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12/6/2004
In sworn affidavit, programmer says he developed vote-rigging prototype for Florida congressman; Congressman’s office silent
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By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor
In a sworn affidavit (pdf file) Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
RAW STORY acquired the affidavit from The Brad Blog, which has been in contact with the programmer in Washington.
While working for Yang Enterprises in Florida, the 46-year-old programmer says he was instructed by then-Republican state representative Tom Feeney to “develop a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in the election and be undetectable.”
Feeney, a former failed running mate of Gov. Jeb Bush, now represents Florida’s 24th district in the House of Representatives. At the time, he was serving both as general counsel and lobbyist for Yang Enterprises and the Florida state congressman.
Feeney’s office in Orlando told RAW STORY they would check with the congressman and hoped to provide comment later today. A receptionist at Yang Enterprises said she would pass a message along to a vice president, who she said would return the call.
“They will give you a comment,” she said.
The programmer, Clinton Curtis, said that he was told the program needed to be “touch-screen capable, the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment,
the programming was to remain hidden even if the source code was inspected.”
Curtis asserts that he told Feeney it would be nearly impossible to write a code to change the voting results if anyone were able to view the source code.
“However,” he added, “if the code were compiled before anyone was allowed to review it then any vote fraud would remain invisible to detection.”
Nevertheless, he says that he was asked at the meeting by Yang to build the prototype anyway.
Curtis states he initially believed that Feeney’s sought to stop Democrats from using such a program and “wanted to be able to detect and prevent that if it occurred.”
It was not until after the prototype was delivered that he says he got wind of its possible, more nefarious usage.
According to his affidavit, Yang, his employer, later informed him that the software might be used to “control the vote in South Florida.” He says that he would never have developed the software had he known its alleged ultimate purpose.
Yang could not be reached for comment.
Curtis details his claims on the fraud program in the affidavit:
In the vote fraud prototype that I created things are not what they seem. Hidden on the screen are invisible buttons. A person with knowledge of the locations of those invisible buttons can then use them to alter the votes of everyone before them. By clicking the correct order of invisible buttons the candidate selected by the user is compared to other candidates within that same race. If the candidate they selected is leading the race nothing happens. If the other candidate is leading the race the vote totals are altered so that the selected candidate is now leading the race with 51% of the vote. The other candidates then share the remaining 49% in exact proportion to the totals they had previously. In the prototype supplied to Feeney the vote totals show on the screen. In an actual application the user would receive no visible clues to the fraud that had just occurred. Since the vote is applied by race, any single race or multiple races can be altered. The supervisors or any other voter would never notice this fraud since no visible sign would appear. Additionally, the procedure could be repeated as many times as was necessary to achieve the desired results. No amount of testing or simulations would expose the fraud as its activation and process is completely invisible to everyone except the person programming the vote fraud routine.
The same procedure could be automated to activate without any user intervention whenever the machine detects a certain pattern of voting. The algorithm could also be altered from hidden keys or triggers that would allow the fraudulent user to manipulate both the margins and percentages of any particular race. In most national elections it is not necessary to win every area.
Yang Enterprises is currently under investigation by the FBI. Curtis has filed a suit with the state alleging the the firm also overbilled the state on
another contract, and his report of an illegal alien resulted in the arrest of a Chinese national in March who is accused of sending information on radar guidance chips for the U.S. Hellfire missile to China.
Curtis’ affidavit has been turned over to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee for further investigation.
More details on this story are available at The Brad Blog. Further updates will be available at RAW STORY later tonight.
Developing…
Correction: An early iteration of this article referred to the programmer as Clinton Collins due to a transcription error. The name signed on the affidavity is Clinton Curtis. 
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