Are the machines in 2004 the same as in Florida 2000?

[AnIndependentTexan]

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/vote_fraud.html

Rapp, the founder of Triad Governmental Systems, Inc. of Xenia, Ohio, wrote the computer program that tallies the punch-card ballots in the centralized counting systems used in 41 counties in Ohio. Rapp, whose sons now manage the family run company, is a generous supporter of the Republican Party and the presidential campaign of George W. Bush.

The second largest vendor of vote-counting machines in Ohio, in terms of the number of counties served, is Election Systems & Software (ES&S), a privately owned company based in Omaha.

Together ES&S and Triad GSI count the votes in 80 out of the 88 counties in Ohio. ES&S, however, manages the elections and counts the votes in the most populous counties of the state.

There were numerous problems with voting machines in Ohio, where Bush reputedly won by some 136,000 votes. Some voters had to wait until 3 a.m. to cast their ballots, and a computer error gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in one precinct in Franklin County.

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oversees Greene County’s voter registration and tabulating systems

April 10, 2003

http://www.ysnews.com/stories/2003/april/041003_voting.html

Dwayne A. Rapp, vice president of TRIAD Governmental Systems Inc., the Xenia business that oversees Greene County’s voter registration and tabulating systems, said that the push-button system does not represent “a flamboyant change” in the way people vote. Voting “should be as simple as it was” in previous elections, he said.

TRIAD personnel and Board of Elections officials will be in Yellow Springs on Election Day to monitor how the voting system works. Poll managers and poll workers will receive training before the election, Garman said.

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A quote from Dwayne Rapp on a website making fun of pregnate chads in 2000

http://www.angelfire.com/wizard/linkpagemainwebsite/election2000.html

of Election Data Corp. "Counting those dimpled chads is definitely not right," Dwayne Rapp, vice president of Triad Governmental
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Looks like they have a list of what venders were in what place

http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=973

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June 8 primary- read the full article on this one.

http://www.fairvote.org/righttovote/hargrove4.htm

The problems in Kershaw County paled compared to the labors that officials faced in Sumter County. Scott Vandyke, pastor of the East Dayton, Ohio, Church of Christ and a part-time elections assistant for Triad Governmental Systems of Xenia, Ohio, nearly half of the time had to repeat a run of computer cards because of bent ballots or tallies that didn't agree with precinct reports.

Sumter County voters cast 33,433 ballots in the 2000 general election, but only 30,671 registered a vote for president, an apparent undervote of 8.3 percent.

"I'm sure the problem is not with the cards. And, generally, people will vote correctly," said Vandyke.

Only 91.4 percent of the 7,486 Democratic primary ballots registered a vote for U.S. Senate this month, while 96.3 percent recorded a vote for the local sheriff's race and 94.6 percent registered for state auditor.
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Florida 2000 between Gore/Bush

http://www.leinsdorf.com/itsatie.htm

It Was Really A Tie In Florida and in the Nation - Voting Machine Choice Determined Winner in Florida

The reason it is taking so long to put this election to bed is that it really was a tie in Florida and the nation. The voters were presented with an unacceptable choice and, in the end, they refused to make it. They have hit the ball back into the court of the politicians, as if to say, you decide.

The number of double votes, under votes and no votes for president in Florida varied from a high of 12.4% in Gadsden County to a low of 0.24% in Seminole County.

Many explanations have been offered from the butterfly ballot arrangement in Palm Beach County to the allegation that minority voters were misled at the polls.

The truth turns out to be that the kind of voting machine used determined how many people did not vote for president.

There were 11 different voting systems in the 67 Florida Counties:

manual paper ballots (1)

TGS - Triad Government Systems, Xenia, Ohio (8)

SPS - Sequoia Pacific System, Exeter, California (2)

GES - Global Election System, McKinney, Texas (16)

F&C VM - Fidlar & Chambers, Rock Island, Illinois (2) Votematic

F&C DM - (1) Datamatic

ETN - ETNet, Inc., Little Rock, Arkansas (1)

ERC - Election Resources Corporation, Little Rock, Arkansas (11)

Optec - Election Systems & Software, Inc., Omaha, Nebraska, Optec III marksense

ES&S115 - Election Systems & Software, Inc. Omaha, Nebraska, Model 115 and/or315

[robbedvoter]

1. They "improved" their methods

[FullCountNotRecount]

2. No, They're worse.

at least the punch cards were paper trails. Now there are no paper trails in the big counties.

[AnIndependentTexan]

3. Just a note GES - Global Electrion System is Diebold

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

Diebold Election Systems

Diebold Elections Systems is run by Bob Urosevich, who has been working in the election systems industry since 1976. In 1979, Mr. Urosevich founded American Information Systems. He served as the President of AIS from 1979 through 1992, and that company, now known as Election Systems & Software, Inc., counted over 100 million ballots in the U.S. 2000 General Election. Bob's brother, Todd Urosevich, is Vice President, Aftermarket Sales with ES&S. In 1995, Bob Urosevich started I-Mark Systems, whose product was a touch screen voting system utilizing a smart card and biometric encryption authorization technology. Global Election Systems, Inc. acquired I-Mark in 1997, and on July 31, 2000 Mr. Urosevich was promoted from Vice President of Sales and Marketing and New Business Development to President and Chief Operating Officer. On January 22, 2002, Diebold announced the acquisition of GES, then a manufacturer and supplier of electronic voting terminals and solutions. The total purchase price, in stock and cash, was $24.7 million. Global Election Systems subsequently changed its name to Diebold Election Systems, Inc.


Criticism
Together Election Systems & Software, Inc. and Diebold Election Systems, Inc. are responsible for tallying around 80% of votes cast in the United States. The software architecture common to both is a creation of Mr. Urosevich's company I-Mark. Some critics claim that this structure is easily compromised, in part due to its reliance on Microsoft Access databases. Britain J. Williams, responsible for certification of voting machines for the state of Georgia has provided a negative assessment based on her accounting of potential exploits. In August 2003, Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fund-raiser for President George W. Bush and had sent a get-out-the-funds letter to Ohio Republicans. When assailed by critics for the perceived conflict of interest, he pointed out that the company's election machines division is run out of Texas by a registered Democrat. Nonetheless, he vowed to lower his political profile lest his personal actions harm the company. DES claims its systems provide strong immunity to ballot tampering and other vote rigging attempts. These claims have been challenged, notably by Bev Harris on her website, Blackboxvoting.org (http://www.blackboxvoting.org), and book by the same name. According to critics, the I-Mark and Microsoft software each represent a single point of failure for the vote counting process, from which 80% of votes can be compromised via the exploit of a single line of code in either subsystem. Harris and C. D. Sludge, an Internet journalist, both claim there is also evidence that the Diebold systems have been exploited to tamper with American elections —a claim Harris expands in her book Black Box Voting. Sludge further cites Votewatch for evidence that suggests a pattern of compromised voting machine exploits throughout the 1990s, and specifically involving the Diebold machines in the 2002 election.