Everything you always wanted to knpw about Voting machines, Dick Cheney, and The Carlyle Group, It ain't pretty.

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything." - Joseph Stalin

It is now effectively illegal for citizens in 49 states to count their own votes on election day. http://www.votefraud.org/Intro/index.html

LAWSUIT: Voting Machine Engineer Sues, Alleges Machine Design Flaws
Friday 2/21/2003
This afternoon, the disturbing issues surrounding voting machine security were racheted up another notch:

Dan Spillane, a voting machine test engineer, filed a lawsuit against his former employer, DRE touch-screen voting machine manufacturer VoteHere.

Georgia recently approved VoteHere's machines, and the military is considering them for overseas voting. The company does business also in Sweden and England, and appears to be manufacturing, or planning to manufacture, components for other voting machine companies.

Spillane alleges in his lawsuit that he reported over 250 errors in the system, including critical errors of "severity 1" which include errors that may prevent the machines from correctly registering the votes. He sought meetings with company officials to express concerns about system integrity flaws, and created logs and reports of such flaws.

His complaint indicates that VoteHere did not address the flaws, and that the VoteHere system was certified by independent testing labs despite known flaws. Just when the testing lab began its examination of system integrity, VoteHere fired Spillane.

VoteHere's board of directors includes former CIA director Robert Gates. VoteHere's Chairman is Admiral Bill Owens, who was senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney. Carlucci, of course, now heads the Carlyle Group and Cheney is Vice President.

retrieve a copy of the lawsuit early next week, case # 03-2-18779-85SEA, filed in King County, Washington. If possible we will post it later in the week at http://www.blackboxvoting.com

Bev Harris
http://www.blackboxvoting.com


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/national/26VOTE.html


Receipts Reflect Fears Over Electronic Votes
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 25 — The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted today to invest $20 million in 5,000 voting machines that produce paper receipts, a move that reflects concerns about the trend toward electronic voting machines.

The vote makes Santa Clara the first county in the nation to purchase the so-called voter-verified paper backup system.

The popularity of electronic voting machines is growing as counties replace the kinds of antiquated systems blamed for Florida's 2000 presidential election debacle. At least 1 in 10 voters nationwide cast ballots in the last presidential election using electronic machines.

Computer scientists in Silicon Valley are calling for a halt to the trend, at least until voting machines are redesigned to produce a paper record of every vote.

The intent is to provide more protection against hackers, or political operatives, who might tamper with the results.

Republican Manufactured Voting Machines Involved in Election Fraud
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000048.htm

Right-wing, radical political activists financed USA's largest voting machine company.
http://www.talion.com/election-systems-software.html

Who are Diebold? The corporate officers are as thick as thieves with the Republican hard right religious nut division. http://www.diebold.com/

Election.com Sold To Group Tied To Saudi Nationals

http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzelec0227,0,2634964.story?coll=ny-business-headlines

Election.com, a struggling Garden City start-up scheduled to provide online absentee ballots for U.S. military personnel in the 2004 federal election, has quietly sold controlling power to an investment group with ties to unnamed Saudi nationals, according to company correspondence.

In a letter sent to a select group of well-heeled Election.com investors Jan. 21, the online voting and voter registration company disclosed that the investment group Osan Ltd. paid $1.2 million to acquire 20 million preferred shares to control 51.6 percent of the voting power.

In a Newsday interview in October, Charles Smith, a representative of Osan who sits on Election.com's board, declined to name the Saudi Arabian investors with a stake in the company, other than to say they were "passive” and part of a larger group that included Americans and Europeans. Smith didn't return phone calls Wednesday. ...

-------------------------------

Rothschilds are part owners of voting machines. They were also behind the whole Enron debacle. Now they will be in charge of the software that runs the voting machines. The other owners have simular NWO backgrounds as well. http://www.rense.com/general31/roth.htm

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Massive voter fraud was being planned for months. The fix was in. Be warned. This exclusive interview with Greg Palast will boil your blood.
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/2002/11/04_Palast.html

FLORIDA VOTE FRAUD: High-tech voting system working fine "Go back to sleep, citizen. Nothing to see here!"
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/830822.asp

Arkansas Republicans went to court to keep votes uncounted
http://www.kark.com/karktv/news/story_tmp.asp?cmd=view&Storyid=4948

A statewide recount in Alabama's gubernatorial election demanded by Democratic Governor Siegelman gave victory to his Republican challenger:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/11/07/politics1919EST0782.DTL

Problems in Texas with touchscreen voting machinery http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID=51022&SecID=2

Kansas provisional ballots caused problems
http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/1771656/detail.html

South Carolina's voting equipment creats difficulties
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/4459621.htm

"The likely truth is that the "invalid numbers" were showing the opposite of the intended result. Better to just throw the whole notion of "asking voters who they voted for" out the window with a cheesy and unbelievable excuse, and rely on known methods such as stolen ballot boxes and outright fraudulent punch machines and the like. THOSE methods have been working for millenia, and that is why the VNS fell back on them, as opposed to
exposing the FACT the fraud starts and ends at the tippity-top. '

Nebraska's election fiasco
http://www.theindependent.com/stories/110602/new_electionglitches06.shtml

New Jersey's tally delayed by computer problems
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-nj--votingglitches1106nov06,0,808514.story?coll=ny-ap-regionalwire

Vote Fraud in Tennessee: Worse than Florida?

Black voters were told to get behind the white voters. They were told to remove NAACP stickers from their cars, or leave the polling place without voting. It all sounds like a promo for "Mississippi Burning," or maybe a documentary about egregious civil rights violations in some Deep South backwater fifty years ago. But it happened in November 2000. http://www.counterpunch.org/tnfraud.html


VOTE FRAUD USA?

The Tennessee Voter Empowerment Team met to discuss information they have received. http://www.nashvilleinsanity.com/evidenceinTN.html

MASSIVE POLLING FRAUD IN FLORIDA
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000043.htm

Florida 2002: Sluggish Systems, Vanishing Votes
http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/insiderisks.html#149

Alert: Ghost Precincts, Vigilance Needed
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm4.showMessage?topicID=25.topic

Broward vote total off in reporting glitch The missing 104,000 votes raised questions about the county's $17.2 million electronic voting system http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/4460196.htm

Michigan ballot shortages and polling problems
http://www.tv7-4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1002309&nav=1vrjCEZ7

San Francisco ballot shortages
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1002487&nav=5D7lCElH

18 vote machines missing from Broward elections office

By Buddy Nevins and Scott Wyman | Florida correspondents
Posted October 17, 2002
The Broward County elections office is missing 18 new touch-screen voting machines worth $3,000 each because of poor record-keeping before the flawed Sept. 10 primary, the new elections chief said Wednesday.

"We don't know where they are. I don't think anyone does at this point," said Joseph Cotter, who was hired to fix the problems highlighted by the chaotic primary.

The missing machines were not used in the election. They were part of Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant's outreach program and presumably were used to educate voters on how to cast ballots on the ATM-like devices.

More Florida funny business....

http://www.drudgereport.com/vote1.htm


http://ap.tbo.com/ap/florida/MGAIFTWBQ3D.html
Expert: Palm Beach's New Voting Machines Have Problems
By Jill Barton Associated Press Writer
Published: Jul 16, 2002

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - The voting machines that replaced butterfly ballots and hanging chads are checked by an "Enron-style of auditing" and don't provide voters any assurance that their votes are being cast, an expert testified Tuesday.

Rebecca Mercuri, a computer science professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, said questions remain about the $14 million machines Palm Beach County purchased to improve its voting system because they are designed to audit themselves.

"The problem with the self-auditing machines is if it's broken, how can it tell you that it's broken?" Mercuri said. Mercuri's testimony provided the latest criticism of a county still embarrassed by the 2000 election debacle. She was called in a Tuesday afternoon hearing to bolster a Boca Raton man's claims that he lost a City Council election in March because the new machines malfunctioned.

Former Mayor Emil Danciu's suit seeks to have the results overturned and a new election held. The suit includes affidavits from eight voters who said they had trouble casting ballots on the ATM-style machines and says voters should be given paper receipts to confirm their vote was recorded. It also seeks to allow an independent review of the voting machines and related software and security features.

Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore says such a review would void the machines' warranty and that they've been reviewed twice by labs appointed by the federal government and also by a state worker.

She says most of the information the plaintiffs are seeking is filed with the state Division of Elections in Tallahassee and even if it were available, she couldn't provide it because it includes trade secrets of Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., which manufactures the machines.

"I'm not willing to let anyone take a machine and take it apart," LePore said. "I don't think the taxpayers would appreciate them taking apart a $3,500 machine and voiding the warranty."



---------------------------------------

"Teresa LePore (Palm Beach County supervisor of elections.... revealed that the county's purchase contract included trade-secret clauses that would make it a third-degree felony to disclose details of the specifications or internal functioning of the machines......Further, she noted that the vendor would void the warranty on the machines if they were opened for inspection. Effectively, any independent verification of proper operation was limited to examining the outside of the box. "

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/oct02/evot.html


"Almost 20 years ago, in a classic paper, "Reflections on Trusting Trust," Ken Thompson, a co-inventor of the Unix operating system at AT&T's Bell Laboratories, said: "You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself....No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code....A well-installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect." This computational reality has profound implications for voting systems. Whereas earlier technologies required that election fraud be perpetrated at one polling place or machine at a time, the proliferation of similarly programmed e-voting systems invites opportunities for large-scale manipulation of elections."

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/oct02/evot.html


"It is a known fact that the computer industry does not have the capability, at present, to assure a safe, reliable election using only electronic devices. Thorough investigation of vendor claims (such as those performed by New York City on DRE products), and failures of performance in actual elections, have demonstrated the existence of major flaws. Communities that rely on promises of security and accuracy when purchasing such systems, run the severe risk that they will administer an election whose results may someday be contested — but they will not be able to provide an independent audit that can ascertain the content of the true ballots cast. "
Rebecca Mercuri, Ph.D.

Dr. Mercuri, an electronic vote tabulation specialist and computer science professor at Bryn Mawr, testified on behalf of the Democratic Recount Committee to provide a sworn affidavit on the necessity of a hand recount in the disputed Florida precincts. The testimony was presented as part of the defense brief in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Atlanta, November 17, 2000.

http://www.voterwest.org/mercuri.html

--------------------------

"The concept is clear, simple, and it works. Computerized voting gives the power of selection, without fear of discovery, to whomever controls the computer," - James & Kenneth Collier, authors of VoteScam (1992)

"There are no documented cases of electronic vote-rigging occurring anywhere in the country, but only because it's nearly impossible to prove."

"Hand counting is the gold standard against which we check machine counting efficiency."


American Coup: Mid-Term Election Polls vs Actuals

Scoop’s analysis shows that - according to the polls - the Republican Party experienced a pronounced last minute swing in its favour of between 4 and 16 points. Remarkably this last minute swing appears to have been concentrated in its effects in critical Senate races (Georgia and Minnesota) where it secured it's complete control of Congress. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00078.htm

How to Rig a Touch Screen Voting Machine I have been in the computer programming business for over 30 years. I have written code that runs in devices like the Touch Screen voting machines. When I decided to write this piece, I wanted to describe what it would take to rig a Touch Screen and get away with it and make it very, very, very hard to detect.
http://www.allhatnocattle.net/november92002.htm


Diebold - The Face Of Modern Ballot Tampering

The lack of any exit polling on November 5 has been oddly ignored by the media. Those pesky tracking polls leading up to the elections have been explained away by a ‘late surge to the Republicans’ caused by.... hmmmm, how about sun spot activity? With no exit polls, there was no other feedback to conflict with the "official" results, this allowed the Diebold touch screen machines to change the way election fraud is carried out.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00081.htm


Voting Machines - A High Tech Ambush

Personally, I'll never vote on a machine again if I can help it. For the next election, I'll vote "absentee" (i.e., through the mail). In fact, Oregon has wisely rejected voting machines altogether and handles its entire election through the mail. The state of Washington offers that option, and Colorado is considering mandatory mail-in voting. Maybe those states see an ambush when they see one.ambu
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Landes_Ambush.htm


Vote of No Confidence Everything you need to know about stealing elections http://www.conspire.com/vote-fraud.html

For all its apparent benefits, touch-screen voting is not a panacea, according to several nationally recognized computer experts. There are no documented cases of electronic vote-rigging occurring anywhere in the country, but only because it's nearly impossible to prove.
http://www.kioskcom.com/article_detail.php?ident=1021

The elephant in the room is vote theft on a massive scale
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Editor_sDesk/editor_sdesk.html

The Greatest Cover-Up Of All: Vote Fraud In America
http://www.votefraud.org/Archive/Write/greatest.htm

CalTech and M.I.T. Computer Experts -- Hacking the Machines
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm4.showMessage?topicID=24.topic

Why One Tech Maven Fears Computer Voting
http://www.notablesoftware.com/Press/WSJ.html

Rebecca Mercuri loves computers. But when it comes to counting votes in an election, she favors plain old paper. Computers, she says, just can't be trusted with our democracy. http://interactive.wsj.com/public/current/articles/SB985032601926471110.htm

Voting Machine Technology - It's Not Secure
Have elections in America been rigged to slowly, but surely shift power to the right? In the secretive world of voting machines, anything is possible.
http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm\

When it comes to elections in America...assume crooks are in control...and then act accordingly. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

Thirty-one city newspapers have documented voting errors that only add to the ballot-stuffing, dead-people-voting, hide-the-ballots-in-your-trunk, absentee-faking problems of the past.
http://www.talion.com/election-mistakes.html#reports

Computer Vote Counts are Unverifiable
http://www.votefraud.org/Archive/Write/unverifiable.htm

TESTIMONY OF A COMPUTER EXPERT: The Judge stated in his ruling that "There is no adequate and proper safeguard to prevent the computers from being programmed to distort the election results." http://www.votefraud.org/Archive/Write/expert.htm

Why we need to know who owns voting machine companies
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html#Nebraska

Diebold Magic?
http://www.bartcop.com/111102fraud.htm

Republican Controlled Voting Machines Hand Suprise Victories to...
Guess which party?
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000051.htm

Voter News Service sitting on Election Day data http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nc/story/1902810p-1886603c.html

"Congress could force these companies to submit current source code as a pre-condition, if they wanted to. Congress could keep it secret, so the copyright and trade secret laws would not be infringed. The Senators or whatever would have to sign non-disclosure agreements... there's no valid reason this code is not checked for accurary. Which leaves only invalid reasons for not checking the code - and that would be that they do have ways to monkey with the votes."

The Real Scandal Is the Voting Machines Themselves Computerized vote-counting is a terrible system. This is only news to those who haven’t been paying attention. http://www.commondreams.org/views/121400-108.htm

Rage Against the Machine Machines don't have political beliefs. But computer programmers do.
http://www.tnr.com/120400/dugger120400.html

Voting Machine Companies owned by conservative Republican businessmen, bankers, religious nuts http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachineCompanies.htm

Repository for Voter Complaints
http://www.votewatch.us/

Republicans dominate the voting machine business:
Republican Voting Machines, Election Irregularities, and "Way-Off" Polling Results
http://www.ecotalk.org/MidtermElections2002.htm

Voting Machines - High Tech Ambush
http://www.ecotalk.org/Vote-By-Mail.htm

Elections In America - Assume Crooks Are In Control
http://www.ecotalk.org/AmericanElections.htm

The Nightmare Scenario Is Here - Computer Voting With No Paper Trail
http://www.ecotalk.org/Dr.RebeccaMercuriComputerVoting.htm

"The code behind exit poll tabulation is astoundingly simple to write. And the more simple it is, the less error prone. Why, with two years and millions (billions?) of dollars could they not get it right? When I took Oracle 8i, we were taught DB querying on the first day, and produced percentage based results the first week. This story is hole-ier than a hula-hoop."

Fraud and manipulation endemic......
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20021106&Category=APN&ArtNo=211060605&Ref=R


Proprietary software makes inspection of electronic voting systems impossible
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110602_elections.html


ON SCRAPPING THE EXIT POLLS

"I'm astounded that no one finds this to be of any interest. If you're going to fix an election one thing you need to worry about is an outside party monitoring that election and using well-established and accepted methods of predicting its outcome. Suppose the consortium had McBride beating Bush by 5% and yet Bush was declared the winner. Two possibilities: either the exit polling methodology was flawed or the election was stolen. Are we to believe that a consortium of the nation's most prominent news organizations is so incompetent as to have this happen to them?" www.whatreallyhappened.com


"I'll tell you right now, this election is fixed!"
http://www.drudgereport.com/vote1.htm

"Flyers were being left on cars in black neighborhoods warning that voters with outstanding tickets or warrants might be arrested when they show their ID to vote. Early voters were met by poll watchers from the Republican Party of Arkansas who demanded identification and challenged voter ballots."
http://www.pbcommercial.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2002/October/22-2390-NEWS1.TXT

Background Stories about ES&S Voting Machines
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm4.showMessage?topicID=12.topic

Chip Glitch hands victory to wrong party. Guess which party?
http://www.voxnyc.com/archives/00000050.htm

Great Bartcop article on Voting Machine Fraud, Execs GOP contributions
http://www.bartcop.com/110702otter.htm

Fraudulent automated phone messages in Florida Bush said he was unaware of the phone call effort - even though the call says it was ``paid for by Jeb Bush for Governor Campaign'' http://election2002.tbo.com/election2002/MGARSR0D58D.html

Vote Fraud Texas style http://www.jshull.org/

There's only one reason the exit poll has been scrapped. How could they explain away a (potential) lead by the democrats and then suddenly have the GOP controlling congress. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20021105/ap_on_el_ge/eln_voter_news_service

Voting Problems In Orlando, South Florida "These folks are so crooked they have to screw their socks on in the morning"
http://news.tbo.com/news/MGACF5AHY5D.html

Voting Machines' Maker Blamed. How Florida bought easily-rigged ES&S Voting Machines
http://www.tampatrib.com/MGASSAS976D.html

Manufacturers Admit Voting Machines Unreliable How ES&S machines have modems, allowing hacking to access & alter vote tallies
http://www.rumormillnews.net/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=5172

The Nightmare Scenario Good explanation by Dr. Rebecca Mercuri on paperless computer voting & fraud http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0805-07.htm

Voting into the void Touch-screen voting machines may look spiffy, experts say they can't be trusted.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/05/voting_machines/

How VNS helped to rig Nov. 5 Election for GOP
http://pub103.ezboard.com/fsoldiervoicefrm61.showMessage?topicID=2.topic

Why did VNS bow out the morning of the election? Did somebody get a horse's head in their bed? http://www.bartcop.com/vns2002.htm

Voter News Service Meltdown - Washington Post article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10472-2002Nov5.html

"Voter News Service (VNS) is a top-secret private consortium owned by ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News. It's current headquarters is in Brooklyn, New York. It's been around (under different names) since 1964. It's the only company whose exit poll results are used by the news media to announce the
"projected" winners in races for the president, U.S. House and Senate, state governors, and select races.

With the use of computerized vote counters and the news networks exclusive control over polling data in major elections, the gates to election fraud were wide open. Computerized voting machines have now made election fraud as easy as stealing candy from a baby... If VNS is helping to rig elections, why are they doing it? Generally speaking... I believe that the same people who can't rake in enough money, also can't get enough power. The news networks are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the richest corporations and individuals in the world. They certainly have an agenda.

Their arrogance and disregard for the little guy is clear. They may think that we're not smart enough to pick the 'right' kind of leaders... right for them, that is. So they might try to do it for us. Voter News Service warrants an investigation. Its operations should be shut down regardless. It's in a perfect position to sabotage the election process. Let the counties count the vote and report it to the states. If it takes a day or two for the states to report the results... so be it. Democracy takes time."

Why did VNS bow out the morning of the election?

VNS got into a lot of trouble for correctly calling Florida for Gore after exit polls showed him winning by a comfortable margin. After that 'debacle' they were forced to completely re-design their computer hardware and software. They were my client, and ran on a large IBM mainframe with legacy software.

They were forced to get off the mainframe and on to a completely different hardware and software platform. Everything had to be built from scratch. Supposedly, they didn't have time to fully test the new environment thoroughly far enough ahead of this election cycle. Therefore, they chose to use this election to test the new environment, but not publicly release the results.

Why does VNS think their "Gore wins" Florida 2000 projection was wrong? Bush guaranteed he would win Florida, even after VNS said he lost it. Why is nobody else suspicious?
http://www.bartcop.com/111102bonus.htm

More Magic: winning vote totals uncanny. County Judge Danny Scheel received 18,181 votes. Republican Carter Casteel got exactly 18,181votes. Republican state Sen. Jeff Wentworth also got 18,181 votes. http://www.mysanantonio.com/specials/elections/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=860675

VNS - CIA link? VNS, the guys who are deep sixing their exit poll data, used an outside company to develop their computer programs. It turns out that the company is..... Battelle Memorial Institute, an Ohio-based technology company that also works as a defense contractor to help build the new VNS system. A Battelle spokeswoman declined comment on Tuesday's performance. " From:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021106/ap_wo_en_po/us_election_vns_6

Battelle was also under investigation during the search for the anthrax killer.
http://www.columbusalive.com/2002/20020530/053002/05300203.html

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