature. What good are rules unless you can bend them now and again."

What if somebody in the Diebold "upgrade" chain decides that votes against their candidate are defective and unpatriotic? Is there a "patch" for that?

Of course! Anybody who knows a little bit about Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Access can do it.

:kick:

[dansolo]

6. And didn't the judge say that the argument

Over the reliability of voting machines was completely without merit, when they ruled down the postponement of the recall election?

[ForestsBeatBushes]

7. Why, yes, yes he did!

Did he at least get a boat or something out of it?

[Voltaire99]

8. Down the memory hole

Can our national political life get more Orwellian?

When I think about the dystopia we seem hellbent on perfecting, I wonder how far it can go aesthetically. The 20th century experience teaches that looks count for everything - superficiality is as integral to our lives as to our political rituals. So since we insist on the fiction of democracy being observed through the appearance of fair elections, is the touch screen fraud the highest technical expression of our contempt for the real thing? Or will it only get weirder and more disgustingly fraudulent?

[kayell]

9. Are they checking all the other counties?

eom

[librechik]

14. Californians should write Kim and ask him to check n/t

everybody else too--

[Epoch]

10. I just e-mailed this article to all 8 of my congressmen and two senators

This article just got sent to all my Maryland representatives. Every day I will send it to the congressmen from each state. Everyone else needs to do the same. Call your congressmen! Save our democracy!!

Yaron

[farmboxer]

12. Republicans Can't Lose An Election Because They

can always count on the "Republican manufactured and programmed voting machines"!

[nolabels]

23. "are...........shopping for voters"

One thing I have noticed is that some idealogical Republicans say making money on because some is forced to work for lower wage is okay. Then when one goes higher on the corporate-republican food chain it goes making money is all there is

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/03/EDGT42MT171.DTL&type=printable
Shopping for voters
Ruth Rosen
Monday, November 3, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback


URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/03/EDGT42MT171.DTL


IMAGINE THAT you earn $8 an hour working for Wal-Mart. Then, you learn that the store is recruiting workers, at $10 an hour, to convince neighbors and shoppers to vote against a law that would limit the size of "big- box'' stores in unincorporated areas of Contra Costa County.

Great, you think. I'll apply. But Wal-Mart won't hire its own workers because the corporation isn't sure it's legal to use them to promote a political campaign.

When you realize that Wal-Mart will pay higher wages to those campaigning to keep your wages low, you get angry -- which is how I've learned about the Arkansas retailer's countywide plans to repeal the ordinance.

Last June, the Contra Costa Country Board of Supervisors passed the ban when it recognized that Wal-Mart's seductive low prices come with hidden costs to residents. The retailer's subsistence wages drive down the pay of other workers; its huge super-centers undermine local small businesses and create more traffic congestion. Taxpayers, moreover, end up paying for workers' health care because they can't afford costly benefits on such low pay.
(snip)

But if they work in police-prison states like China or Nicaragua, they don't have to worry about the voting public

http://www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/magazine/walmart.cfm


Not made in USA: Family members hand food to workers at the Chentex plant in Nicaragua, where workers are locked behind enclosures throughout their workday.

The NLC found and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last year that in Managua, Nicaragua, Wal-Mart has been among retailers using the Chentex sweatshop to manufacture private-label goods. While Wal-Mart says it has a code of conduct guaranteeing workers' rights for anyone sewing Wal-Mart garments around the world, Chentex's Taiwanese owners fired in 2000 union leaders asking for raises for workers making less than $5.30 a day for a 10-hour day, or less than 53 cents an hour.

With President George W. Bush promising on the campaign trail to "look South" and Congress last year enacting the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act, which extends to Caribbean and Central American nations no-tariff benefits similar to those under the North American Free Trade Agreement, this region is poised for an explosion of garment sweatshops, says Clark University's Ross. Central America is extremely convenient for retailers and it offers lower shipping costs than Asia.

But the region also is where union leaders, often women, routinely are threatened by employers, according to the Support Team International for Textileras, a network of women community and union organizers. Only such factory clients as Wal-Mart and the Bush administration, which the Walton family backed with huge campaign donations, can ensure workers are protected, Ross adds. (In the 2000 election cycle, Republican Party committees received $100,000 from John Walton, $81,000 from Jim Walton and $10,000 from Alice Walton, the children of the deceased Sam Walton, while reaping another $75,000 from the company and $384,000 from other board members, according to Federal Election Commission filings.)

"With Caribbean Basin parity," Ross says, "the danger is that by using China as a whip, labor standards in Mexico and Central America will be driven even further down by sweatshop owners competing with business from the big private-label retailers led by Wal-Mart."
(snip)

[Rex]

13. Someone coredumped on our beloved Democracy

those fucking bastards...I bet ya anything the repukees are gonna hijack Cali in 2004. They can't do a repeat theft in Florida, that's just to obvious.

[T Bone]

15. Hmm Rex now there is a thought

You may be on top of it. 'Let' us win in Florida but double up the fraud out in California this go-around.

In California, did they count absentees at the precinct or at a 'central location'? This is a key part of any skimming operation from what I have seen here. We have to be very careful comparing original machine counts from the precinct and ward level back to re-canvassing done at 'central locations'. IMHO.

[ForestsBeatBushes]

17. Yo!

We democrats were inundated by the local party to vote absentee. They said we just can't trust the machines used here.

Apparently, the repiglicans caught on to that! :mad:

[brucelee]

16. Another Florida Vote rigging?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

18. kick

[bobbieinok]

19. kick

:kick: