Not enough emphasis on Software & Machine Manipulation

[JunkYardDogg]

There was too much emphasis on long lines
Not Nearly enough Emphasis on the Possible Machine and Software
Manipulation and the Incestuous Relationship of the Machine and Software Makers to the BushReich
It has been two whole months since Nov 2 and legally it is impossible to Impound, Analyze, Inspect, and backtrace the Electronic
Voting Machines, Central Tablulators, and servers. IN AMERICA!!
This MUST be addressed. This is totally intolerable.
Of course there is no evidence. American Citizens have no legal ability to independently have this investigated.
Why?
Because to get the machines impounded, we must first show evidence of how many votes were switched.
This was not addressed today.
The best reference to the machines was actually by BushReich Thug Meister DeLay who referred to them as derisively as "Vote-stealing software controlled by Computer nerd Bush"

[slay]

1. I felt the same way

They stole it at the electronic tabulator level most likely. Either the exit polls were wrong, or the election was rigged. I have more reason to believe the exit polls than Republican owned machines, especially after learning about the history of those machines as well as first hand accounts of fraud that DID occur.

[Number_6]

31. grab the evidence now

Not being an expert on election procedure, but having a fair amount of computer knowledge: Any hacked code in the Triad or Diebold (tabulation or e-Voting) machines could easily be un-hacked. This is my primary suspicion of why their support people were creeping around. BUT the computers should be impounded anyway, just in case they were sloppy. And the chances of Diebold turning over the *actual* source code that was used on Nov. 2 seem dim, although they may claim to in response to a subpoena or such. Anyway, the best evidence would be the paper ballots to be (guess what?) hand-recounted in all precincts to see how much discrepancy from tabulation machines' output on Nov. 2. As we can see, the number of precincts that now have exclusively machine Voting, with no paper to recount, is up from 2000 and 2002, is now 30%? That's what I seem to remember. I dunno if that's Ohio or nationwide. That needs to go to 0%.

[Stevepol]

2. Right on JunkyardDogg. This is the ONLY issue as far as I'm concerned.

Unless this issue is addressed, everything else is meaningless. There has to be a DEMAND FOR A VOTER-VERIFIED BALLOT AND REQUIRED AUDITS FOR EVERY ELECTION, HAND COUNTED. Short of massive protests, I don't see it happening. The power of these companies, criminal tho I believe they are, is so great that nothing will be done unless large numbers of people DEMAND IT! That's why this must be ther first issue discussed and the last issue discussed. It's the center of everything, has to be until the machine fraud is remedied.

[eric144]

3. Definitely

It seems like you're right and that democracy could be a thing of the past.

[Beth in VT]

8. Me too

we need subpoena power or a whistleblower or something ...

[AntiFascist]

30. There is some good that has come out of this...

following the flow of money has led to much bigger fish to fry, unfortunately harder to catch.

[FreepFryer]

4. This is too partisan. Might have been the bait... doesn't mean we won't...

use it as the most egregious reason for reform.

Would it have made any difference to concentrate on it?

[KittyWampus]

5. Long Lines Are More Emotionally Gut Wrenching Then Electronics

the Democrats are completely out of power.

They are moving as fast as the situation allows.

Deal with it.

[hansolsen]

6. Yes, and why do ** we ** need to point this out -- it is so obvious.

Over 30% of all votes cast nationwide were cast using blackbox hardware and software that cannot be verified manually. We have no idea who won those votes.

Hacking those machines and hiding the vote stealing is as easy as stealing candy from babies. Bush's election is illegitimate because we do not really know how 30% of all voters voted. Why did every Dem leader stand up and say he won fair and square and any fraud was just minor fraud???? Damn them.

Black box voting machines is the big issue and the only one that absolutely must be fixed before the next election. Our speakers prattled on about the trivia and barely mentioned the 5000 ton pink elephant of voter fraud. What the hell??

[JunkYardDogg]

7. They only needed to change 2% of the vote

2% of the vote from Kerry to Bush equals a 4% Difference
It is of Paramount Importance
Because that is where the Evidence is-
This hearing was covered worldwide- It is absolutely
imperative that the Public-nationwide and worldwide, be bombarded
with information about rigged voting machines. They don't talk about it 'cause they don't understand it.
The more talk about long lines, the less talk about rigged computers
Computers don't make Black Magic "Glitches"
There is no such thing
Everything a computer does is the result of human instruction. Period.
The more this is brought to the public's attention, the more familiar it becomes.
The Borg did it with Gay marriage.
How many Religious Fanatics are really going to be directly affected by Homosexual Marriage? Probably none.
But they are all obsessed with it.
Why, because it is highly publicized by the NeoCon/Dominionists
Why can't we do the same for something which directly affects ALL
Americans?
How fucking pathetic are we?

[hansolsen]

11. Sad to say but 90% of our elected leaders couldn't spell the word computer

You're right, they just don't understand it. They don'e have a clue. They have no idea how easy it is to hack those computers and hide the evidence. If they knew what you and I know, they would be raising holy hell.

[Blue22]

9. You're right, "It's the tabulators, stupid!"

Why don't we go after all of the machines via freedom of information requests to our state boards of elections and local BOEs? You can never tell who might give up the "proprietary code" actually used in this election. 122 million votes cast in this election (http://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/). I'll bet they were greedy and did it in more places than just Ohio. Let's ask for a copy of the raw votes from the database tables in the servers/tabulators. It would be a simple copy command to give it to us. Then we'd be in business, county by county, precinct by precinct, vote by vote...

[newyawker99]

19. Hi Blue22!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[insane_cratic_gal]

10. It will come out n/t

[hereinmissouri]

12. What century are those senators living in?

Did it seem like the senators didn't understand this issue or were they just playing dumb?

They all thought Bush really won because probably 118,000 people didn't leave long lines or vote at the wrong place.

Did any of them look at the exit polls?

[shraby]

13. If we could line up

a couple of moles..one to plug in one of those tabulators and one to hack it, we would have all we need. :evilgrin:

[Blue22]

14. Courts-Nada, Moles-Nada, FOIL-Si

All we really need is 100,000 freedom of information law requests. I just sent my first one in. That was easy.

B-)

[JunkYardDogg]

15. Keep it Going

You might be on to something
Bev Harris at BlackBox Voting.org filed an incredible amount of FOI
requests, but I do not know if her requests covered this
They ran her off of this FORUM, before I started coming here, she has a short fuse and I get the impression that some posters were baiting her, but I'm not sure
It's too bad, 'cause short fuse and all, she really gave a shit about this

[Kelvin Mace]

28. Bev's problems were MUCH greater than a "short fuse"

Bev's major problem was taking credit for other people's work and viciously attacking people who dared disagree with her or question her conclusions.

Today I had a long conversation with Rebecca Mercuri, one of the early academics to address BBV before it had that name, along with Ronni9e Dugger and Peter Neumann.

Dr. Mercuri was in Raleigh testifying before the NC Select Committee on Electronic Voting (of which I am a member) and gave a delightfully blistering indictement of BBV.

After the session, she and I traded Bev stories and I learned, yet again, that even some of Bev's early work (the ES&S ownership research) was cribbed from someone else.

Also, Bev was NOT the first person to find the Diebold files, some kiddies playing around on the net found them earlier and posted links
on their own site. That is how Bev found the site.

The Kids Prick Open a Scandal

Some kids who are "really interested in computers" were playing around last year, spidering through the links on various websites, when they discovered that Diebold had an unsecured FTP site (the same one Behler had used). One of the boys noted the fact on his website. Some other material on that site--not the stuff about Diebold--attracted a lot of hits, and that automatically led Google, the cyberspace search engine, to position it among the early-listed sites for many searches. One day Bev Harris, a literary publicist in Washington who was doing research for a book on vote-counting in computers, fed Google the right search words and the FTP site itself popped up. Knowing little about computers, she turned to David Allen, who was publishing her book, and he recognized the openly posted source codes and much other data concerning Diebold voting machines.

How They Could Steal the Election This Time
by Ronnie Dugger
The Nation, 7/9/04
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&c=1&s=dugger

I believe Bev threatened to sue Dugger over this story (she threatens everyone), but nothing came of it because it was true. What made Bev mad is that it undermined her standing for filing a qui tam, since she was NOT the originator of the evidence.

Bev may care about this, but she doesn't care enough to keep her ego in check or to avoid trashing fellow activists who she deems "competitors" for the limelight. Nor does she care enough to put aside making a buck off it.

Bev has done SEVERE damage to the anti-BBV movement with her qui tam law suit in California (which gave her a nice paycheck) and is supposedly working on a Federal qui tam, worth even more.

If she doesn file suit in Federal court, I WILL contest her standing to prevent her from destroying the value of any more evidence of Deibold's wrong doing.


David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org

The taste of Republican butt does not improve with age.

"The NeoCons can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They do not feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

[JunkYardDogg]

35. Good Account-Thanks

Plan9_Pub
That was a good accounting of Bev-
I'm familiar with a lot of it- early on I came across the Geeks finding the open source code and the "Rob Georgia" app on the open
Internet, which is a story in itself
I'm in Californee, so I know of her work.
Also, we are lucky enough to have a Sec of State, Kevin Shelly, who understands E-Vote Machines and he fought Diebold, unfortunately he is being investigated for some abuses. I mentioned this to
the Calif Lt. Governor, Cruz Bustamante, on Election day at a Local Dem Election office, Lois Capps, and he didn't even want to discuss
E-vote equipment. Of course, his son is going after Shelly's job in the next election.
Anyway, your posting was very informative, and it is a shame that Bev
can't stay more focused with her anger
Thanks

[Time for change]

22. Yes, it did seem to me that they didn't understand the issue

But hopefully what they were really doing was using the long lines arguments, etc., as a wedge issue to investigate the whole thing.

[Blue22]

16. Simple FOIL request

Here's some text for a simple FOIL request that anyone could send in to get info on the e-vote machines and associated vote counting processes. Once we start to get stuff we can share and refine our requests for additional info based on what BoEs cough up.


To whom it may concern,

I am submitting a freedom of information request for the following information and any associated information that you may have related to the procedures and processes surrounding e-voting in your districts. I am interested in obtaining the following from any election district in New York State that used electronic voting equipment:

1. Name address and telephone number of the vendor.
2. Type of equipment
3. local procedures used to record and tabulate votes with the equipment
4. copies of all software used on the voting and tabulator machines
5. copies of all databases holding accumulated vote records for all elections in the district(s), logs of database activity, user passwords (appropriately encrypted) and any other transactions related to voting.




Sincerely,

[Stevepol]

17. Excellent ideas Blue22. Everybody can do a little something.

It could be that college poli-sci departments or high school poli-sci classes could be enrolled to find this stuff out and report on it. It's very hard to find people on regular city newspapers who will help. I've tried here in Wichita but despite knowing an editor who is sympathetic I've been unable to get any coverage of the issue. I wrote a couple letters to the editor, but they were soft-pedaled and amended by the editors so as not so scare the voters or make them think something might be seriously askew. Anyway, I just called the Elections commissioner and talked with him about the machines used, etc. We use the Micro-Vote machine here in Sedgwick County. It has a scroll inside that supposedly records on paper the result of the vote. However, it's not voter-verified and of course there's no required auditing. This machine by the way was involved in one of the biggest anomalies in history. In Boone County IN in 03, the Micro-Vote machine recorded 144,000 votes when the county only had 19,000 voters. If the error had only been 2 or 3% nobody would have noticed.

[JunkYardDogg]

18. Do you know at What Address to Submit the FOI Requests?

A few years ago I had to submit a Freedom of Information Request on a Customs Duty issue, and there was a specific address to send it to.
Because the machines are located in obviously many different locations, do we submit to each precinct, or perhaps each county's
election office? This could be really worth puruing- there certainly are enough DU members to split this up amongst each state.
If we can find even one proof of manipulation, this could enable
a legal basis to go after all the machines.
My Mantra has been that the voting anomolies and aberrations are prima facie evidence of intentional vote tampering and manipulation
Blue22- this is a good entry into DU for you
MAKE WAVES

[Blue22]

32. How to submit FOIL requests for info on e-voting processes at BoEs

Submitting a FOIL request to a Board of Election or any state
agency or board is fairly straightforward in New York
(http://www.dos.state.ny.us/coog/foil2.htm) and I assume that
this is typical of other states.  In general, requests should
be submitted in some reasonable format (e-mail is usually OK),
public officials are required to process them within a set
time-frame, and some nominal fee may be charged, e.g., the
cost of the CD-ROM carrying the info.  In practice, the
information disclosed depends on who is handling the FOIL
request that day, so some variability in response is natural.
It's a kind of open government lottery!  Another great feature
is that we all have due process and appeal rights if we aren't
satisfied with what we receive.

All we have to do is Goggle 'board of elections' and your
state.  Almost all have web sites with "contact" via
e-mail links.  Then proceed to specific counties.

We don't even have to be systematic about trying to cover all
states/counties because there are so many of us.  In fact,
because of variable responses and the publicity factor, the
more FOILs per jurisdiction, the better.  


JunkYardDogg, if you could keep this thread or a similar one
going for a while, we can share what types of info/data we
receive and develop a plan to organize it, maybe on DU or some
other site.


B-)

[understandinglife]

20. This could help, considerably (and, ironically!!)....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=264336&mesg_id=264437

go dino go; you're the man dino...:evilgrin:

[Time for change]

21. I agree

Hopefully the investigation will look into that in great deal.

[Pacifist Patriot]

23. They went with what couldn't be contradicted...

or brushed off as speculation. Long lines and unscrupulous politicians (Blackwell) are fact rather than theory.

[Beth in VT]

29. The machine stuff is kind of tin-foily until we have more info,

and they're already calling us conspiracy theorists without it.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

34. The Thugs spin it into tinfoil, but the data is solid

It is too bad more Dems didn't present the facts regarding the machine issues, and name the laws that Blackwell has broken. The Dems relative silence about this actually gave more impact to the Thugs tinfoil accusations, I thought.

[sandnsea]

24. There's testimony on the lines

Has anybody come forward to say the machines were actually tampered with, that the machines actually switched votes? No. There was plenty of mention of the machine malfunctions though, and that's the door to get to the proprietary software and hacking problems.

[12345]

25. saw this in another thread...

Thankfully, American Free Press reporter, Christopher Bollyn was in the right place at the right time on Election Night 2004. He spotted an AP employee connecting her laptop to an ES&S computer at the Cook County (IL) election headquarters. But, was she downloading or uploading data? In an interview with this reporter, Bollyn said, "When I asked the AP "reporter" if she had "direct access" to the mainframe computer that was tallying the votes, she said yes and then Burnham (a Cook County official) stepped in and re-asked my question for me. Again the answer was, "Yes."

I called Cook County this week and spoke with Cass Cliatt, their spokesperson. She said that, after the polls close, any reporter can use the county's "connector cables" that allow them to download the latest vote totals. Cliatt said that this did not constitute a connection to the mainframe computer. She did admit that AP employees were there on Election Night and had cables dedicated to them specifically. But, she again insisted that the AP cables were not connected to the mainframe computer. Bollyn disagrees.

http://onlinejournal.com/evoting/010705Landes/010705lan...

[ivorysteve]

26. We need a cartoon ...

Saw this suggestion on another thread, too.

How about "Vlad the Tabulator Hacker"? Armed with just a modem and a laptop, he changes county totals with a few keystrokes! Oooh, he's so baaaadd!

:-)

[masaka___]

27. I agree.

the machines are not trustworthy.

[Bill MI]

33. Don't get mad, get LOUD!!!

We need to flood the Judiciary Repuglicans with e-mails, letters, and phone calls in order to get them to understand how important this is. They MUST hold FULL investigations with subpeona powers.

<http://judiciary.house.gov/contact.aspx>

The idiots have megaphones, but we have numbers!

The Senate Democrats were cowed, this time by their constituents, into doing what they should have done in 2000. We can't stop now. The ight has only begun!

[JunkYardDogg]

36. PDF on Voting Machine Use across the Country

Thanks to a posting by KaliTracy
this is a PDF Report on the Distribution and use of E-Voting Equipment across the U.S.
I haven't been able to get thru it as my Screen freezes at about pg 5

http://www.electiondataservices.com/EDSInc_DREoverview.pdf

This is KaliTracy's posting:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x260831