More Roadblocks to More Verifiable and Honest Elections

        PPP’s newest national survey finds that a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately….
        Belief in the ACORN conspiracy theory is even higher among GOP partisans than the birther one, which only 42% of Republicans expressed agreement with on our national survey in September.

A majority of GOP voters think ACORN stole the ‘08 election for Obama,
by Jim Galloway, Atlanta Journal Constitution
November 19, 2009

        After issuing an oral ruling in May, 2nd Circuit Court Judge Joseph Cardoza sided with five plaintiffs to bar the state Office of Elections from using electronic voting machines or transmitting election results over the Internet or telephone lines. How the ruling might affect the 2010 elections was not immediately known. Chief Election Officer Kevin Cronin said his office was reviewing Cardoza’s decision and was not prepared to comment on specifics. However, in prepared testimony last week, Cronin says budget cuts and other fiscal restrictions by Gov. Linda Lingle have left the Elections Office with insufficient funds to “successfully execute” the 2010 elections, which include races for governor and Congress.

Maui judge formalizes ruling that bans electronic voting,
by B.J. Reyes, Honolulu Star-Bulletin
September 15, 2009

        While many states are moving toward the use of optical-scan ballot systems, which create a paper trail for voters, 17 states and the District of Columbia will be using paperless systems to some extent in November, according to the Verified Voting Foundation.
        Voters in six states — Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina — will use entirely paperless machines.
        The majority of machines are paperless in seven other states — Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
        And four states – Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi and Wisconsin — have only a small number of paperless systems in place; the majority of voters in these states will use systems that create a paper trail.

N.J. Voting Machines May Be Tested for Accuracy,
by Joshua Brockman, National Public Radio (NPR.org)
May 22, 2008

An Internet security expert says there's no way Internet voting can reliably replace paper ballots to ease the expense of election day.
        John Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin spoke one day after Lake County, Ind., sat out a transit referendum because county commissioners didn't have a spare half million dollars to fund the election.
        Professor Rubin says there are several problems with Internet voting. He says voters do not know if their votes have been counted, if the vote was private, if others cast votes in the name of someone else.
        He says it's just not possible to secure elections property.
        Rubin is author of the book "Brave New Ballot".
        He says there's no way to tell if a voting system has been hacked, if someone is watching the votes roll in.

Security expert: no way to secure Internet voting,
by John Cody, WBBM Radio - Chicago
November 4, 2009

        On Nov. 3, hundreds of thousands of New Jersey voters will slip behind the voting-booth curtains and secretly decide which man they want to be governor for the next four years. They’ll tap the screen on the electronic voting machine and wait for the lighted "X." They’ll cast their vote and go on their way, content that they have exercised their most basic democratic right.
        But when the polls close and the votes are counted, can we trust the result? Sadly, we can’t be sure. Because New Jersey still doesn’t require its electronic voting machines to produce a paper record to verify their results.
        Paper-ballot proponents are trying to get the law changed. They charge that elections without paper-verified ballots are unconstitutional and illegal, but their lawsuit — Gusciora vs. McGreevey — has dragged on in state court for five years.
        A ruling is expected soon, but not soon enough for this year’s contests. Meanwhile, a plan to retrofit 10,000 electronic voting machines with paper printers was delayed by the Legislature this year for lack of funds. So for yet another major election, New Jersey will use the same unacceptable election policy: We’ll cross our fingers and hope nothing goes terribly wrong.
        Here’s why paperless electronic voting is a crap shoot: Voters hit a button and send a signal that the specially programmed computer must interpret. The computer then decides, for instance, is this a vote for Jon Corzine or Chris Christie or Chris Daggett?
        The vote is recorded, and when the polls close, the machine spits out the results. But there is no way to be certain that a computer glitch or malicious hacking hasn’t corrupted the outcome. We must take the computer’s word — even though most of us don’t have a clue how a computer works.
        Think about it: How many times have computer glitches messed up another part of your life? How many times has your laptop or personal computer been infected with a virus? Computers are not infallible, they break down. And even computers with the most sophisticated firewalls can be breached.

Electronic voting machines: Votes need verification,
by Star-Ledger Editorial Board, New Jersey Star-Ledger
September 28th, 2009

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- The New Jersey Supreme Court has reinstated a ban on exit polls, surveys taken of people as they leave their voting places.
        It also has kept in place a ban on distributing leaflets or other materials within 100 feet of polling places. It said Wednesday prohibiting such activities will ensure voters feel no obstructions to casting their ballots.

NJ court reinstates ban on voting site exit polls,
by Beth DeFalco, Associated Press
September 30, 2009

(Washington, D.C.) – Rep. Rush Holt today reintroduced the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, legislation that would create a national standard of voting to help ensure that every vote is recorded and counted as intended. The bill would require paper ballot voting systems accompanied by accessible ballot marking devices and require routine random audits of electronic voting tallies. The bill has 75 cosponsors.
        “It is time we stop using elections as beta tests for unreliable electronic voting machines,” Holt said. “The ability to vote is the most important right as it is the right through which citizens secure all other rights. Voters shouldn’t have any doubts about whether their votes count and are counted. Congress should pass a national standard ensuring that all voters can record their votes on paper and requiring that in every election, randomly selected precincts be audited.”
        In every federal election that has taken place since the Help America Vote Act was enacted in 2003, citizen watchdog groups have gathered and reported information pertaining to voting machine failures. In the 2004 election, more than 4,800 voting machine were reported to the Election Incident Reporting System, from all but eight states. In the 2006 election, a sampling of voting machine problems gathered by election integrity groups and media reports revealed more than 1,000 such incidents from more than 300 counties in all but 14 states. And in 2008, the Our Vote Live hotline received reports of almost 2,000 voting machine problems in all but 12 states.

Bill Would Require Voter-Verified Paper Ballot and Random Audits,
Rush Holt's Office
June 17, 2009

NARRATOR: As dusk fell on election night, one official noticed something very strange: a sign that the heart of America’s democracy was in danger. In Volusia County, Florida, an election computer counted Al Gore’s totals backwards. He had negative votes.
DEANIE LOWE: It was showing a minus sign in front of the votes that it had subtracted from Gore. I mean, it wasn’t like it was trying to hide it. It says there’s minus-16,022 votes here.
NARRATOR: How could a computer that is supposed to protect the votes of you and me count backwards to give a candidate negative votes? Either it was an error or someone had tried to rig the election. ...

... And the public records, I can’t emphasize enough how important they are. In San Diego in the June 6 election, the event log, the audit log that was obtained by a citizen named Bruce Sims, shows the voting machine dialing out to Diebold at 9:31 p.m. during the count on election night. These are the kinds of things that show up.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, explain that.
BEV HARRIS: Yes. It’s difficult to explain.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, the machine dialing out?
BEV HARRIS: The machine dialed out and made a remote connection to Diebold at 9:31 p.m. during the count. And when you say, “Explain it,” I don’t know of any legitimate explanation.

Hacking Democracy: New Documentary Exposes Vulnerability of Electronic Voting Machines,
Democracy Now.org
October 31, 2006

MR. CURTIS: Oh, the exit polls should not be
significantly different than the vote.
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: And if they
were, you would conclude what?
MR. CURTIS: I would conclude someone is
playing with the vote.
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Not with the
exit polls?
MR. CURTIS: That's possible, too. Something
is definitely skewed.
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Something is
definitely skewed in one or the other?
MR. CURTIS: Right. To select which one,
you'd have to see where the problem is.
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Let me ask you
one further question. Assuming for the moment that
such software -- that's what called it, such software
to rig a vote was used in one or more machines in Ohio
or in Florida, could you, today, detect that if you'
looked at the source code?
MR. CURTIS: If you get the machines and they
have not been patched yet -- once they get in and
touch them, anything can happen. You could also set
timers to do that, but then you'd see the timers.
Then you'd have to take those machines, decompile
them, which I couldn't do, but possibly Microsoft, an
MIT something could do, you might, you might be able
to see it.
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: You might?
MR. CURTIS: It depends on how good they are
at destroying what they had.
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Destroying what
they had by tampering with the machine afterwards or
by programming them to destroy instructions in the
first place?
MR. CURTIS: Right.
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE NADLER: Either or both?
MR. CURTIS: Either or both. You didn't
actually see what's in there, so you don't know if the
code is running as a single executable or running in
various modules. If it's running in modules, you can
make the code actually eat itself.

Transcript of December 13th, 2004 Testimony at Congressional Hearing in Columbus,
Including Clinton Curtis Sworn Testimony,
Freepress.org
December 13, 2004

        On November 22, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) announced that they had sent letters to voting officials in eight counties around the country urging them to allow independent testing of their electronic voting machines. The two groups were among the 60 organizations in the Election Protection Coalition (EPC), which ran an Election Day hotline and the web-based Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS). The Coalition received 40,002 reports of election irregularities, including 2,242 incidents concerning voting machines. Click here for an analysis of some of these incidents by a team of computer scientists. (This link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.) According to EFF and VFF, the most serious problems were reported in Mahoning and Franklin counties in Ohio, Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida in Florida, Mercer and Philadelphia counties in Pennsylvania, Harris County in Texas and Bernalillo County in New Mexico. Florida and Ohio were the big swing states that gave the election to George Bush.
        While any form of voting fraud or interference is bad, a malfunctioning voting machine can prevent hundreds of people from casting their votes -- or change the votes of those who do. Most computer experts who have studied electronic voting do not consider the systems used in the 2004 election to be secure or reliable. The state of California has successfully sued Diebold, the manufacturer of one touchscreen voting machine over this very issue, after machines that were purchased for California turned out to be unusable. According to programmers and engineers who have investigated the security of electronic voting machines, touchscreen machines can be set up with a default choice for any candidate that would not be visible to the voters. (The Black Box Voting site explains some of the ways in which this can be done.) Their votes would automatically be cast for the default candidate -- such as George Bush -- unless they could successfully override the hidden default choice programmed into the computer. For example, if a voter deliberately chose not to vote for any Presidential candidate, the touchscreen voting machine would count the non-vote as a default vote for George Bush.

        Reports from voters in Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, and elsewhere (especially other swing states) documented that many touchscreen voting machines appeared to have been set with a "Default to Bush". The "Default to Bush" could be changed only if a voter successfully selected another candidate. But it appears that in many cases the voters did not successfully override the "Default to Bush," in some cases because they did not notice the problem and in other cases because it was difficult or impossible to get the machine to accept another candidate. This was a major problem in New Mexico and Mahoning and Franklin counties in Ohio. There were also problems with "Default to Bush in the "Big Three" Florida counties: Palm Beach, Broward and Dade, and elsewhere in Pinellas, Hillsboro, Pasco, Sarasota and Lee. In fact, Florida was the state with the most reported incidents in the Election Protection Coalition/Election Incident Reporting System database. (There are state-by-state links below.)
         Election officials had to replace some of the machines in Mahoning County (Ohio) after repeated attempts by technicians to "recalibrate" them failed. This also happened in Florida and New Mexico. The EIRS system also identified patterns of default away from Kerry and the minor party candidates elsewhere. The same pattern was also found in some U.S. Senate races, including the race in Florida, which elected Republican Mel Martinez over Betty Castor. ...
        Computer security experts and engineers from the International Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) found evidence that the manufacturer's technicians or representatives have remote access to some vote machines while they are in service, and can change defaults and other settings remotely. Furthermore, some of the voting machine manufacturers monitored the election results remotely on election day. ...
        Many computer systems are designed so that service technicians are able to make changes to the software through a remote connection, but this is not an appropriate feature for a voting machine. The actual security of electronic voting machines is difficult for the general public to determine. Voting machine designs are certified by two highly-secretive consulting firms which have refused to disclose their procedures for testing machines for accuracy and security. Even when they certify a machine, the certificate applies only to the design of the hardware and software -- any individual machine may be altered before an election.

Patterns of Touch Screen Voting Machine Fraud Identified and Documented in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and Elsewhere in 2004, FLCV.com

        The fallibility of such systems are well known by now. They are hackable as well as prone to error, and if they were hacked, there is no way to trace by whom because there is intentionally no evidence (except by statistical analysis, hardly a smoking gun) and no way to verify without a paper trail, that a wrong result had been given or that it would not have occurred that way anyway. But 'painful' recounts of close elections such as Florida in 2000 and an even closer Minnesota Senatorial election of 2008 can now be simply waved away where these machines dominate or have influence. Nothing to recount. Take the machines word for it because that is all you will ever get, and how it works is as classified as any Honduran death squad's relations to the US government could ever be.
        But there is another aspect of this which is clearly criminal. Though I would state that anyone who is responsible for having built or ordered such machines which INTENTIONALLY produce results, election results for who controls the government no less, which cannot be independently verified have committed crimes against the state or treason, many would consider that an extreme position. Get over it. Mistakes happen all the time. There is no such thing as an error free election anyway so what is the big deal if these new machines are not perfect? That is the price of progress! Heck, it can even be funny too.



        Literally we now have made stealing elections in plain sight no longer a crime. Though we have many many FBI and other officials who will state otherwise, that such actions are still in fact illegal, how can that stand when those running the elections are purposely making it possible for such things to be done, to hide the evidence that any election was indeed 'stolen' and such future investigations, if any, will be hampered by a preemptive 'shredding' of any evidence of such a crime?
        And even if one were to state that such things are merely 'bad judgment' such as creating a system of confinement or 'interrogation' based upon torture, sexual assaults, raping of relatives or threats to do so to elicit cooperation, then how can they explain away a doubling or tripling of doubt in the public of the fairness in their elections, that the person 'elected' to represent them actually won the most votes honestly? The last poll I saw, more than 30% of Americans doubted the fairness of the electoral process, in a large part due to unchallengeable, unverifiable electronic voting machines. That politicians and electoral boards can flagrantly put in systems of voting counting that completely and provably severely diminish the public's faith in the honestly of their elections shows such laws against tampering clearly do not extend to giving people valid reasons to not wish to vote at all. Why vote if you don't think it will be counted fairly? And if that is the intent after all, you have a completely legal way to disenfranchise millions simply because of 'bureaucratic bad decisions' which can create the exact same conditions as riggable voting machines without actually having to rig them except when one thinks simply turning people off to the idea of voting has not worked well enough this particular time.
        Once the evidence came out that such machines could be rigged, leaving them in place and not recalling them should have been prosecuted for the crime that it was, conspiracy to continue to make possible the rigging and theft of an election. And beyond that, even if such machines are not 'provable' to be 'hackable' simply putting in systems which do not have or severely diminish the public's confidence in the honesty of their elections, that alone should make it a crime. For that which undermines the public's desire to vote because such elections are purposely being held up as possibly being or having been tainted, with evidence quite enough to back that suspicion up, should itself be enough to make it a crime, as conspiring to suppress legitimate voters from having reason to vote.

Pulling the trigger on the Anti-Democracy gun,
TruthRevival.org (previous post)
May 30, 2009

        In the 6 months since my last post, Pulling the trigger on the Anti-Democracy gun, nothing much has changed in giving most people reasons to think American elections are completely honest and fair. As with the years before that, when Congressman Holt put forward bills requiring the elimination of unverifiable electronic election machines, such notions and bills died along the way or were held up in committee.

        Still, we have come a long way since November 2000 when most people were first given reason to have suspicions or were even made aware that such machines and vulnerabilities were even present in the election process. Many states since have put forth laws requiring a paper trail, yet nothing has been done on the federal level to give Americans as a whole, assurances that their elections are not being rigged by the companies making the machines, or anyone else.

        As I mentioned in the last post, I don't think you have to actually rig an election's voting machines to rig an election. Even casting doubt on the veracity of the process to the extent that a significant number of people will stay home and not bother to vote at all I believe can be a valid method to sway elections. It may not rise to the level of outright voter intimidation which was used in Ohio in 2004, but it is subversive to any notion of democracy as well.

        The worst danger after the public became aware that their election processes could be manipulated was a push to ban exit polling. If the election results and the exit polls did not match, and a recount was not possible or could be embarrassing, a good number of Congressmen and the press floated the idea of simply getting rid of any independent verification or checks of unverifiable results from electronic machines which produced no backup methods except their own accounts. Of these producing externally unverifiable results, many have repeatedly and demonstrably have shown they could be easily rigged.

        It is nice to think we have moved away from that, that exit polling would continue to be an indication of fraud, but that is hardly the case. The fact that following the evidence of massive fraud in the Florida 2000 election, the major news networks were suddenly convinced to suspend their independent and thus cross verifiable exit polling, and pool their results into one common set of poll numbers was unconscionably stupid if not criminally suspect. This led to the simple fact that there were no exit polls given at all because they were declared tainted or suspect. Without creating a new law expressly forbidding exit polling from being conducted, the exact same outcome was achieved without the embarrassment of looking like a country which more or less openly rigs, or attempts to rig its own elections.

        Anyone who has studied elections of other countries, close, disputed, "colored" revolutions, and so forth, as I have may agree it is a good rule of thumb that an opposition party must win big to win at all. How big depends on the country, whether or not the US or news organizations will quickly accept your results, how quickly you can dampen street demonstrations, and how committed or desperate the demonstrators are, and the amount of funds available to keep them fed, as well as funds to provide sanitation services for thousands of people constantly in the streets. Obviously, getting enough people to have recounts is very expensive, as well as the recount process or revotes.

        A similar knee-jerk reaction to the close votes in Congressional districts in 2008 led to calls to ban recounts. As some have argued bizarrely in Obama's decision making in regards to the Afghanistan morass, that it is better to make a quick decision than the right one, they have put forth that a quick count of votes is more important than an accurate one. No "as long as it takes," just a repeat of "I am ahead now, so please stop counting now." And if that doesn't work, appeal, appeal, appeal. All of this is hardly conducive to getting people to wish to vote, but then how much of what the government does these days actually makes people feel their votes count, if not that they literally were not counted at all?

        In regards to the "must win big to win at all" rule I mentioned for challengers, it was fairly clear that Obama did succeed in meeting that threshold. Over 9 million votes, and more than enough states to have many states and even many combinations of states excluded completely if tainted or "flipped" by fraud, and still he would have won. Yet a majority of Republicans supposedly, according to one poll, think he might have won by fraud, or that, by that logic, he did not really win the Presidency at all.

        That fits neatly in with the many other competing memes that he is not the legitimate President of the United States because: a) he was not born in this country; b) his father was not an American; c) he is or may be the Anti-Christ; d) he is a time-travelling Nazi Moslem Manchurian Candidate;

Colbert assists Bush: Obama is a secret time-traveling Nazi Muslim - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

... and other similar but less plausible theories. Such a majority response to that question may be also an answer given to balance or get back for the many who claimed that George Bush did not legitimately win the 2000 and/or the 2004 elections. Given that many might use the opportunity to vent frustration about that when asked the same exact question of Obama's victory's legitimacy, one could think such an answer might not be a 100% reflection of what they really think.

        However, even if they really truly think that, despite the evidence that Obama won by a substancial margin, it is not even surprising. It is doubtful that many who think that Obama did not win would be necessarily swayed by greater election safeguards, recounts, and independent verifications or outside checks or monitoring, but that does not excuse the fact that in many states and in many cases there are (and CAN BE by design) none at all. We do not invite international observers to monitor our elections, despite the fact that in many instances some fail to live up to international standards. In too many instances, there is rampant evidence of attempted rigging, and often non-existent investigations.

        And that is only to speak of outright clearly defined election crimes. Strategic malfunctioning of machines, longer lines in some districts over others, uneven placement of machines of varying reliability in successfully recording votes, these are just a few of the harder to prove methods which are allegedly used. But in my mind, none of these is so open, so flagrant, as to continually allow such elections with tainted and suspect machines and methods to go forward year after year, election cycle after election cycle. People are getting rich off these machines, others possibly by hacking or rigging them, and "our public servants" are continuing to place these slot machine (for them) versions of voting machines in place of ones which would accurately record votes with verifiability to their results to actually being provably demonstratively correct. And doing by doing so, continuing to buy them, win or lose for them, is always a win for the companies making them, and always losing more credibility in the results, and losing reasons for people to vote in the first place the more these abominations to democracy spread and are allowed to potentially poison the results, and absolutely, to poison their credibility.

        Voteprotect.org has a good listing of which states have more verifiable counting methods in place, yet even in paper-trail verifiable states like my own, there can be legislation pending to overturn court decisions requiring paper trails or forbidding results from traveling over the Internet. My own state legislature has begun considering reversing course now, so even the "good" or "more verifiable results" states on Voteprotect's map may not be that way next week, or in the next election cycle. And attempts at banning exit polling are always right around the corner too, not to mention the fact that such polls, when conducted now, are not always publicly released. It is said the price of democracy is eternal vigilance. To what degree can we say our current legislators or electors try to live by that motto?

        Sorry, we would like to have open, fair, and completely verifiable elections, but you know, they are just so dang expensive...


Below is map of current states which have verified voting and/or mandatory checks (green yes, red no, yellow partial)...

(Image via Verifiedvoting.org)

Other relevant links..

Electionprotection.org
Verifiedvoting.org
Voteprotect.org
Votersunite.org